Consumption

Excessive consumption patterns, especially in the global North, and increasingly in urban centres in the global South, demand a constant extraction of minerals, energy and raw materials. Most of this extraction takes place in the global South, where companies take over community lands for industrial plantations, fossil fuel extraction and large-scale mining. Communities are losing their lands and forests so that consumers can continue to have cheap access to paper products, cars and mobile phones, etc – and companies continue to pocket their profits.

Bulletin articles 25 October 2023

Uruguay: The impact of industrial tree plantations on the water crisis

More than seven percent of Uruguay's territory is covered with monoculture tree plantations. A handful of companies have been behind this massive expansion—which has occurred mostly over watersheds and prairies—,with devastating consequences. This year, almost half of the urban population had no access to drinking water—an imminent warning of the drastic change that is needed for Uruguay to maintain its water.

Bulletin articles 30 March 2023

Nature-based Solutions: Corporate polluters keep fuelling climate chaos with greenwashing and junk offsets

Ending fossil fuel burning is urgent, yet oil and gas companies have been ramping up production and profits in 2022. Polluters greenwash their activities saying they offset their emissions with investments in ‘nature-based solutions’, which mean land grabbing, violence and corporate control over vast areas of land in the global South.

Bulletin articles 16 January 2023

New Capital Cities, Deforestation and Social Apartheid: Parallels Between Brazil and Indonesia

Brazil and Indonesia share a particular similarity: at some point its rulers decided to build a new capital city. While rulers in Brazil built Brasilia some 60 years ago, construction of the new Indonesian capital is currently underway. Both projects reinforce a colonial State, in spite of their promoters claiming the opposite. Both stories however, also show the role of social struggles as a way to revert a history of colonialism. (Available also in Bahasa Indonesia)

Bulletin articles 16 June 2022

Expansion of Pulp and Paper Companies APP and APRIL in Indonesia: More Deforestation and Violence

More than 10 million hectares in Indonesia are controlled by the pulp and paper industry, mainly by two giant corporations: APP and APRIL. Despite the companies’ commitments to protect forests and peatland, both keep being associated with deforestation, forest fires and to a business model of violence, criminalization and dispossession of forest communities. (Available in Bahasa Indonesia)

Bulletin articles 16 June 2022

Communities resisting the impunity and impacts of oil palm growers in Ecuador: Cases from Esmeraldas

There are currently 270,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Ecuador. The resistance processes of the communities of La Chiquita, Guadualito and Barranquilla de San Javier in the region of Esmeraldas continue to generate outrage and solidarity among other communities, and internationally.

Bulletin articles 23 March 2022

The Rush for Carbon Concessions: More Land Theft and Deforestation

This bulletin focuses on a central cause of large-scale deforestation and dispossession of forest peoples: The imposition of land concessions as an instrument to separate, divide and map land according to economic and political interests. In consequence, the editorial alerts on the grabbing of vast amounts of hectares for Carbon Concessions.

Bulletin articles 23 March 2022

Colonization and Monoculture Plantations: Histories of Large-Scale ‘Grabbings’

The control of land was vital to colonisers. It meant wealth, territorial influence, access to ‘resources’ and cheap (and often enslaved) labour. The separation of indigenous inhabitants from their territories was a crucial component that persists until today. The effect of this history continues to influence the management of and conflicts over land.

Bulletin articles 15 May 2017

Water and Pulp: The North's Thirst and the South's Resistance

Bulletin articles 9 November 2015

Trade deals, agribusiness and the climate crisis

Other information 9 June 2015

Latin America and EU Trade relationships - Animated video

Bulletin articles 6 May 2015

FSC: Certifying accumulation markets

For a long time, WRM, along with other organizations and social movements, has denounced the certification of projects that are destructive to forests and their web of life. These projects have also proven to be detrimental to communities living in and depending on forests. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification not only legitimates industrial logging in tropical forests and vast areas of monoculture plantations, but has also been associated with carbon markets, by certifying trees planted for “carbon capture".