With World Bank support, the Thai government is moving quickly to implement its ‘climate policy’ based on carbon offsetting through the use of so-called ‘green areas’. These areas are projected to cover no less than half of the country´s area. Yet hidden behind this ‘green’ discourse is an economic policy that is heavily reliant on the continued use of fossil fuels. (Available in Thai).
Bulletin articles
Besides the direct impacts on communities’ lives, eucalyptus monoculture plantations represent absurd and obscene inequality. A group of 45 community people with whom we spoke was shocked to learn that it would take them 2,300 years of non-stop work to collectively earn the same amount that a single Portuguese family, one of the owners of the plantation company they work for, earned in one single year from the profits of their shares in the company.
One of the central issues under discussion in Cali, Colombia, at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Conference of Parties (COP) 16, are the so-called ‘biodiversity offsetting mechanisms’, a strategy to allow companies and their allies to continue expanding their profits and with them, destruction.
This bulletin highlight several cases where the expansion of carbon projects has become an integral part of the extractivist model. Since this model has been destroying territories and people’s livelihoods for a long time, we share articles on both old and new forms of extractivism, and how communities continue to carry on struggles to resist them.
Just like the Dutch colonizers in the past did, the Indonesian government, companies and investors consider the land of Papua to be a vast empty territory, a new frontier for extraction and profiteering However, the land of Papua is not empty, but rather home to hundreds of Indigenous Peoples—including the women and men of Kampung Bariat village, who are struggling to ensure control over their ancestral territory and keep it free of oil palm plantations.
Peasant families are threatened with eviction by Brasil Bio Fuels (BBF) oil palm plantation company, with the complicity of the state government. This article shows that the much spoken of ‘bioeconomy’ is not ‘sustainable’ and even less ‘clean’. What it does is destroy communities’ territories, just like fossil fuel-based extractive industries have been doing for a long time.
Colombia's Orinoquía region stretches from the foothills of the country's eastern mountain range to the Venezuelan border. This region has historically been associated with the exploitation of rubber, timber, furs and other so-called “natural resources,” to the detriment of ancestral communities. Today, new threats are emerging under the paradigm of conservation, green energy and carbon projects.
The company is in the process of renewing part of its oil palm plantations in Edéa. At the end of last year, communities started to mobilize against this process. The community resistance has led the sub-prefect to request Socapalm to stop its activities. This is a first victory of the community but the struggle will continue until SOCAPALM returns the lands to the communities!
The Argentine province of Corrientes has the largest area of tree plantations in the country. 80% of the timber from these plantations goes to sawmills, where mountains of sawdust are regularly burned, causing serious health problems for neighboring communities. The local organization, Guardians of Y'vera, conducted a community health survey to highlight the problem, demand the relocation of these mills, and denounce the impacts of the forestry model.
Several articles in the current bulletin report about community struggles against old and new forms of extractivism that threaten the territories and livelihoods of communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. For this reason, we recommend the rereading of an interview with the WRM Advisory Committee member Nasako Besingi, from Cameroon, about the challenges communities face.
A new round of initiatives to plant tree plantation to provide carbon offsets is currently being proposed. Aside from the absurd notion—endorsed by the UN and various national governments—that tree plantations can offset the (climate) damage caused by burning fossil carbon, these initiatives have destroyed people's livelihoods and co-opted vast areas of community land.
Forest conservation and tree planting initiatives to provide carbon offsets are two of the corporate sector's favourite ways to greenwash their image and keep doing business as usual. These initiatives have features that make them very attractive to investors, for example the easiness with which project arguments and calculations can be manipulated. Therefore, it is no surprise that scandals have come to light—which has affected the kinds of projects being developed.