Other information

 WRM information sheets on GE tree research First posted: 1 August 2008 Modified: 7 August 2009 Last update: July 2014 Tree species being manipulated: Poplar Eucalyptus Pine (Pinus halepensis) Aim of genetic manipulation

 WRM information sheets on GE tree research First posted: 1 August 2008 Last update: July 2014 Tree species being manipulated:

 WRM information sheets on GE tree research First posted: 1 August 2008 Updated: 15 August 2008 Updated 7 August 2009 Last update  August 2014 Tree species being manipulated:

 WRM information sheets on GE tree research First posted: 1 August 2008 Last update: 2014 Forest tree species being manipulated:  poplar, eucalyptus and spruce (1) Aim of genetic manipulation

 WRM information sheets on GE tree research First posted: 1 August 2008 Updated: 14 August 2008, based on information from (1) Last update: 2014 Tree species being manipulated: (1)

An article in June’s WRM Bulletin highlighted Unilever’s role in the threat to Tanoe Swamps Forest, one of the last remaining forest blocks in Cote d’Ivoire.  Following international protests, Unilever now ‘promises’ an Environmental Impact Assessment but has given no guarantee that the forest will be protected.  Instead, they have publicised their long-standing plans to sell shares in PALM-CI, which holds the concession for Tanoe, although they will remain a major PALM-CI customer.  Behind the announcement, and possibly behind the plans to destroy Tanoe Forest, lie far-reaching changes in

On 17 June 2008, a federal court in the city of Eunápolis, in the state of Bahia, passed sentence in a public civil suit filed in 1993 by the Brazilian Federal Public Prosecutor's Office against Veracel Celulose – known at the time as Veracruz Florestal – and the government environmental agencies CRA (Centre for Environmental Resources, responsible for environmental licensing in the state of Bahia) and IBAMA (Brazilian Environmental Institute, the national environmental authority).

The occupation of the Mapuche peoples’ ancestral territories by large-scale eucalyptus and pine plantations belonging to major forestry companies such as CMPC and Forestal Bosques ARAUCO relies for its expansion on the support of State machinery. Repression, torture, death and criminalization of Mapuche resistance are the background for the “forestry model.” The Mapuche conflict is a sort of leprosy in Chilean society: concealed, stigmatized and denied.

Since the beginning of the decade, all the areas of expansion of oil palm plantations have coincided geographically with areas of paramilitary presence and expansion, to the extent that some of the new plantations being developed have been financed as farming projects for the same demobilised paramilitary from the AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – United Self-Defence Force of Colombia) who had previously made incursions into these very areas.

In Europe and the US, palm oil is being promoted as an agrofuel that will allegedly prevent the increase of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere. Of course, it is the large scale and not the small-scale diversified model which is being implemented and in fact it’s just a way of delaying the imperative need of changing energy-intensive production, consumer and trade patterns. Oil palm plantations for agrofuel just add to the already damaging effects of palm tree plantations for industrial use.

Paper is a wonderful material, which for centuries has served for a fertile exchange of ideas among human beings. For us all who use it as an essential vehicle to share what we think, imagine, dream, know or believe we know, paper is a wonderful tool that we want to be able to continue using ... but not at the expense of people and the environment. As people who live in this reality, we are aware of the serious injustices and inequalities - social and environmental – arising from the world production and consumption of paper.

The Gates and Rockefeller Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) initiative has landed on Africa announcing that it will help small-scale farmers go commercial. What does this mean? Behind the millionaire funding projects lies the promotion of biotechnology in agriculture. African agriculture will be more dependent on chemicals, monocultures of hybrid seeds, and genetically modified crops.