Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Industrial oil palm plantations have been expanding in many countries in the global South, increasingly in Africa and Latin America, invading territories of rural populations, indigenous peoples and traditional communities in order to produce palm oil for export or agrofuel for foreign markets.

The State Government of Sarawak has issued a provisional lease for an oil palm plantation scheme to Woodijaya Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of Rimbunan Hijau Sdn Bhd on Lot 197 Teraja LD and Lot 1200 Puyut LD, both which are 4,658 hectares. The 60 year lease that was issued by the State’s Lands & Surveys Department encroaches on lands belonging to the Malays of Marudi and Ibans of Lubuk Amam.

Okomu Oil Palm Plc, the Dangote Group and United Food Industries Ltd representing Indonesia's Salim Group are to benefit from plans by the Edo State Government to allocate 410,000 hectares of forest land belonging to community people in order to establish large scale monoculture plantations. Only 30,000 will be left for the over 170,000 local farmers in the communities who earn their livelihood from farmlands and forest resources.

In Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar it remains common until today that the wife will be the one who ‘owns’ the land of the paddy or upland rice fields. . Women therefore can be the ones fully responsible for maintaining those resources for the next generations.

“It is the rural women’s movements that have been at the forefront of massive public actions aimed at fighting back against the big corporations in the agri-food sector (pharmaceutical laboratories that produce transgenic seeds and toxic agrochemicals) and defending biodiversity.” (SILIPRANDI, 2013, p. 239)