Fake Solutions: Industrial Tree Plantations

Seeding Climate Justice Maputo Meeting on Real Solutions to the Climate Crisis

21-23 April 2015Maputo Mozambique

About Timberwatch

Formed in 1995 (also 20 years old!), TW has 15 South African NGO members, that together with individual supporters make up the coalition. TW is a registered Not-for-Profit organisation.

At first TW focussed on monitoring timber plantations and opposing industry proposals for the expansion of plantations into ecologically inappropriate areas in South Africa. However after 1998, through partnerships with international groups such as WRM and GFC, TW became more active in working to expose the negative impacts of industrial timber production and its processing into pulp and paper on local communities and the broader environment. TW and its members are also actively engaged in campaigning for climate justice and against false solutions such as carbon trading and environmental offsets.

 Natural Forest ?

 What is Forest ?

Plantations Harvesting

 What are the impacts of plantations?

History

 

Plantations history emerges from colonial pastDeforestation of natural forestsPlanting of first plantations South Africa, Kenya and Mozambique,Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Swaziland

Next wave

 

Seen as a development tool Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique,Tanzania Zimbabwe, Malawi, Rwanda,

World bank influencePrivatisationLandgrabsConcessionsCDM

“Forests” and People: Investing in a “Sustainable”

Future, or ‘Corporations and

Plantations: Undermining Earth’s Integrity’?

7th to 11 September 2015 Durban

BACKGROUND  The WFC takes place every six years, organised jointly by the United Nations FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) and a host national government, in this instance being that of South Africa, represented by its national Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF). Previous WFCs were held in Canada (2003) and Argentina (2009). The WFC is not part of an official UN policy process, but rather can be seen as providing a major opportunity for the global timber industry to showcase and to promote itself together with new technological and marketing developments in the international ‘forestry’ arena. In effect it amounts to a subsidy to ongoing corporate land grabs and biodiversity destruction.

FORESTRY or DEFORESTATION?

What is really meant by “forestry” in this instance is not very clear, because it can include everything from conservation management of forests in protected areas to large-scale clear-cut logging of natural forests, or establishing more destructive industrial timber plantations in natural grasslands or community farmland. To the better informed, the WFC is mainly just a showcase for the crude industrial exploitation of forests, woodlands, grasslands and shrublands and the local communities to produce the timber needed to satisfy consumer demand for wood-derived products, including all the throw or flush-away items that are considered part of ‘civilised’ society!

WFC 2015 Participation

Registration for the XIV World Forestry Congress is now open. To register and book accommodation please visit the official XIV World Forestry Congress web site: http://wfc2015.org.za  For further information regarding registration, exhibitions, accommodation and other general inquiries, please contact info@wfc2015.org.za

Overall Objective To organise a civil society alternative programme of activities (CSAP), to be staged at a central and easily accessible venue (or venues) in close proximity to the Durban International Conference Centre where WFC2015 will be taking place. 

Events and ActivitiesTo prepare a comprehensive programme of presentations, workshops, displays and other activities such as film screenings and guided tours, to cater for the concerns of civil society groups and affected indigenous peoples and local communities, and to arrange preparatory and post-WFC meetings and workshops.

The Civil Society alternative Programme “CSAP”

Planned CSAP Events

To organise open panel discussions/debates between representatives of civil society organisations, community groups, conservation bodies, FAO/timber industry actors, and other delegates to the WFC, for broadcast on public TV.  To organise a “Forestry” film festival where documentaries and video testimonies by affected local communities on the socio-economic and ecological impacts of forest loss caused by clear-cut logging, the establishment of monoculture tree plantations, and industrial processing of timber from both forests and plantations, can be screened.

CSAP Day of Protest – Thursday 10th September

To co-ordinate a public awareness event involving members of the general public and plantation and pulp-mill affected communities, aimed at drawing attention to the social and environmental harm resulting from so-called “forestry” in the form of forest-logging, industrial monoculture tree plantations. Also to highlight the associated impacts on water resources, as well as pollution from industrial wood processing activities, including the production of chemical cellulose (dissolving wood-pulp), paper and packaging, and biomass-based fuels (wood pellets and ethanol). 

Other CSAP Services

To arrange guided tours for both WFC delegates and civil society participants to visit nearby sites where different types of forests may be seen, as well as to witness the social and ecological effects of large-scale monoculture tree plantations and the associated impacts of pulp and paper mills.  To help provide specialised support in the form of volunteer interpreters and guides to assist participants representing affected Indigenous Peoples and local communities with translation and other services in order to facilitate their full and most meaningful possible participation at the event.

CSAP Programme Updates

Please check the Timberwatch Coalition website – www.timberwatch.org for

updates on the CSAP (civil society alternative programme of

activities and events).

For e-mail updates on the programme preparations, and to be included in

discussions on relevant campaign issues and strategies, you can join civsoc-re-

wfc2015@googlegroups.com