brazil: plantar – privatizing the
climate and land for profit
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is
one of the carbon reduction strategies
developed under the Kyoto Protocol. A CDM
project is intended to be a sustainable
development project that theoretically
reduces or offsets global emissions in
carbon dioxide (CO2). The institution
implementing a CDM project will, as part of
the Protocol, gain carbon credits that they
can sell to polluting industries or
countries, usually based in the North, who
have agreed to undertake a reduction in
their emissions. CDM projects include
methane extraction from landfills,
hydro-electric dam projects, mono-culture
tree plantations and projects that switch
fuel use away from carbon based fuels, such
as coal or oil to alternative sources.
Brazil has been targeted as a country
with great potential for growth in CDM
projects with several already in
development. One example of a CDM in the
Minas Gerais region is a controversial
project supported under the auspices of the
World Bank’s Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF). A
corporation called Plantar S.A. is claiming
carbon credits for not switching its pig
iron operations from charcoal to coal. In
addition to this ‘avoided fuel-switch’
component, the Plantar project also claims
credits for the carbon that will be
temporarily taken up by its 23 100ha of
monoculture eucalyptus plantations, acting
as sinks that absorb carbon from the
atmosphere. The eucalyptus is burnt to
produce the charcoal that smelts the iron,
but currently only around 50% of the
charcoal comes from Plantar’s own
plantation and a large amount of the
remainder is purchased from native sources.
This has increased pressure on native
forests, where due to significant demand
from the pig iron industry, harvest is
rarely sustainable, and in many cases
illegal.
The World Bank has decided to support
Plantar despite the fact that scientific
studies concerning the ability of
monoculture tree plantations to sequester
CO2 remain inconclusive. Some studies show
that such plantations actually produce more
CO2 emissions than they take up, while
others say that only established forest
ecosystems such as rainforests are able to
absorb and store carbon. Moreover, carbon
is actually not stored in plantations, and
in the case of Brazil, eucalyptus is
harvested in 7 year cycles and when burnt
releases the CO2 back into the atmosphere,
something not taken into account in
projects such as Plantar. Additionally,
during planting, soil is tilled, releasing
CO2. Compounding the problem, more often
than not plantations displace native
forests, disrupting local ecosystems and
degrading biodiversity.
In the case of Plantar, there was more
at stake than a company profiting from
climate change by planting a
self-destructive green desert of eucalyptus
trees. In March 2003 a group of over 50
trade unions, churches, local deputies,
academics, human and land rights
organizations and others protested against
Plantar.
Plantar S.A. installed themselves in
Minas Gerais in the 1960s and 1970s during
the military dictatorship, taking advantage
of attractive tax incentives at the time.
Most lands owned by Plantar and other
corporations that moved into the area, are
devolutas, which means without land titles,
and belong to the state. According to
Brazilian law, corporations cannot acquire
this type of land, only peasants. Even so,
with fraudulent registrations in the
registry offices and “hiring” contracts
with the state, Plantar succeeded in
acquiring hundreds of thousands of hectares
of devolutas lands.
Local communities were never consulted,
and Indigenous peoples and Afro-Brazilian
Quilombala communities and thousands of
peasants lost their lands, specifically the
immensely biodiverse native savannah, the
cerrado, which together with subsistence
agriculture had provided for all of their
needs. The short cycle plantations that
replaced the natural environment did not
allow for the survival of indigenous
plants, animals and birds, which in turn
affected local food markets that had
previously depended on the natural products
provided by the cerrado. The pig iron
companies still use around 15-20 per cent
of native cerrado vegetation.
Not only did Plantar cut down large
areas of the forest and create unemployment
in the process, but also the oil smelting
industry and eucalyptus plantations did not
replace these jobs sufficiently. However,
with no other choice many people were
forced to work for these industries.
Plantar does not do anything for its former
workers, many of whom are injured or
suffering from health problems. Moreover,
many have already died as a result of the
very bad working conditions associated with
charcoal production and eucalyptus
cultivation.
Local groups have been working to regain
land and compensation from Plantar.
However, threats and intimidation tactics
from Plantar have made many local residents
afraid to let interviewers cite their names
and are acknowledged nowhere in project
documents. Under the PCF project, Plantar’s
already vast land holdings in Minas Gerais
will expand by an additional 23 000 ha,
further increasing unequal land
distribution.
The local movement appealed to the
Prototype Carbon Fund with no success, and
is now appealing directly to European
investors not to put money into the carbon
project.
Despite the ecological destruction and
social suffering caused by Plantar it has
succeeded in gaining a sustainable forestry
certificate through the Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC). However, a 2003 report by
the World Rainforest Movement, documented a
multitude of shortcomings and omissions of
the FSC certification assessment by the
certifying body Scientific Certification
Services (SCS), who issued the certificate.
In the case of Plantar it seems that the
FSC prefers supporting industrial
plantations instead of ecologically based
initiatives by local communities.
In summary, the case of Plantar and the
support of the World Bank PCF is a stark
reminder of the direction our planet is
heading. The privatization of lands for
monoculture plantations aimed at reducing
the pollution caused by the industrial
north is not a remedy for climate change.
In fact it is only making it worse, while
in the process excluding the poorest and
destroying what remaining biodiversity we
have.
more information
Carbon Trade Watch
CDM Watch
FASE (Federation of Organizations
for Social and Educational
Assistance)
World Rainforest Movement
Landless Workers Movement/
Movimento Sem Terra
