The WRM International Secretariat addressed the President of Venezuela and environmental authorities of that country expressing concern for the energy transmission line being built between Macagua power station and the Brazilian states of Roraima and Amazonas. The plan is expected to cause deforestation and loss of livelihood for the Pemon indigenous people.
Bulletin articles
Large-scale tree plantations are having grave social and environmental impacts in many countries of the world. While governments and international organizations promote this forestry model, more and more people rise in opposition against it. Its promoters' real aims (power, profits) are hidden under a "green" guise: the plantation of "forests" in a world facing deforestation and climate change.
Forests cover about 30 million hectares in Chile while plantations occupy 2,1 million hectares. Chilean forests -with more than 100 native species- are one of the most biodiversity-rich temperate forests in the world. In marked contrast, 80% of the plantations are composed by radiata pine and 12% by eucalyptus monocultures.
Indonesia’s forests occupy about 120 million hectares. Although at least 2-3 million families of indigenous peoples live in or around the forests and many of the 220 million inhabitants of the country depend directly or indirectly on forests for their livelihood, the government’s approach has been to consider forests as "empty" land. Logging and plantation companies are responsible for the high deforestation rates (1 million hectares a year according to the World Bank, but 2,4 million according to Indonesian NGOs).
Up to the decade of the ‘50s the Brazilian government provided subsidies for the import of pulp. With the military government, beginning in 1964, a forestry policy was set up trying to promote tree plantations and large export-oriented pulp companies by means of subsidies and loans. Eucalyptus for pulp is grown in Brazil with rotation periods of only 7 or even 5 to 6 years.
Timber plantations have been a part of the South African landscape for more than a century. Colonial settlement brought a wide range of exotic tree species. Not all were successful, but it soon became clear that Australian acacias and eucalyptus were well suited to conditions in the Eastern part of South Africa.
The World Bank has been and still is an active and influential promoter of industrial scale tree monocrops using different mechanisms. The first one is providing technical advice for forestry planning. The Bank has carried out dozens of forest sector plans for various countries, which include models on how to zone land and how should land be allocated for different uses, including particularly for plantations.
In 1995, the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development established an Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) to address a wide range of forest-related issues. The IPF produced a final report in early 1997 containing a set of 135 proposals for action, that governments have agreed to implement. This package of proposals was formally endorsed at the June 1997 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the implementation of Agenda 21.
Jaakko Poyry is one of the actors involved in creating the conditions for establishing plantations. This consulting company was born in Finland 40 years ago. It grew up together with the the boom of Scandinavian forestry after the war, when Finland, Sweden and Norway became one of the superpowers of industrial forestry. Jaakko Poyry was there, helping them to do it. It's role was to provide special expertise about planning pulp mills, paper mills, plantations, logging, how to plan industrial operations. At first its clients were Sweden, Finland, Norway and the rest of Europe.
Individuals and organizations interested in obtaining information on the issue of large-scale tree plantations can access it in the WRM web page: http://www.wrm.org.uy. Additionally, for those who wish more in-depth information and analysis, the WRM has produced a book (Pulping the South: Industrial Tree Plantations and the Global Paper Economy), which has been published by Zed Books. Orders can be requested by sending a message to Helen Salmon .
A call for action to defend forests and people against large-scale tree monocrops-
In June 1998, citizens of 14 countries around the world gathered in Montevideo, Uruguay out of urgent concern at the recent and accelerating invasion of millions of hectares of land and forests by pulpwood, oil palm, rubber and other industrial tree plantations.
On May 12th we addressed the President of ENARGAS -the Argentinian national authority on gas energy- to express our concern regarding a pipeline projected by the company Norgas, that is expected to produce a negative environmental impact on the “yungas” ecosystem in the northern region of San Andres in the province of Salta. The yungas are a mountain ecosystem, holding high levels of endemism and biodiversity, and inhabited by the Kolla indigenous peoples. They strongly oppose the project.