The International Day against Monoculture Tree Plantations seeks to protect native forests from industrial crops

Not all plantations are positive. That is the case of the large-scale monocultures that are multiplying in South America and ecologists know that. Therefore, today September 21 is the International Day against Monoculture Tree Plantations, date that was established from 2004, in Brazil, by the Red Alert against the Green Desert.

Leer en español: Ecologistas luchan contra las plantaciones industriales de árboles

Due to the negative impacts that this model of industrial production was generating on communities and ecosystems, environmental organizations make visible the struggle that began in 1999 in the state of Espiritu Santo in Brazil. There, the eucalyptus plantations were replacing the native trees, crops and ending with the water that bathed the territories of indigenous settlements like the Tupinikim and Guaraní.

However, Brazil is not the only country in the area that suffers this damage with great magnitude, also Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Venezuela and Ecuador. In the rest of the world, countries such as Cambodia, Indonesia, South Africa, India, Vietnam, Thailand and Uganda, among others, suffer from this problem according to the report presented by the World Rainforest Movement.

They are not forests

The message given by environmental organizations is that industrial plantations can not be classified as forests, destroying native forests, eradicating communities, fauna and flora in the area to be replaced by oil palm plantations, eucalyptus or big scale monocultures. 

"Large-scale plantations, whether genetically modified or not, are the end result of a set of global trade mechanisms implemented by a series of international actors that enable companies to appropriate land, water and diversity. biological diversity to increase their profits, "says the World Rainforest Movement.

The Movement also indicates that pulp and paper companies, "among international entities that work to deprive local communities of their rights in defense of corporate profits and the neoliberal model, include international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank; organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; commercial banks and forest consulting firms, all of which have the support of national governments. "

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It is estimated that one of the causes of the constant floods in Peru, Chile, Brazil and Colombia, to name a few countries, is the deforestation of native forests, figures that have increased in recent years according to data provided by the organization Greenpeace.

Forest losses reach 219,973 hectares in Colombia in 2017. Meanwhile, Peru lost two million hectares in a 15-year period and Bolivia annihilates an average of 350,000 hectares per year.

However, the numbers are more worrisome in Brazil, since between August 2015 and July 2016, 798 thousand hectares of forests in the Amazon were knocked down.

LatinAmerican Post | Jorge Hernández
Translated from "Ecologistas luchan contra las plantaciones industriales de árboles"