Today, September 21, 2024, is the International Day of Struggle Against Tree Monocultures! On this day, we publicly denounce, once again, the numerous and serious impacts of industrial plantations on the lives of rural communities, including their livelihoods and the ecosystems on which they directly depend on.
Year after year we bring reports and complaints from affected communities… year after year we demonstrate how evident the negative impacts are on the lives of the vast majority of those affected, and that the “better life” promised by companies such as Portucel and Green Resources as well as by our Government, only served as a discourse to deceive communities into giving up their lands! The “empty” discourse of “development” that encouraged the land grabbing of community lands to make way for plantations was forgotten at that moment, all that remains is the memory and the hurt of the countless peasant families deliberately deceived! Some still believe that companies will fulfill the promises made, will build schools, bridges, hospitals and that they will eventually have jobs that will change their lives. Some don’t even realize that all these promises are actually the responsibilities of the Mozambican Government, and that these are the same promises made in all electoral campaigns, and little or nothing actually happens!
The denunciations, appeals and complaints from affected communities and social organizations and movements have been largely ignored year after year by the various State institutions responsible for looking after the interests of the People!
This year, we celebrate this day in a very different context from the previous ones, in the middle of the Election Campaign! It was exactly to escape this context that we held our International Meeting Against Monoculture Plantations, in celebration of the International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Plantations, on the 22nd and 23rd of August.
The meeting took place in the Province of Manica, and was attended by members of communities directly affected by plantations from the companies Portucel, Green Resources and Mozambique Holdings, from the Provinces of Manica, Zambézia and Nampula, as well as members of Quilombola communities in Brazil also affected by plantations. The objective of the meeting was to promote exchanges between communities affected by industrial Plantations and to carry out visits to some affected communities, to understand their impacts on site. We didn’t see any development, we didn’t see any improvement in the living conditions, we saw eucalyptus plantations, which enrich foreign businessmen, where before we saw farms to feed the people.
At this meeting, organized in partnership by Justiça Ambiental, the World Rainforest Movement, Missão Tabita and AJOCME, we once again listened and felt the enormous negative impact that these plantations have on the lives of communities! Testimony after testimony we heard how they were deceived, how they regret having believed, we see the feelings of despair and anguish in the face of the new reality.
“Everything the company has done to date does not compensate for what we lost by giving up our land” – Affected by Portucel Moçambique plantations, Zambézia Province
“The company arrived with many promises, school, hospital, but nothing happened and now we can’t even produce well in the lowlands, because these trees are drying up our water” – Affected by Portucel Mozambique plantations, Manica Province.
“We were deceived because we didn’t know anything, they arrived with many promises, we accepted because we believed we would have a better life, they promised to fix the roads, school and hospital. Not even paying compensation for our land, others received little and others saw nothing. Now our struggle is really big, to recover our lands for agriculture, because we are peasants, that’s all we do” – Affected by Green Resources plantations, Nampula Province.
We urge the Government of Mozambique to reject all false solutions to climate change and for the people’s well-being, such as carbon credit projects, and invest effort and resources in supporting peasant agriculture, for a diversified and quality food production through agroecology in order to ensure food sovereignty; We urge the Government to promote and facilitate community-based initiatives to generate income and conserve our natural resources and important ecosystems! We also urge the Government to carry out, as a matter of urgency, a serious and impartial assessment of the social, environmental and economic impacts of the industrial plantations that it has promoted so much and continues to promote, as this will clearly demonstrate that these plantation model does not work.
Continuing to allow and promote false solutions will worsen the lack of political will and financing to implement real, decentralized solutions based on the needs, interests and will of the people.
Plantations are not forests! Plantations take away land, resources and ways of life…
We stand in solidarity, today and always, with all peoples and communities that resist the usurpation of their territories and ways of life!
The struggle goes on!
For rights, For justice, For a better world for everyone!
