Large-Scale Tree Plantations

The Mumbai-Porto Alegre (MPA) Forest Initiative is intended to serve as a platform for the joining of forces and for the building of solidarity between actors working on a wide spectrum of issues related to social and environmental justice and forests. As economic globalisation is increasingly affecting local communities, the need to create a global movement for ensuring peoples’ rights and forest conservation became an imperative that a number of participants to the World Social Forum decided to set in motion.

The following Statement was issued on 24/11/05 in Vitoria, Espirito Santo, Brazil at an international meeting on building support for local communities against large-scale tree plantations and GMO trees. This meeting was co-sponsored by World Rainforest Movement, FASE-ES and Global Justice Ecology Project.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports outdoor field trials of GM trees worldwide in 16 countries. While the majority are located in the United States, there are also GE tree test plots in France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, Indonesia, Chile and Brazil. China is the only country known to have developed commercial plantations of GM trees, with well over one million trees planted throughout ten provinces.

Lumaco (which means “Moon water”) is a community of passage located in a large area of tree plantations and impoverished communities. Very little about it invites you to stay. Lumaco is part of the communes known in Chile as forestry communes.

In Ecuador three models of monoculture tree plantations coexist: the erroneously called “carbon sinks” belonging to the Dutch foundation FACE, the pine tree plantations in Andean communities promoted by organizations linked to the Church and the pulpwood plantation model. In this article we shall concentrate on this latter and more recent model.

Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is one of the world's largest pulp and paper companies. The company is responsible for large-scale deforestation of Indonesia's forests. APP has also generated a number of not-yet-settled conflicts with local communities in Indonesia. Forthcoming research by Rully Syumanda, Friends of the Earth Indonesia/WALHI's forest campaigner and Rivani Noor of the Community Alliance for Pulp Paper Advocacy (CAPPA) documents the company's grim record in Sumatra.

"Rural people are very knowledgeable, but they don't have degrees. Neither do they speak the 'right' language. This study helps me to empower the community. I see myself as a voice of the voiceless, committed to the struggle for the advancement of the dignity of our people," John Blessing Karumbidza said, opening his presentation in Vitória. Born in rural Zimbabwe, Karumbidza is a Junior Lecturer in Economic History at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

In 1994, the FACE Foundation signed an agreement with the Ugandan authorities to plant trees on 25,000 hectares inside Mount Elgon National Park in Uganda. FACE is working with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), which is responsible for the management of Uganda's National Parks. The FACE Foundation (Forests Absorbing Carbon dioxide Emissions) was set up in 1990 by the Dutch electricity generating board with the aim of planting trees to absorb and store carbon, supposedly to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from a new power station to be built in the Netherlands.

The following Statement was issued on 24/11/05 in Vitoria, Espirito Santo, Brazil at an international meeting on building support for local communities against large-scale tree plantations and GMO trees. This meeting was co-sponsored by World Rainforest Movement, FASE-ES and Global Justice Ecology Project.

Among other direct and underlying causes of deforestation, Africa's rainforest ecosystems are threatened by logging, as are virtually all of the world's remaining large, contiguous rainforests. These biodiversity rich rainforests provide critical habitat not only to local indigenous but all of the Earth's peoples and species.

Initiated by WWF in cooperation with business partners --a group of producers, buyers, retailers and financial institutions-- in 2003, the initiative called Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has hold its third meeting in Singapore this month where 8 Principles and 39 Criteria were adopted.

South African pulp and paper company Sappi is planning to increase the capacity of its Sappi Saiccor mill by more than 200,000 tons a year. Sappi Saiccor is the largest producer of chemical cellulose (dissolvable pulp) in the world. Its mill at Umkomaas, about 50 kilometres south of Durban Port currently produces about 600,000 tons of chemical cellulose a year. The chemical cellulose is used to produce things like cigarette filters, sweet wrappers, an additive to washing powder that stops dirt sticking to clothes and the stuff that makes vitamin tablets stick together.