For a long time, WRM, along with other organizations and social movements, has denounced the certification of projects that are destructive to forests and their web of life. These projects have also proven to be detrimental to communities living in and depending on forests. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification not only legitimates industrial logging in tropical forests and vast areas of monoculture plantations, but has also been associated with carbon markets, by certifying trees planted for “carbon capture".
Large-Scale Tree Plantations
Industrial tree plantations are large-scale, intensively managed, even-aged monocultures, involving vast areas of fertile land under the control of plantation companies. Management of plantations involves the use of huge amounts of water as well as agrochemicals—which harm humans, and plants and animals in the plantations and surrounding areas.
Bulletin articles
10 April 2015
For several years now the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has celebrated the International Day of Forests on March 21. This year’s theme is: “Forests, Climate, Change.” But the changes we see that the FAO promotes only increase the problems of the peoples who depend on forests, such as the trend in Southern countries, like China, Malaysia, Brazil and Chile, to promote commercial plantations of genetically engineered trees.
Bulletin articles
10 April 2015
Other information
10 April 2015
In an unprecedented and alarming move, the United States Department of Agriculture has given GE tree company ArborGen permission to pursue commercial production of a genetically engineered loblolly pine with no regulatory oversight or environmental risk assessment. In the current plan, the potential impacts to the public or to the environment will not be evaluated. This decision sets a terrible and unacceptable precedent.
Bulletin articles
10 April 2015
Bulletin articles
10 April 2015
Bulletin articles
10 April 2015
Transgenic forestry in Chile is shrouded in mystery, secretiveness and corporate lobbies. While state agencies deny that transgenic trees have been released into the environment, laboratories, universities and companies devoted to forestry-related biotechnology multiply in the country, supported by public funds. Schizophrenia, a sudden scientific interest or reprehensible political irresponsibility?
Other information
10 April 2015
Aljazeera’s People and Power TV program released a video on the social and environmental consequences of oil palm plantations in Cameroon, where the government has been trying to attract the palm oil industry by offering a number of incentives.
Other information
9 April 2015
Decision made in violation of national law and international protocols