“Plantations are not forests” is a phrase that has been around for many years, but that does not mean that tree plantations are good nor bad in themselves. The benefits or threats of plantations depend on:

• their scale
• their objective
• the trees planted
• the natural and socio-economic environment in which they are established.

Some small scale, community owned plantations made up of a variety of trees grown over long cycles can be very beneficial. However, to compensate for even a small fraction of the eight gigatonnes of carbon we release each year into the atmosphere, millions of hectares of land would have to be taken over for carbon sequestration. The likely consequence is that industrial, large-scale, monoculture, fast-growing tree plantations will be established, and this can bring several problems:

• Negative impacts on local communities, local economies and biodiversity. NGO investigations show that this pattern is likely to remain unchanged for carbon sink plantations.
• Large-scale plantations often replace forests. There are comparatively few cases where large-scale tree plantations have been established on degraded land. Tree plantations can in fact be a direct cause of deforestation. This means that before large-scale tree plantations become a temporary carbon sink, they cause the release of large amounts of carbon previously stored in the forest and forest soils they replace.
• Plantations can initially release carbon. Several studies suggest that if planted on certain soils, tree plantations established on clearcut areas will continue to release more carbon than they absorb for at least 7 years. Consequently, tree plantations should be considered sources not sinks until proven otherwise. Unfortunately, there are many possibilities under the Kyoto Protocol to avoid accounting for carbon releases while receiving credits for sequestration.
• Plantations negatively affect communities already touched by climate change. Climate change has mainly been caused by the North's high levels of energy consumption, but the impact is being felt most dramatically in poorer communities. This inequality is further compacted by large-scale tree plantations in countries where land and labour are cheap, but communities are offered little opportunity to participate in discussions that affect their lives.

The World Rainforest Movement (WRM) has more information and detailed documentation about the social and environmental impacts of large-scale tree plantations. Please visit www.wrm.org.uy/plantations