Large-Scale Tree Plantations

Since last March 18, workers of the pulp mill Veracel, a company equally the Swedish-Finnish Stora Enso and Fibria of Brazil, started an unlimited strike due a deadlock in the salary negotiations for the period 2012-2013. The strike also unveiled a facet cruel Finnish transnational: the company does not recognize most of the occupational health related diseases, mainly in the field of mechanical harvesting. Veracel entered, on March 20, a lawsuit against the union, trying to criminalize the strike and that the Justice declare the strike illegal.

A group of eleven Finnish and international NGOs has filed a complaint to the UN Human Rights Council about human rights violations in connection to Stora Enso's eucalyptus plantations and planned cardboard factory in Guangxi that led to land conflicts with two reported deaths and multiple episodes of violence The UN's Global Compact (an initiative for increasing social responsibility of corporations which Stora Enso has signed) requires Stora Enso to respond to allegations by 11 April.

ALDAW has just launched a massive campaign against oil palm expansion. A petition launched through care.org is addressed to the National Government. A second petition, launched through Change.org, is focused on Palawan and it is addressed mainly to the Provincial Government, to the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) and to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), one of the world’s biggest investors in the palm oil industry, has found that the activities of Wilmar International Ltd, Astra International Tbk PT and 21 other oil palm companies are incompatible with the Fund’s policy on risk related to climate change and tropical deforestation. As a consequence all stakes in the 23 oil palm companies were sold in 2012.

The US Department of Agriculture Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced that it is voluntarily preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) regarding a petition to deregulate [legalize] the commercial sale of the first genetically engineered tree in the US, a freeze tolerant eucalyptus tree. Eucalyptus trees are not native to the US and are a documented invasive species. They are also highly flammable and known to deplete ground water. The freeze tolerant GE eucalyptus trees will be able to survive in regions too cold for their non-GE relatives.

“Credibility at Stake - How FSC Sweden Fails to Safeguard Forest Biodiversity”, a new report in English by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), available at http://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/sites/default/files/dokument-media/rapporter/2013_engelsk_rapport_skog_credibility_at_stake.pdf

Apparently out of concern over climate change and the urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels, the governments of the North – particularly those of the member states of the European Union, but also those of the United States and Canada – are increasingly promoting the use of a certain type of raw material, considered “renewable”, for large-scale energy generation: wood.

Only available in French By Franck Ndijimbi.

We are once again approaching March 8, the international day of women’s struggle, on which we, as feminist women, also struggle against the commodification of nature. This commodification is deepened by the expansion of green deserts, which are portrayed as a step in the transition to a so-called Green Economy. This is a process based on false environmental solutions for a system in crisis, but which is, in fact, aimed at creating economic opportunities for the integration of nature into the market.

The three leading Liberian civil society organizations Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU), and Social Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development (SESDev) released a statement on January 31, 2013, calling for a review of Liberia’s agricultural policy. Since 2006, the Government of Liberia has entered into binding contracts – known as concession agreements – with three major oil palm producing foreign investors: Sime Darby (Malaysia), Golden Veroleum (Indonesia), and Equatorial Palm Oil (UK).

The Singapore based agribusiness giant Wilmar - is expanding its operations in Africa. It already has approximately 50,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Ivory Coast, Uganda and Ghana. More recently it has expanded to Nigeria going into a joint venture with PZ Cussons to set up huge extensions of oil palm plantations in Cross River State in the south east region of the country while promising the creation of thousands of job opportunities.

Tropical rainforests cover 85% of the total land area in Gabon. They are home to an immense diversity of species, on which some 300,000 people depend for their survival, through hunting, gathering, fishing and small farming.