Large-Scale Tree Plantations

A letter signed by over 140 organizations and social movements from different countries around the world and by over 110,000 individuals has been sent to the President of the DRC and the Governour of Equateur province, where the killing took place.

We ask for your urgent support. Please sign on to the Action Alert. It is important to send the letter as soon as possible.

A member of the Congolese environmental and human rights organisation RIAO-RDC was brutally killed by a security guard of the Canadian palm oil company Feronia Inc. on Sunday, July 21, 2019, near the company’s Boteka plantations in Bempumba, Eqauteur Province, DRC.

It is impossible to think about extraction without thinking about a vast network of accompanying infrastructure, and thus even greater deforestation and destruction.

We live in an age of ever more “extreme infrastructure.” The construction of roads, railway lines and other infrastructure linking production and resource extraction centres with major consumer areas is tied to profoundly undemocratic forms of elitist planning.

The construction of the Suzano Pulp and Paper mill—along with nearby highways, the constant transport of wood, and the massive influx of workers—has brought a lot of devastation to communities. This is the testimony of an activist who is fighting for the territory.

The mega-infrastructure corridors prioritized in ambitious investment programmes spanning the african continent are squarely focused on facilitating the export of minerals and agricultural commodity crops and the import of processed foods and manufactured goods.

As a condition to install its second pulp mill, the company UPM demanded that the Uruguayan state build a new railroad from the site where UPM plans to locate its mill to the port. The government would cover the costs of these infrastructure projects at the service of UPM.

In a context of a thriving eucalyptus plantations industry in China, around 150 Yong’an residents are suing both Guangxi Lee & Man Forestry Technology Ltd. — the timber company that operates the nearly 300,000-square-meter eucalyptus plantation — and the local government body that partnered with it, for violating a clause in Chinese contract law that bans businesses from damaging public interests. Villagers claim the eucalyptus sucks up water from three mountain springs, leaving little for them to use for cooking and rice farming farther downstream.

The global Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees is in Raleigh, NC during the 2019 Tree Biotechnology Conference of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO).

While the destruction of forest territories continues, more pledges, agreements and programs are being implemented in the name of ‘addressing deforestation and climate change’.

Blue Carbon (or Blue REDD+) appeared as a new carbon offset scheme between emissions and carbon absorption in coastal territories. However, organizations in Indonesia warn that the initiative is a strategy to change the coastal and marine territories into tradable assets .