Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Today I went for a walk in the Tarkine. I was fortunate to sit under a wedge tailed eagle as it circled around me. Its nest must have been nearby as it seemed to linger, most curious about my intrusion. As I wandered in to that spot, so similar to many other places in Tassie's north-west, I had the pleasure of seeing a couple of wallabies and some rather rare trees, amongst which was a magnificent specimen of native olive.

There should be more literature on the broken promises of the logging industry. When those companies arrive in a country, they try to entice the local people with arguments like that their operations will bring jobs and training for them.

A Brazilian industrial plantation project hoping to get a subsidy from the UN for sucking up carbon from the atmosphere has failed to make its case, according to the project's official validator. Det Norske Veritas (DNV), a norwegian company assigned by the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) to check the project's claims, says that it can't determine whether carbon could be held in the project's eucalyptus trees long enough to make any difference to the climate system.

Some conceptual errors are hard to die. Such is the case of the concept of "planted forests". Although increasingly weakened as a credible definition, the draft plan for implementation agreed upon in Bali during the last Preparatory Conference for the World Summit on Sustainable Development insists on calling plantations "forests."

While not related to the pulp and paper industry, rubber plantations and oil palm plantations have similar impacts on local communities to fast-growing tree plantations. Rubber and oil palm plantations also involve using large areas of land, often land which is crucial to local people's livelihoods.

The loss of access to forest resources does not only occur with deforestation of primary forest, but also where commercial tree plantations replace primary forests. It is a well known fact that tree plantations of introduced species planted for commercial purposes for local and international markets, do not have the non-timber forest products of primary forests, particularly resources used for housing, household items, food, fuel, handicraft and medicines.

Tree plantations are a growing problem worldwide and this is particularly clear to people living near the plantations. For instance, the Chief of Xiang Khai sub-district of Xaibouli district, in Laos, says: “Eucalyptus plantations are causing forest, soil and water resource degradation. I do not want anyone to grow any more eucalyptus trees in my sub-district.”

The certification granted by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or what is now known as the “green label” guarantees that a company’s wood with this qualification, has been obtained on the basis of sustainable forest management practices.

Corporate interests in oil palm, (see WRM Bulletin 47) have found in Mexico, and more precisely in Chiapas, an ideal spot for their business, basically due to the climatic diversity of the zone, the availability of cheap labour (more so because of its condition as frontier state with Central America, where undocumented workers abound), and the possibility of easy access to peasant community land. The peasants, pushed and pressed by the powerful market forces expressed in agrarian policies, become salary earners on their own land, which is no longer the base of their food security.

The Argentine forestry sector is weeping. The fat business of planting large-scale monocultures of fast growing alien tree species, aimed at the pulp industry, has foundered.

The Plywood Ecuatoriana S.A. logging company, belonging to the Alvarez – Barba family will end up by destroying the last primary forests existing in the zone of the Ecuadorian Choco, specifically in the province of Esmeraldas. However, this company that depredates forests has recently decided to dress in green.

Liberia is a biodiversity rich country with rocky cliffs and lagoons facing the Atlantic Ocean, with plains covered by forests and savannahs, and rainforests in the highlands, crossed by rapids and waterfalls, all of which are home to the Kpelle, Bassa, Gio, Kru, Grebo, Mano, Krahn, Gola, Gbandi, Loma, Kissi, Vai, and Bella peoples. The evergreen and semi-deciduous rainforests of Liberia also harbour many and even rare and unique plant and animal species.