Forests and their peoples: The struggle against a definition that benefits profit

"The communities are closely connected to forests. It is impossible to imagine communities without forests because everything communities need is provided by the forests ... by preserving forests, families are preserving their own livelihoods. " -Campesino de Acre, Brasil

The obvious importance of forests for life on the planet has produced for decades numerous campaigns, advertisements, projects and national and international policies that focus on the urgent need to "protect the forests." This vital importance for the provision of water, food, timber or medicines, as well as for the regulation of hydrological, biological and climatic cycles of the planet generates an almost universal consensus on the need for its protection. What is not explained, however, is to what is being explicitly referred to in these campaigns, politics and propaganda when they speak of "forests". This assumed obviousness of the concept prevents the question: "What are forests?" and "Who defines them?"

The peoples who live with forests for generations have tried to explain many times, and in diverse ways, the many meanings that the word "forest" has for them. The forest is what gives meaning to their lives, and in a close relationship based on respect and humility, guarantees their survival, not only physical but also cultural and spiritual. Forests involve life, color, sounds: 1500 animals may live in only one old tree. And where there is an immense variety of trees, forests also proliferate plants of different species, sizes and ages. Forests also develop and evolve in equilibrium with the living water cycle: they filter and purify thus preventing soil erosion, watershed feed and protect during winds and storms. At the same time, forests are crucial for global climate balance through their ability to store carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and release oxygen. To adapt to different contexts – altitudes low and high, humid valleys, arid areas, freshwater and brackish environments – many types of forests exist. These webs of life that sustain forests allow water, plants, animals, communities, air and soil to maintain close and interdependent relationships.[2]

However, there is a definition that is used and promoted by most multilateral and government agencies, large NGOs, and at conventions and agreements on climate change that carries an "official" status. This "universal" definition, created by the agency of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a forest is defined as "land spanning more than 0.5 hectares of trees equipped with a minimum height of 5m at maturity in situ and a crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of more than 10 percent." In other words: forest = trees in a set of certain physical and spatial characteristics.

This definition calls for attention for several reasons. First, this brings up the question: why are trees the only consideration and not the other living beings and organisms that live as an integral part of the forest – such as the animals, water cycles and peoples of the forests and their intangible universe that determines cultures and spiritualities?

Secondly, to define a forests based on tree height and density, as well as surface size, includes not only the forests of the Amazon, the Congo Basin or southeast Asia, but this also includes the millions of hectares of tree monocultures including eucalyptus, pine and other tree species. They are considered “forests” under this definition. In the official discourse there is no serious intention to raise awareness about the complexity of forests and this excludes discussions about land tenure, the real causes of forest destruction and their webs of life etc. That is, a forest according to FAO can be felled and still be a “forest”.

As a consequence, millions of hectares of forests in the world, especially in the Global South, are being substituted by monoculture plantations under that slogan of “planted forests”. These industrial tree plantations have quadrupled in Southern countries in the last two decades, so that today there are 60 billion hectares.[3] This expansion is based on the logic of the permanent plunder of the forests and their peoples which results in: deforestation; and territorial destruction that is crucial for the survival of animals, plants and human being; depletion of water sources and soil nutrients; contamination by the use of excessive agrotoxics; dispossession of populations and the loss of their territories, cultures, autonomy and ways of life; violations of human rights; and criminalizing resistance.[4] Despite the strong negative impacts, industrial plantations remain actively promoted to serve the pulp and paper industries and, in recent years, also as "carbon dioxide sinks" – and even the growing demand for electricity in Europe promotes the use of wood for energy.

SO WHO BENEFITS FROM THE FAO DEFINITION?

One important reason for why the FAO and their friends only talk about trees, or the wood, has a lot to do with the close relationship that the agency has with the timber and pulp and paper industries. This relationship, for example, can be found in the Advisory Committee on Paper and Forest Products loggers of the FAO, composed of executives in these industries. So, not surprisingly, the FAO definition includes industrial monocultures. Branding industrial plantations as "forests" or "planted forests" helps companies to convince authorities and the population at large that its plantations do not cause environmental damage but provide the same benefits as "natural" forests.

The United Nations international conferences about climate change have taken the FAO definition as a reference. This allows the plantation companies to take advantage of the idea that the “forests” are important reservoirs and capturers of carbon dioxide. In practice, this has resulted in a company that establishes an industrial tree plantation in a country in the Global South can, through the carbon market, obtain higher profits by selling carbon credits generated by the plantation, to big polluters in the Global North.[5]

While promoters say the pollution emitted in one place can be compensated, for example, by a tree plantation established somewhere else through absorbing an amount of "equivalent" carbon, the fact is that plantations increase carbon emissions.

While the molecules of carbon dioxide stored in trees can be chemically identical molecules emitted by a polluter in the Global North, from the climatic point of view, both are radically different. The carbon stored in trees is released again after felling and burning the trees for pulp, paper and other wood products. Furthermore, quantifying the actual emissions of an industrial plantation is almost impossible: it would have to include the production of soil carbon, both within the boundaries of the plantation and downstream, the effects on displaced peoples, as they may migrate to urban centers where lifestyles have different pollution loads, and many other factors.[6] The polluting company in the Global North for its part, by burning fossil fuels, releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that was trapped underground for hundreds of years, thus increasing the total circulating carbon in the atmosphere.

Consequently, they have opened the doors for more subsidies and more profits for the plantation industry and its financiers. Thus, according to the FAO definition of "forests" companies such as Suzano, Asian Pulp and Paper, Green Resources and many others that have obtained millions of hectares of land and forests, have not caused any deforestation. On the contrary, they may even benefit from the sale of carbon credits, and now as well with the REDD mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

REDD, created and discussed in the climate negotiations of the United Nations and pushed by, among others, the World Bank, is presented as a solution to halt forest deforestation. However, the logic behind it, again, is to allow for the expansion of the production and consumption hegemonic model, as long as they "compensate" for the destruction of forests. In 2009, during the climate negotiations in Indonesia, a "plus" was assigned to REDD, that includes the incentive to increase "carbon sinks".

The FAO definition of "forest" fits hand-in-glove with REDD plans, which allow industrial companies to count carbon in tree plantations and gain higher profits by selling the credits generated in the financial market.[7] However, REDD does not address the real causes of deforestation, nor does REDD try to stop it. REDD creates an illusion that "forests" are but mere carbon reservoirs, priced in the market, publicly traded, emptied of people and controlled by companies. Indeed, the FAO was the one who suggested that "planted forests" are included in the mechanism REDD.[8]

False and unjust policies on forests in relation to climate change stem from an industrial and “others” point of view. The policies are determined and created from "above" to be, in one way or another, implemented "down". The forest is by no means just a collection of trees and even less a mere source of wood. That point of view excludes people who have defended their territories and forests from the guilty actors of deforestation and more large-scale pollution. For over 10 years, many organizations, networks and social movements have been fighting for a change in the FAO definition of forest FAO. Plantations are not forests!

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