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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.
Monoculture tree plantations affect the health of the soil, increasing acidity, polluting with toxic chemicals, and causing soil compaction. Indigenous plant species, that supply the needs of both people and wildlife, are lost, and this means that natural ecosystems disappear. Tree plantations usually are of alien tree species that spread out of plantations, invading wetlands, grasslands, heath and forests.Local communities, including Indigenous Peoples are displaced from their land, and forced to live in overcrowded unhealthy slums. The worst impact of plantations is the deforestations. The land is saturated, arable land is running out. New virgin land is available in the forest areas.
In many cases these plantations do not last long: in the tropics, once all the trees are gone, the soil is unprotected. The sun will try the soil, the tropical rains will wash away the thin layer of humus. And immense areas of forests in the Amazon, Southeast Asia or Africa become unproductive deserts. Often the areas to be transformed into plantations are "cleared" with fire, creating large uncontrollable fires and emitting huge ampunts of CO2. Large monoculture plantations such as soybean, corn, palm oil, sugar cane are associated with intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides which poisons the soil and the rivers.
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Who wants bioengineered trees? |
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Wednesday, 28 July 2010 07:17 |
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 The commercial paper industry's plans to plant forests of genetically altered eucalyptus trees in seven Southern states have generated more cries from critics worried that such a large introduction of a bioengineered nonnative plant could throw natural ecosystems out of whack. ArborGen, a biotechnology venture affiliated with three large paper companies, got U.S. Department of Agriculture approval last month for field trials involving as many as 260,000 trees planted at 29 sites during the next few years. Much smaller lots of the genetically altered trees have been growing in some of the states for years.
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HSBC pulls investment from Sinar Mas |
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Thursday, 08 July 2010 13:47 |
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 According to The Guardian, Swiss bank HSBC has sold its shares in Sinar Mas, the Indonesian palm oil and paper producer accused by Greenpeace, WWF and RAN of illegal deforestation in Sumatra. The global bank is the latest in an increasingly long list of major companies dropping the Sinar Mas group. Nestle ditched the palm oil supplier after Greenpeace targeted its KitKat brand and Tesco announced it would stop buying pulp and paper from Sinar Mas subsidy, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), after Greenpeace released a report, How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet.
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Paper tigers and the Australian mill |
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Thursday, 10 June 2010 08:40 |
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 The two Indonesian-Chinese paper giants APP and APRIL are fighting to get the Australian prey, in the Gunns mill. For for more than a decade Australian environmentalists tried to protect the giant eucalyptus trees of Tasmania's forests from Gunns's bulldozers.
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IFC finances 250,000 hectares plantations in Indonesia |
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Friday, 04 June 2010 08:24 |
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 IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has launched the Sustainable Forestry Program in Indonesia to support the creation of 250,000 hectares tree plantations. The program will measure its progress through five- year targets of expanding plantation on degraded land by at least 250,000 hectares.
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Page 4 of 6 |
An 18 year-old rubber farmer was killed by Sumatran tiger (panthera tigris Sumatrae) in the first week of August and the location of deadly human-tiger conflict was only 1,8 kilometer away from PT Ruas Utama Jaya’s pulpwood concession, a pulpwood supplier of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP). The tigers chased from the forest due to the expansion of plantations, become aggressive and threaten the villagers.
