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For Immediate Release – September 21, 2020

New York– September 21, 2020 marks the 16th International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations. The Day was created in 2004 by rural communities in Brazil in opposition to industrial monoculture tree plantations that drain natural resources, destroy biodiversity and negatively impact rural inhabitants and Indigenous Peoples. These plantations are known as Green Deserts in Brazil due to their devastating impacts.

In Chile, water-intensive eucalyptus and pine monocultures, combined with climate change-induced heatwaves and drought, have led to record-breaking wildfires. Plantations in Chile are called Green Soldiers as they march steadily forward destroying all in their path.

Industrial monoculture tree plantations are also prevalent in Africa, where large eucalyptus plantations have replaced the biodiverse native grasslands and disrupt the lives of locals. These plantations are called Green Cancer in South Africa as they uncontrollably spread their destruction into native ecosystems.

Global Justice Ecology Project has signed onto a letter spearheaded by the World Rainforest Movement that seeks to warn governments and NGOs in the Global North of the environmental degradation and injustice that monoculture tree plantations present to the Global South.

GJEP has released the following statement:

“Industrial monoculture tree plantations run by national and multinational corporations are ecological con jobs and human rights disasters.

Industry, governments and organizations like the UN collude to pass off these biological deserts as planted forests. This serves the purpose of detracting from the global deforestation crisis by pretending these green deserts serve the same function as forests, which they clearly do not. Monoculture plantations, often composed of non-native invasive trees heavily inundated with toxic chemicals drain resources such as fresh water and displace biodiversity, local communities and Indigenous Peoples. Meanwhile in the Global North, they are presented as a ‘green solution’ to climate change and fossil fuel independence.

Increasingly, ecological crises such as climate change and invasion by pathogens are being used by corporations and researchers as excuses to legalize genetically engineered (GE) trees and use them in industrial plantations. In reality, GE trees are not being developed for conservation, but for predominantly for traits that include faster growth and easier processing – properties that make GE tree plantations more profitable and hence, more likely to spread onto new lands–lands occupied by communities or native ecosystems.

The resistance to monoculture plantations in the Global South has been tremendous, including major opposition to the introduction of GE trees.

Global Justice Ecology Project stands in solidarity with rural communities and Indigenous Peoples around the world in saying no to monoculture tree plantations, genetically engineered trees and the colonization and environmental exploitation that they bring.”

Contact: Steve Taylor   +1 314 210 1322

steve@gjep2020.local

GJEP’s resource page on International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations 

 

Photo: Claudio Nogueira

The Role of Eucalyptus in Brazil comes under the Crosshairs of the International Anti-Transgenic Tree Network (June 2, 2023)

Impact of monoculture in territories was the subject of visits led by FASE in Espírito Santo

 

Note: FASE were co-organizers of the tour to the communities of Espírito Santo.

The article (included below in full) is written by Claudio Nogueira (FASE Communications Coordinator) and originally appeared June 2nd, 2023, on FASE’s website. It is available in both Portugese and English through Google Translate.

 

The pulp industry writes a sad story in Brazil. Its role in land occupation with eucalyptus monoculture imprints a perverse logic that suffocates traditional communities and goes far beyond false ideas of reforestation and environmental concern. This was the scenario encountered by members of the campaign “Stop GM Trees” (No to Transgenic Trees) and the Alert Against Green Deserts Network, in a tour organized by the FASE Espírito Santo team, visiting locations in the north of Espírito Santo and the extreme south in Bahia, between the 24th and 29th of May.

In all, around 25 people, including popular educators, quilombola and landless leaders, environmentalists and foreign researchers from Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Ireland, Argentina and Chile were able to verify the impact of eucalyptus plantations on the way of life of family farmers and traditional communities in the region. For three days, the group got to know the experiences of agroecological practices in areas taken over by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) at the Egídio Brunetto Training School and at the Índio Galdino settlement, in addition to hearing reports of the difficulties faced by the quilombola communities of Volta Miúda and Angelim 2 with monoculture plantations. After the visits,

eucalyptus espirito santo

Photo: Claudio Nogueira

For Beto Loureiro, educator at FASE in Espírito Santo, the tour was important for the researchers to realize that the impacts are already terrible, and the transgenic trees are going to be one more aggression in the historical series that monoculture causes in the territories, “since the expulsion of traditional communities, passing through the depletion of water resources and the enormous amount of poisons that they apply now, even by air”. “They are spraying the monocultures by drone, and this poison is spreading, falling on the communities’ plantations, falling on their homes, on their schools. In short, a real chemical war, which takes place here in the green desert, ”he explains.

Transgenic trees, a new threat

Brazil was chosen to host the meeting due to the extension of activities in the paper industry and approval by the company Suzano, in 2021, for the planting of genetically modified eucalyptus trees to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate. This follows the previous approval, in 2015, of FuturaGene’s fast-growing transgenic eucalyptus tree, which was not planted commercially. The country is the only one in Latin America where field tests seem to be taking place today with genetically modified trees.

Genetic engineering directly changes the genetic makeup (DNA) of an organism, bypassing normal plant or animal reproduction to create new traits. Genetic engineering includes techniques that make changes to DNA by inserting genetic material from the same, similar or wholly unrelated organisms, or, with genome editing (also called gene editing), by introducing genetic material that acts as “editor” to change the DNA. Genetic engineering applied to trees is a technical challenge fraught with serious environmental and social risks.

Photo: Claudio Nogueira

Most research is focused on increasing the productivity of planted trees for various industrial purposes. These objectives include pulp, paper and wood production; as well as the use of trees as “bioenergy” crops – to produce biomass and liquid “cellulosic biofuel”. There is also some interest in genetically modifying trees to produce other industrial materials such as pharmaceuticals, using the trees as “biofactories”, as well as experiments to sell carbon credits and proposals to release these trees into the wild to “restor” endangered species. of extinction.

“It made us realize that it is another problem that we will have to deal with”, ponders Beto. “These transgenic eucalyptus trees grow very quickly. Therefore, they must also suck water very quickly, they are resistant to poisons. We can imagine that the burden of poisons in monocultures will increase, and that is what we expect from these researchers: that they return to their countries also understanding that non-transgenic eucalyptus is already a tragedy”, he concludes.

The foreign delegation continued its tour of Brazil with audiences at UnB and Esplanada dos Ministérios, in Brasília, and will continue to Mato Grosso do Sul, also to verify the role of eucalyptus plantations in the environmental imbalance in the state.