Struggles Against Tree Monocultures

Corporate profit drives land grabs to install industrial tree monocultures. Where industrial plantations take root, communities' territories and lives are violently invaded, their forests destroyed and their water polluted. When communities resist, companies tend to respond with aggression. Despite this extreme violence, communities around the world are resisting, organizing and joining forces to defend their territories. Every September 21 the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations is celebrated.

Bulletin articles 25 October 2023

Oil palm plantations through contract farming and a new Forest Amendment Law threaten India’s North-East forests

Land related struggles in India’s Northeast states might worsen with the push to expand oil palm plantations on small-farmers and Indigenous land, threatening their food sovereignty and the ancestral practice of Jhum (shifting cultivation). On top of this, a new Forest Amendment Law will facilitate this expansion, jeopardizing further the region’s forests and Indigenous Peoples.

Other information 16 June 2022

“Flames of Dispossession.” Fires caused by the plantation business in Chile

A documentary produced by the audiovisual collective, Ojo de Treile, shows how industrial monoculture plantations in southern Chile have been causing mega-droughts and voracious forest fires.

Bulletin articles 23 March 2022

Forest Concessions, Colonial Concept

What a certain historiography terms civilizational expansion or capital’s expansion has in fact been the invasion and de-territorialization of peoples and communities using much epistemic and territorial violence. Concessions have been granted in areas that are not demographic voids, a colonial concept that ignores the fact that they have been populated for millennia.

Multimedia 22 September 2020

(Video) Luchas contra los monocultivos de árboles en Latinoamérica

Conversatorio virtual realizado el 21 de Septiembre de 2020, en conmemoración del Día Internacional de Lucha contra los Monocultivos de Árboles. Organizado por la Red Latinoamericana contra los Monocultivos de Árboles (Recoma).

Other information 30 September 2019

Chile: Territorial voices on the mega-expansion of Celulosa Arauco

Bulletin articles 22 December 2018

How to Strengthen Resistance Movements?

Despite the many profound damages that industries cause in the world's forests, they also cause something else to emerge: the strong and diverse resistance movements of affected communities defending their territories, livelihoods, cultures and even their existence. The struggle continues! (Available in Swahili).

Other information 15 November 2018

Court orders chilean company, Arauco, to return land to the Mapuche community

On September 28, the Chilean courts ruled in favor of the Ignacio Huilipán community, located in the Contulmo Commune, Bío Bío region.

Bulletin articles 9 July 2018

Chile: Mega forest fires, corporate crime and impunity

Tree plantation companies have enormous power and impunity in Chile. The fires of 2017 demonstrated the collusion between these companies and public officials to prevent investigations and criminalize the Mapuche indigenous people

Bulletin articles 7 March 2018

Women and plantations: When violence becomes invisible

This bulletin, on International Women's Day, is a call for direct and radical solidarity with those women who suffer, resist, organize and mobilize against the daily violence and abuse that industrial plantations cause.