Large-Scale Tree Plantations

In 1998, the World Bank and WWF announced a new ‘Forest Alliance’ with the target of securing 200 million hectares of certified forests in World Bank client countries by 2005. The Alliance has faced a serious challenge in reaching this goal.

The concept of carbon trading as an instrument to ‘avert dangerous climate change’ first surfaced in the negotiations that resulted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992. Under the UNFCCC, projects claiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could sell the ‘saved’ emissions to a company that finds it more lucrative to pay someone else to reduce emissions rather than to reduce them themselves.

Indonesia has the third most extensive area of tropical forest on earth and is one of its richest centres of biodiversity. It is also the world's second largest palm oil producer with an output of over 11 million tonnes of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) in 2004. With Indonesia’s forests disappearing at 3.8 million hectares per year, the land area converted to oil palm plantations has doubled during the past decade to nearly 5 million ha - an area roughly the size of Costa Rica. Most oil palm plantations in Indonesia are established on land which was, until very recently, mature rainforest.

The whiteness of a sheet of paper hides obscure stories of enviromental degradation and social dispossession. Those stries are seldom know by consumers living far away from where the raw material -wood- is obteined and from where pulp and paper are produced. It is therefore important to know -and tell- the story.

The Forest Stewardship Council's Plantations Review is finally under way. The 12 member committee elected to implement the first part of this process (the “policy phase”) held its first meeting from 9-11 March in Stockholm, Sweden. Four members –two northern and two southern- from each of the three chambers (social, environmental and economic), will have the task of leading this process and elaborating clear guidelines for future certification of plantations. A possible second “technical phase” is now being discussed by the committee members.

On 18 October 2004, Samling Plywood, the Malaysian timber corporation, was granted a Certificate for Forest Management under the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) for the alleged sustainable logging of one of Sarawak's last remaining contiguous areas of primary rainforest.

Illegal logging is rampant in Vietnam. Vietnamese newspapers frequently report on new logging scandals. A few examples from last year illustrate the point. In January, the People's Army Newspaper ran a story about the arrest of "notorious timber trader" Nguyen Van Hung. In June, Labour Newspaper reported that railway guardsmen had stopped the transportation of illegally logged timber on a train. And November saw the conclusion of the biggest ever illegal logging case in the central highlands.

The world's largest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp has plans to become even bigger. Last year, Aracruz Cellulose produced 2.5 million tons of pulp. The company is looking at five possible sites to build a new, one million tons a year pulp mill. Over the next two years, Aracruz will spend US$600 million on upgrading its existing pulp mills and expanding its 305,000 hectare plantation area.

For the second time, the Clean Development Mechanism's (CDM) Executive Board has rejected the reasons of Vallourec & Mannesmann do Brasil for requesting carbon credit money for industrial tree plantations.

In early March 2005, the first carbon sinks project promoted by the World Bank's BioCarbonFund entered the first stage of registering as a CDM project under the Kyoto Protocol. Around the same time, a template document for BioCarbonFund sinks project developers to estimate sequestration rates was posted on the World Bank carbon finance website. The template used some slightly irreverent examples to illustrate how to fill in certain fields. The highlight was in the section “Contact (preferably email)” which was filled in “ fred@data_fiddling_Inc.jail.com ”.

If there is one thing that the other possible world we are appealing for must contain, it is biological diversity. Life shouts this out at us at each step we take. The message is there for all to see. The greater the diversity of an ecosystem, the greater its wealth, the greater its beauty. The precious tropical forests, deep receptacles of innumerable animal and plant species, of colours, shades and sounds, the cradle of springs and streams, the matrix of human populations.

In 1972 the Norwegian group Borregaard set up a pulp mill in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, a few kilometres away from the City of Porto Alegre, (municipality of Guaiba), on the banks of the river Guaiba. This mill was to close down in 1975 as a result of public pressure against the contamination it was causing. That same year it was purchased by the Klabin Company, and reopened under the name of Riocell.