By Chris Lang
Today is the International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations. To mark the day, World Rainforest Movement put out a statement in solidarity with the communities resisting industrial tree monocultures:
Plantations Are Not Forests!
On September 21st, International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations, communities, movements, organizations and networks celebrate the courage and strength behind every struggle.
Let’s share the resistance stories and collectively demand an end to the expansion of this devastating industry.
The large-scale plantation model cannot be decoupled from histories of colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy and racism. This intensive and violent model is largely based on crimes. Crimes like the stealing of land and livelihoods, unlawful criminalization, sexual assault and harassment, human right violations, oppression of women, labour exploitation, environmental devastations and pollution.
Those behind the violent imposition of this model in the global South have often tried to erase the violent pasts and presents of their activities with nice-sounding propaganda. Yet, the ‘sustainable’, ‘net zero’ or ‘carbon neutral’ claims hide countless histories of dispossessions and oppressions that have built and sustained profits for a few. Histories that have largely been silenced and marginalized by forces of money and power.
But these histories also carry another set of powerful and strong stories; stories of community resistance. Their struggles against industrial tree monocultures are struggles for their lands and forests, their communities and their life spaces nurtured with their histories, knowledge and understandings.
Since 2004, September 21 marks the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations. This is a day when communities, movements, organizations and networks celebrate the courage and strength behind every resistance struggle. Acknowledge the countless resistance stories and join their call for an end to the expansion of these devastating industrial tree plantations.
Let’s turn up the volume of the voices of resistance against industrial tree plantations!!!
Plantations are not forests!!!
