“Pulping the Future”: New video by Geasphere about industrial tree plantations in South Africa

Geasphere has released a great new video documenting the environmental and social impacts of industrial tree plantations in South Africa. Timber plantations consume 30 times as much water each day as the population of South Africa. Thousands and thousands of people have been evicted to make way for Mondi and Sappi’s monocultures.

More problems with FSC-certified plantations: this time it’s Altri Florestal in Portugal

Press release from Quercus in Portugal. Why does FSC keep allowing this sort of operation to be certified?

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FSC greenwashing Brazil’s monoculture tree plantations: Part 1

World Rainforest Movement’s website currently has a great image of FSC’s greenwashing of industrial tree plantations on the front page (click on the image below to go to WRM’s website):

Certification of monoculture tree plantations – open letter to FSC members

“Plantations are monocultures, created from seemingly endless rows of identical trees. They suck the water out of nearby streams and ponds and lower the water table, leaving little or no water for people living near the plantations. They deplete soils, pollute the environment with agrotoxics and eradicate biodiverse local ecosystems. Activists in Brazil call them the green desert because of the way they destroy local people’s livelihoods and environments. But what’s almost as bad as the plantations themselves is that this sort of plantation is given a green seal of approval by the Forest Stewardship Council.”

The Secret Life of Paper

Inform recently produced “The Secret Life of Paper”. The video promises to answer the questions, “How is paper production related to forest destruction and global warming?” and “Why is recycling and buying recycled paper important?”

Federal court rules that Veracel must uproot its trees

A Brazilian Federal Court ruled in June 2008 that Veracel must uproot 96,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations and replant the land with native trees. Veracel was also fined US$12.5 million for deforesting areas of the Atlantic Forest with bulldozers and tractors during its first years of operation.

Veracel: FSC’s Death Certificate

Statement from WRM, 19 March 2008:

Yesterday we were notified by the Forest Stewardship Council certifying body SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance) that they have awarded an FSC certificate to Veracel’s eucalyptus plantations in Brazil. What they did not announce in the e-mail was that together with that certificate they were also giving the FSC its death certificate.

FSC in Laos

Subject: FSC in Laos
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:52:45 +0100
From: Chris Lang
To: Richard Donovan (Rainforest Alliance/SmartWood)
CC: smartwood@….id, FSC-Watch, Ricardo Carrere (WRM)

FSC-watch

Earlier this week I was involved in launching a new website: FSC-watch.org. The website documents the problems with the FSC system and hopes to generate an open discussion of these problems. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s generated a steady flow of emails. Most controversial seems to be the reference to the letter sent to FSC and signed by 75 organisations. The letter is a “closed” letter – which some people seem to think means that we can’t even talk about it.

A note on the FSC certification of forests in Laos

Ben Hodgdon send me this paper: “A note on the FSC certification of forests in Laos” and asked me to post it on this blog.*