A forest is much more than a number of trees, a forest a complex and dynamic ecosystem.

Green deserts. They are immense extensions of trees. They have all of the same age, they looks all the same. Often they are coming from other continents.
A forest is much more than a number of trees. A forest is a dinamyc and complex ecosystem.
Plantations are agricultural cropland based on trees, mostly based on a single specie. Throughout the world, governments are actively promoting the expansion of large-scale monoculture tree plantations, despite the serious social and environmental impacts already witnessed on existing plantations.
The expansion of plantations often takes place at the expense of transforming natural ecosystems, particularly tropical rainforests.

 

Also ancient and delicate natural habitats such as grasslands of South America and South Africa, are being replaced with plantations of eucalyptus and pine. Rapid growth trees, have high economic performance, but erode the soil, disrupt the balance in the chemical and physical composition of the soil, absorb large amounts of water, and in some cases led to the desertification of entire areas.

 

As the fire season looms in Indonesia, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s largest pulp and paper companies, owned by the Sinar Mas Group, has been actively clearing Sumatran peatland for pulpwood plantations in direct breach of its own commitments to preserve and restore carbon-rich ecosystems and reduce emissions. Major brands such as Unilever, Nestlé, Askul and Woolworths are still supplied by APP, which today is gathering its stakeholders in a forum focused on sustainability.

Previous studies showed more diverse tree stands to be healthier and more productive than monoculture forests, but scientists didn't know why. New research suggests tree diversity lends a forest adaptability, allowing it to maximize the sun's energy.

Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) occupied the place where the National Technical Biosafety Commission would vote the introduction of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees planting into the country. Meanwhile, in Itapetininga, 1,000 woman from the landless movement occupied the plant of the major company dealing with transgenic Eucalyptus, FuturaGene.

On Thursday afternoon, two teams of the Military Police of Parana, accompanied by security guards of the Araupel plantation company, attacked a camp organized by the peasant landless movement Sem Terra, in the municipality of Quedas do Iguaçu, in the Paraná state.  The camp, located in the municipality of Quedas do Iguaçu, in the state of Paraná, is organized with 2,500 families. Two farmer has been killed, Vilmar Bordim, 44, married with three children, and Leomar Bhorbak, 25, who left behind his wife who is nine-months pregnant. Seven workers were also wounded.

The clear-cutting of forests to make way for oil palm plantations is driving a wave of illegal logging in Indonesia, fundamentally undermining efforts to bring much-needed reform to the nation’s forestry and timber sectors. A new report released today by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Permitting Crime: How palm oil expansion drives illegal logging in Indonesia, reveals how a widespread culture of corruption and poor law enforcement is generating a flood of illicit timber as plantations surge into frontier forests.

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