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An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South - June 2012 ejolt report no. 3 June, 2012 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South Conflicts, trends and resistance struggles Contributions by Winfridus Overbeek, Markus Kröger and Julien-François Gerber EJOLT Report No. 01 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South - June 2012 June - 2012 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South Conflicts, trends, and resistance struggles EJOLT Report No.: 03 Report written by: Winfridus Overbeek (WRM) Markus Kröger (University of Helsinki) Julien-François Gerber Edited and revised by: Larry Lohmann Design: Jacques bureau for graphic design (Netherlands) Layout: Winfridus Overbeek Series editor: Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos The contents of this report may be reproduced in whole or in part for educational or non-profit services without special permission from the authors, provided acknowledgement of the source is made. This publication was developed as a part of the project Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) (FP7-Science in Society-2010-1). EJOLT aims to improve policy responses to and support collaborative research and action on environmental conflicts through capacity building of environmental justice groups around the world. Visit our free resource library and database at www.ejolt.org or follow tweets (@EnvJustice) or updates on our facebook page (EJOLT) to stay current on latest news and events. This document should be cited as: Overbeek W, Kröger M, Gerber J-F. 2012. An overview of industrial tree plantation conflicts in the global South. Conflicts, trends, and resistance struggles. EJOLT Report No. 3, 100 p. EJOLT Report No. 01 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South Abstract Over the past two decades, industrial tree plantations (ITPs), typically large-scale, intensively managed, even-age monoculture plantations, mostly exotic trees like fast-growing eucalyptus, pine and acacia species, but also rubber and oil palm, all destined for industrial processes to produce paper, palm oil and rubber products, increased their area in the global South about fourfold. Some of the main expansion countries with already millions of hectares include Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia while ITPs are also expanding, for example, in African countries, like Mozambique, and in the Mekong region, in a context of increasing land grabbing. This expansion is Northern-driven; the US and the European Union together consume most of the final products, benefiting also their banks and businesses that are key players in the different industry sectors behind ITPs, and also increasingly investment funds. In the global South where plantations are set up, local people, while having a very low consumption level, suffer severely from the negative impacts of these plantations. The social and environmental justice conflicts that result from the negative impacts of plantations are mainly about land access and tenure, but also other social, economic, environmental and cultural impacts. Human rights violations are common in many countries. In spite of the heavy negative impacts of ITPs, they continue being actively promoted as carbon sinks, or to supply energy and electricity through biofuels and burning wood in specially designed and subsidized wood-based power facilities in Europe. These new trends only aggravate the negative impacts, while the proven deforestation and land use change that results from plantation expansion undermines the supposed carbon neutrality. Although consumption reduction and paper recycling are important, a structural change in the global industrial production and consumption system, of which paper, vegetable oils and rubber are fundamental parts, is needed in order to build a truly sustainable future. Meanwhile, local communities in the South face the challenge to continue building a stronger and broader movement to halt the continuous land grabbing for industrial tree plantations. Keywords biofuels industrial tree plantations carbon trade land grabbing commodity chains resistance struggles conflicts social and environmental justice ecologically unequal exchange sustainable consumption enclosure of the commons EJOLT Report No. 01 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South Contents Foreword 7 1 Introduction 9 2 Industrial Tree Plantations: a story of conflicts, resistance and irrationality 11 2.1 The increase in area of pulpwood, fuelwood and rubber ITPs in the global South 13 2.2 The increase in oil palm ITPs 17 2.3 How ITPs are established and how conflicts arise 18 2.3.1 Before the first tree is planted 18 The general context 18 Key actors: guaranteeing a ´secure´ investment 19 Local people are not involved, but receive many promises 21 Getting control of land, much land: conflicts and human rights violations 21 Clearing the area to plant the first trees loss of biodiversity and people´s homes 25 2.3.3 Creating jobs 26 2.3.4 Once plantations are established: more impacts and conflicts 30 2.3.5 In the end, ´fenced´ and ´imprisoned´ by tree plantations 32 2.3.6 Women are most affected 33 2.3.2 2.4 2.5 The irrationality behind ITPs 34 2.4.1 Pulp and paper production 35 Pulp 35 Paper and paperboard 35 Paper consumption 38 2.4.2 Rubber 39 2.4.3 Oil Palm 41 Final remarks EJOLT Report No. 01 43 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South 3 Country case studies 44 3.1 Brazil: the ´success´ country 44 3.1.1 The current ITP boom in Brazil 45 3.1.2 Increasing resistance and conflicts around land 47 More conflicts 48 The reaction of the ITP companies during the second ITP expansion boom 51 Violence, criminalization and cooptation 51 ´Behind the scenes´ 53 Flexibilization of environmental legislation 53 An escape to regions ´without conflict´: Mato Grosso do Sul 55 A final remark: a ´threat´ called China 56 3.1.3 3.1.4 3.2 3.3 Mozambique: a new plantation frontier in Africa on peasants' land 57 3.2.1 ITP expansion in Niassa Province 59 Conflicts over land 60 Food sovereignity at risk 62 Insecure jobs 62 3.2.2 Land grabbing 63 3.2.3 Final remarks: increasing resistance and the response of an exposed investor 65 Indonesia: the country with the most ITP conflicts in the world 66 3.3.1 A brief history of Indonesian tree plantations 66 3.3.2 Conflicts over tree plantations 67 3.3.3 Dissecting a plantation conflict 68 3.3.4 The example of APP 70 EJOLT Report No. 01 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South 4 Drivers of ITP expansion 71 4.1 Carbon sink plantations 72 4.2 ITPs as ‘renewable’ energy producers 75 4.2.1 Biofuel from palm oil 75 4.2.2 Wood-based biomass energy 77 4.2.3 Certification schemes and ‘Dialogue’ initiatives: other drivers of expansion? 80 4.2.4 5 The Forestry Stewardship Council 80 The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil 82 ´Dialogue’ initiatives 83 Second generation wood-based biofuels and biotechnology 83 Genetically engineered (GE) trees 85 Final considerations 87 Acknowledgments 92 References 93 EJOLT Report No. 01 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South Acronyms ABP Dutch Pension Fund IBRA Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency ADB Asian Development Bank IFC International Finance Corporation APP Asian Pulp & Paper IMF International Monetary Fund APRIL Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited INCRA National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform BNDES National Social and Economic Development Bank (of Brazil) (Brazil) INEMA Institute of Environment and Water Resources of Bahia National Confederation of Agriculture (of Brazil) ITP Industrial Tree Plantations CCX Chicago Climate Exchange JA Justiça Ambiental (Friends of the Earth Mozambique) CDM Clean Development Mechanism KPA Consortium for Agrarian Reform (Indonesia) CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research BRACELPA Brazilian Cellulose and Paper Industry Association CAN (Brazil) MPE State Public Prosecution Service (of Brazil) CONAMA National Council for Environment (of Brazil) MST Movement of Landless Rural Workers (of Brazil) CSO Civil society organizations MTOE Million Tons Oil Equivalent DUAT Right to Use and Take advantage of Land (Mozambique) NGO Non-Governmental Organization EC European Communities NIB Nordic Investment Bank ECA Export Credit Agency OVF Norwegian Lutheran Church Endowment EIA Environmental Impact Assessment PCF Prototype Carbon Fund EIA/EIR Environmental Impact Assessment and Report RSPO Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil EIB European Investment Bank SAMFU Safe my Future Foundation EJO Environmental justice organizations SCS Scientific Certification Systems EJOLT Environmental Justice Organizations Liabilities and Trade SETSAN Technical Secretariat for Food Security (Mozambique) EU ETS European Union Emissions Trading Scheme SGS Societé Générale de Surveillance EU European Union SIDA Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations UCA Union of Associates and Peasants of Lichinga (Mozambique) FETRICOM Federation of Workers in the Industries of Construction UK United Kingdom and Housing in Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil) UN United Nations FOE Friends of the Earth UNAC National Union of Peasants (Mozambique) FSC Forest Stewardship Council US United States (of America) FWI Forest Watch Indonesia USDA United States Department of Agriculture GE Genetically Engineered VCP Votorantim Celulose e Papel GMO Genetically Modified Organism WALHI Indonesian Environmental Forum GSFF Global Solidarity Forest Fund WRM World Rainforest Movement IATA International Air Transport Association WWF World Wildlife Fund The ISO 4217 standard is used for the currency codes (e.g. USD for US dollar or BRL for Brazil real). EJOLT Report No. 01 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South To Ricardo Carrere EJOLT Report No. 01 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South Foreword Conflicts over resource extraction or waste disposal increase in number as the world economy uses more materials and energy. Civil society organizations (CSOs) active in Environmental Justice issues focus on the link between the need for environmental security and the defence of basic human rights. The EJOLT project (Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade, www.ejolt.org) is an FP7 Science in Society project that runs from 2011 to 2015. EJOLT brings together a consortium of 23 academic and civil society organizations across a range of fields to promote collaboration and mutual learning among stakeholders who research or use Sustainability Sciences, particularly on aspects of Ecological Distribution. One main goal is to empower environmental justice organizations (EJOs), and the communities they support that receive an unfair share of environmental burdens to defend or reclaim their rights. This will be done through a process of two-way knowledge transfer, encouraging participatory action research and the transfer of methodologies with which EJOs, communities and citizen movements can monitor and describe the state of their environment, and document its degradation, learning from other experiences and from academic research how to argue in order to avoid the growth of environmental liabilities or ecological debts. Thus EJOLT will increase EJOs’ capacity in using scientific concepts and methods for the quantification of environmental and health impacts, increasing their knowledge of environmental risks and of legal mechanisms of redress. On the other hand, EJOLT will greatly enrich research in the Sustainability Sciences through mobilising the accumulated “activist knowledge” of the EJOs and making it available to the sustainability research community. Finally, EJOLT will help translate the findings of this mutual learning process into the policy arena, supporting the further development of evidence-based decision making and broadening its information base. We focus on the use of concepts such as ecological debt, environmental liabilities and ecologically unequal exchange, in science and in environmental activism and policy-making. The overall aim of EJOLT is to improve policy responses to and support collaborative research onenvironmental conflicts through capacity building of environmental justice groups and multi-stakeholderproblem solving. A key aspect is to show the links between increased metabolism of the economy (in terms of energy and materials), and resource extraction and waste disposal conflicts so asto answer the driving questions: Which are the causes of increasing ecological distribution conflicts at different scales, and how to turn such conflicts into forces for environmental sustainability? Page 7 An overview of industrial tree plantations in the global South This report is part of the outcomes of EJOLT’s WP5 (Biomass and land conflicts), which is focussed on compiling information about land grabbing and (agricultural and tree) plantations, detailing their impacts on local communities. Within this context, the report aims at analysing conflict on industrial tree plantation based on the actvist knowledge of the World Rainforest Movement, an international network of citizens’ groups of North and South involved in efforts to defend the world’s forests. Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos Series editor Page 8