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Producing cheap palm oil comes at a high price: destruction of rainforests, labour exploitation, and brutal land grabbing. With lands in Indonesia and Malaysia becoming more difficult for palm oil companies to acquire, attention is shifting to Africa as a new frontier for low cost palm oil production for export.

The area planted in eucalyptus and pine in Latin America has doubled in the past three decades, due to the action of national and transnational companies. Wood production is intended mainly for pulp and paper manufacture. WRM found several recent trends in this process, such as the expansion of monocultures of African palm (oil palm), greater research efforts into transgenic trees, the phenomenon of the “green economy” and the increasing involvement of speculative financial capital.

Four leaders of the Ashéninka people of the Peruvian Amazon were murdered by illegal loggers operating on their lands. Among them was Edwin Chota a prominent anti-logging campaigner who had fought for his peoples' right to gain titles to their land and expel illegal loggers who raided their forests on the Brazilian border. Sign the petition:

Representatives of organizations from different Latin American countries and of international networks met together in La Ceiba, Honduras, verified from local testimonies the serious situation faced by campesino, indigenous and Garifuna communities due to the voracious advance of monocultures of African palm.

By Geasphere, South Africa Since 2004,21st September is a special day used to raise awareness about the impacts of large-scale timber plantations, to encourage action, to highlight alternative ‘forestry’ models andto celebrate the progress made in the resistance against the industrial timber production model.Sustained resistance is critical, because timber plantations seriously affect the long-term ecological sustainability in areas where they have been established.