6 April 2010 | News | Resisting neoliberalism
Monoculture of Shame
Claims and demands of social movements to forestry corporation’s shareholders
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Several movements and social organizations of Latin America are exposing the strategies of land occupation by the forestry and pulp European corporations in the region, while they ask for a moratorium that bans the expansion of these activities. The groups especially warn about the actions of the Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso in several countries.
Nearly 30 demonstrators gathered in Helsinki outside the building where Stora Enso’s General Annual Meeting took place on March 31, and accused the company of human rights violations and ’greenwashing’.
They warned the company’s shareholders that the forestry monocultures are a threat to the small farmers and to food sovereignty in countries like Brazil and Uruguay. Two activists climbed up the tower next to the conference center and exhibited a flag exposing the lies of Stora Enso.
The member groups of Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean, in particular REDES – FoE Uruguay, and NAT-FoE Brazil and the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil took the opportunity to issued a declaration with their claims and demands.
“Cellulose transnational corporations like Stora Enso has issued a new and ambitious cycle of land occupation through forestry plantations for pulp production in the Southern Cone, a process that is lined up with the aggressive strategy of the European Union of accessing the trade of natural goods known as Global Europe”, says the declaration.
The document describes the operation of forestry and cellulose corporations in Brazil and Uruguay, but also in Argentina and Paraguay, its advertising strategies, its lobby with politicians, education authorities and the media. It also mentions the crimes that some companies have committed their illegal activities, as well as the social, environmental and cultural impacts of forestry monoculture in Latin America.
The signing organizations warn about the criminalization of the social movements that fight for the sovereignty of their lands, and the militarization process, the creation of armed militias working for corporations that restrict the free circulation of peasants.
Meanwhile, the social movements and organizations demand a moratorium on the expansion of new plantation areas and the installation of pulp mills in the region, and to stop the process of land extraction at the service of the Global Europe strategy to benefit corporations.
They also call to reduce paper consumption in the North that the South does not reproduce the same production and consumption patterns, that the affected ecosystems are repaired and that the forestry and cellulose corporations are punished for their environmental crimes and human rights abuses.
