Global debates about the role of forests and plantations in climate negotiations have paid little attention to the views of the 300 million or so forest people who inhabit them. Historically marginalised and denied recognition of their rights, forest peoples are demanding that their voices be heard and that they be respected as the rightful owners of their forests.
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The following description of work in plantations was written in 1987. Unfortunately, the situation has in general terms not improved much and it is therefore applicable to most of today's plantations.
In 1996, the World Rainforest Movement and the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Association (IUF-UITA,IUL) made a joint statement to the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) focused on the social aspects of plantation development, where "plantation workers are among the poorest and most exploited of all agricultural labourers."
Despite the numerous social and environmental impacts of monoculture oil palm plantations, the industry is continuously trying to increase productivity and lower costs, which can only lead to even more serious impacts on people and nature. It is the system's perverse logic. Within that logic, the obvious step forward is genetic manipulation of oil palms. Not only to increase productivity, but to alter the end-product: palm oil. And they are already working in that direction.
-During the international negotiations on climate change, some governments committed themselves to reducing carbon dioxide emissions in their own countries. This very encouraging attitude from an environmental perspective --for the reduction of the greenhouse effect-- can at the same time be the worst decision against the environment if it were to be implemented through the promotion of plantations to act as so-called "carbon sinks."
Recent research findings provide additional arguments to the opposition movement against the inclusion of tree plantations as carbon sinks within the current Convention on Climate Change debate on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have found evidence linking cooling earth temperatures between A.D. 1000 and 1900 to widespread deforestation. The discovery adds layers of complexity to the already difficult endeavor of predicting climate change and casts doubt on a commonly held belief that planting trees will slow "global warming."
A new study by the World Resources Institute of the UN Food and Agriculture's (FAO) latest assessment of the world's forests reports that deforestation may not be slowing down and may have even increased in the tropics.
"FAO's own data show that the loss of natural forests in the tropics continues to be rapid," said Emily Matthews, author of the new WRI study, Understanding the Forest Resources Assessment 2000. "For FAO to say that global deforestation is slowing down is misleading given the differences in the regional and subregional conditions of the world's forests."
The so called "free trade" is in reality but the granting of unlimited power to transnational companies to govern the world to the detriment of the vast majority of humanity and nature. Forests worldwide are menaced by the process of liberalization of the economy which tends to weaken yet more the already feeble public controls on logging.
The Global Forest Coalition is an informal coalition of NGOs and Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations engaged in the global policy debate related to forests, established at the last session of the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) in February 2000.
The first issue of "Forest Cover" --the newsletter of the Global Forest Coalition-- was published in January 2001. The issue includes the following articles:
Verónica Yépez, from the Ecuadorian NGO FUNDECOL, sent us a message in relation to an article published in WRM bulletin 43 (“Ecuador: action to save the mangroves in Guayas”). She thanks us for having publicised the issue and makes some clarifications about the information provided in the article.
As part of a social uprising that has brought Ecuador to a virtual standstill, a growing number of protesters from environmental and human rights organizations have occupied the offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to protest the IMF's role in Ecuador's current social crisis.