Struggles Against Tree Monocultures
Corporate profit drives land grabs to install industrial tree monocultures. Where industrial plantations take root, communities' territories and lives are violently invaded, their forests destroyed and their water polluted. When communities resist, companies tend to respond with aggression. Despite this extreme violence, communities around the world are resisting, organizing and joining forces to defend their territories. Every September 21 the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations is celebrated.
Articles
13 September 2024
On the eve of the International Day of Struggle against Tree Monocultures, we invite you to participate in the webinar “Tree Plantations, Carbon Markets and Resistances”. It will be on Friday 20th September.
Publications
10 September 2024
This briefing provides an overview of the expansion of tree plantations aimed at carbon markets. Where are these plantations located, who is profiting from them, what have been the impacts for communities living on the lands these projects occupy, and what international initiatives are taking place to boost tree plantations for carbon offsetting.
Bulletin articles
4 January 2022
We invite you to reflect with an activist who explores resistance processes and the challenges they face, based on her experience with struggles in Brazil. In this reflection, we also invite you to join the collective resistance from your own contexts and spaces of organization. The fight continues and the fight is one!
Bulletin articles
24 June 2025
WRM Bulletin 274 included an article on the work of the Earthworm Foundation, entitled: ‘NGOs at the service of plundering territories: the Earthworm Foundation case’. It describes how corporations which are causing conflict in the territories where they operate profit from cooperation with groups like Earthworm Foundation, while violence against community activists, landgrabs and sexual assaults of women continue.
Bulletin articles
23 April 2025
Under the guise of ‘conflict mediation’ and community empowerment, the work of certain corporate NGOs results in communities continuing without access to and control over their lands, and in strengthening destructive production models. One example is the Earthworm Foundation's partnership with palm oil agribusiness in several countries. See the article and interview below.
Bulletin articles
23 April 2025
In South Africa's Western Cape province, rural communities affected by historical land dispossession in many places also face the manifold impacts of living surrounded by industrial tree plantations. Seeking to strengthen their access to land, these communities have mobilised in a forum supported by civil society organizations, demanding participation in decision-making and other community rights.
Articles
2 April 2025
On March 25, the palm oil company Socapalm, a subsidiary of the multinational Socfin-Bolloré, carried out a violent operation with security forces against a rural community that is demanding the return of its lands, in Apouh A Ngog village, in the Litoral Region of Cameroon. In an open letter, more than 50 organizations from different countries demanded that the country's authorities investigate and stop these atrocities and find an inmidate solution in favour of the community.
Articles
13 March 2025
WRM expresses its solidarity with the struggle of women from the Rural Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil. On this day, March 13, they are taking various actions across the country in favor of agrarian reform and against the multiple forms of violence perpetrated against women, under the slogan “Agribusiness means violence and environmental crimes. The struggle of women is against capital”. One of the actions is taking place in the state of Espírito Santo, where 1000 women have occupied an area belonging to Suzano.
Bulletin articles
15 December 2024
The just-released “Mouila Declaration” is a message of resistance, solidarity and unity from communities and grassroots organisations of the Informal Alliance against the expansion of Industrial Monocultures.
Other information
15 December 2024
Articles
1 November 2024
In the upper Acará River in Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, Turiwara indigenous people are defending their territory against the oil palm monoculture company Agropalma, that invaded the lands. The Turiwara fear for their lives due to the presence of company guards and other heavily armed people, frightening them.