Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Tanzania's forests are quickly disappearing and illegal commercial logging is the main cause of the problem. Not only does the government seem unable to address the present state of things, but forestry officials themselves have been accused of being directly involved in the illegal timber trade. Other suspects in the illegal timber business are timber product dealers, private individuals, sawmillers and logging companies (see WRM Bulletin 27).

By different means the World Bank is one of the major and most influential promoters of the prevailing monoculture tree plantation model. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) -a part of the World Bank Group, whose specific task is the promotion of private sector investment in "poor" countries- has been directly investing in projects linked to tree plantations, for example in Kenya and Brazil.

Intentional fires, tree monoculture plantations and mining are direct causes of deforestation in Indonesia. Additionally, indigenous peoples traditional rights over their territories are ignored. As a result, the country's once vast and luxurious forests are vanishing and, according to two recent independent studies, deforestation rate is faster than what the authorities are used to admitting. A World Bank research, based on map studies, and issued last July estimates an annual forest loss of 1.5 million hectares during the last two decades.

Several NGOs -among them the Borneo Resources Institute (BRIMAS), Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth), SACCESS, Keruan Association Sarawak, Centre for Orang Asli Concerned (COAC) and EPSM/CETDEM- took part at the first consultative meeting of the Malaysian National Timber Certification Council (NTCC) which took place from 18-21 October, 1999, in Kuala Lumpur.

In the Region Huetar Norte of Costa Rica, the forest area has been reduced to the lowlands of the San Juan River on the border with Nicaragua. What used to be a vast tropical forest that occupied more than 200,000 hectares has been reduced to a mere 30,000 hectares of fragmented forests, most of which severely logged. Unlike what happens in other regions of the country, in Huetar Norte there are no protected areas, all the remaining forests are categorized as wood production forests, and the region's biodiversity is in the hands of forestry management plans.

Bolivian social organizations, trade unions, IPOs and environmental NGOs have strongly condemned and taken actions to face a recent governmental decree, which in fact guarantees the activities of illegal logging performed by depredatory companies to the detriment of the country's forests and their people.

The "success" of the Chilean forestry model -based on pine and eucalyptus monocultures- was based on a combination of the appropriation of the Mapuche indigenous people's lands and ruthless repression. Now, when the old dictator is under arrest in England, his shadow is still present in the democratically-elected government, which seems unable -or unwilling- to repair the injustices committed during the dictatorship years.

Papua New Guinea still contains one of the major tropical rainforests in the world, hosting high levels of biodiversity. Together with the government's policy regarding forests -which considers them as a mere source of roundwood to be exported- and its collusion with powerful forestry companies (see WRM Bulletin 22), the activities of foreign logging companies constitute a threat to these rich ecosystems and to the people that inhabit them.

Impacts of tree monocultures are usually analysed under two broad headings: environmental and social. The former involves impacts on water, soil, biodiversity and landscape, while the latter includes social and economic impacts. Though useful as an analytical tool, such division can however hide the fact that all impacts are -in the short or in the long run- social, since it is local people who live nearby plantations or who are displaced by them who suffer the consequences.

Because of Aracruz Celulose's move to apply for FSC certification for its eucalyptus plantations in the state of Bahia -avoiding at the same time the polemic issue of the dispossesion of Guarani and Tupinikim's lands as a consequence of the company's plantations in the neighbouring state of Espirito Santo- a large number of concerned organizations and individuals held a seminar last October in Vitoria, Espirito Santo, to analyse this menacing scenario.

Last November we received a message from the Tasmania based NGO Native Forest Network-Southern Hemisphere (NFN), informing that the Australian giant North Ltd. was planning to invest in pulpwood plantations in Uruguay.

Multinational corporations, with support from some academic institutions and governments, are working hard to create and grow genetically engineered trees. Such development is causing great concern among informed sectors of the public, who reasonably fear that these artificially created organisms pose a threat to the environment, and could cause irreparable imbalances in the world's forest ecosystems. Critical reports, protests and even direct actions have been undertaken to curb this process (see WRM Bulletins 23 and 26).