Tree mono cultures don’t save the climate!

Monoculture tree plantations must not be considered as climate mitigation measures and should be excluded from any reward system

Climate Justice Now!, an informal network of more than 160 organizations, wish to make government delegates at UNFCCC aware about the social and environmental dangers of monoculture tree plantations related to climate change mitigation measures.

Evidence about the social and environmental impacts of large scale timber plantations is now abundant and well documented. Those impacts include:
• occupation of vast areas of land resulting in dispossession of local peoples
• increased poverty resulting from the loss of means of livelihood not
compensated by the few and badly paid jobs in plantations
• depletion of water resources
• pollution of soils, water and air
• disappearance of local biodiversity
• irreversible impacts on soils

There is also documented evidence in several countries about the differentiated gender impacts of plantations, resulting in an increase in women’s workload, loss of their traditional means of livelihood and disempowerment within their communities.

In spite of that, carbon sink plantations (including the possible use of genetically modified trees) continue to be promoted within the CDM and rules are being simplified to make their approval and implementation easier.

At the same time, research on the production of ethanol from tree cellulose is being carried out in a number of countries (including genetic manipulation of trees and enzymes), and would result in the occupation of yet more food- producing lands by tree plantations aimed at feeding cars.

Evidence about the social and environmental impacts of large scale oil palm monocultures –including CO2 emissions from deforestation, fires and peatlands- is also well documented and apart from those mentioned above, they also include the impacts resulting from the use of a wide range of agrotoxics that impact on the health of local communities and workers and particularly on women employed as pesticide sprayers.

In spite of that, many governments –North and South- are promoting biodiesel from palm oil as a substitute for fossil fuels, thereby encouraging their further expansion. Some of the governments of countries having large oil palm plantations are at the same time publicizing them –with the aim of receiving payments- as carbon sink plantations.

Plantations are also present in the REDD discussions, given that they have been defined by UNFCCC as a type of forest. This means that deforestation would not be counted as such if the area is “converted” to monoculture tree plantations or if forest destruction in one area is “compensated” with tree plantations in another. In terms of “net” deforestation, a country could in fact receive large amounts of funding for actually destroying forests and planting tree monocultures.

Additionally, plantations actually contribute to climate change through deforestation, draining of peat swamps -releasing the carbon stored therein- provoking carbon emissions from grassland soils, being prone to fires resulting in carbon emissions and in the case of pulpwood plantations ending up in a product which has a short life, is thrown away in landfills and rots to produce methane.
In sum, large scale tree monocultures must be excluded from any type of climate mitigation measures because of their social and environmental impacts and because they contribute to climate change.