Problems with industrial tree plantations
Tree plantations are neither good nor bad in themselves: Whether they are beneficial or a threat depends on their scale, their aimed objective and the type of plantation, as well as on the natural and socio-economic environment in which they are established.

Compensating for the eight gigatonnes of carbon we currently release into the atmosphere every year would require planting four times the area of the United States with trees, never letting these trees die and decay thereafter. Thus, in the context of the Kyoto Protocol, millions of hectares of land would have to be taken over for carbon sequestration to have even a small impact on overall emissions. The likely consequence is that large-scale, fast-growing tree plantations will be established, and this brings several problems:

• Industrial timber plantations almost always have negative impacts on local communities, local economies and biodiversity. Recent NGO investigations (WRM assessment of FSC certifications for V&M Florestal and Plantar tree plantations, November 2002, Tree Trouble, September 2000) show that this pattern is likely to remain unchanged for carbon sink plantations.

• Changes in land use affect people and their livelihoods, and this in turn affects greenhouse gas emissions. This is an area that has been largely forgotten or ignored and may lead to unrecorded greenhouse gas emissions resulting from credit-generating carbon sink plantations.

• There are comparatively few cases where large-scale tree plantations have been established on degraded land (see also Ten replies to ten lies http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/material/lies.html). Often, large-scale tree plantations replace forests and are thus a direct cause of deforestation. This also means that before large-scale tree plantations become a temporary carbon sink, they in fact cause the release of large amounts of carbon previously stored in the forest and forest soils they replace.

• 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 until proven otherwise. Unfortunately, there are many possibilities under the Kyoto Protocol to avoid accounting for these releases while fetching the credits for the sequestration.

• Climate change has mainly been caused by the North's high levels of energy consumption, but the impact is likely to be felt most dramatically in the South. This inequality will be perpetuated by carbon sink credits because most large-scale tree plantations are likely to be planted in the South where land and labour are cheap, but where local communities have been offered little opportunity to participate in climate negotiations.

Also check out the WRM webpage www.wrm.org.uy/plantations for a detailed documentation of the social and environmental impacts of large-scale tree plantations.

Plantations are not forests
Forestry professionals and plantation companies insist on calling plantations "planted forests", or "plantation forests". This confusion between a crop (of trees) and a forest also made its way into the Kyoto Protocol, whose definition for forests as includes tree plantations. However, for forest peoples who call a forest their home, render medicines, food, shelter and building materials from it, the difference is undeniable - a plantation is not a forest and the only thing they have in common is that in both, trees predominate at first glance. There the similarity ends.

A forest is a complex, self-regenerating system, encompassing soil, water, microclimate, energy, and a wide variety of plants and animals in mutual relation.

In a forest:
• Tree species make up only a small percentage of the overall biological diversity;
• Trees and bushes of a variety of ages can be found;
• A large number of other plant species, growing both on the forest floor and on the trees and bushes themselves are present;
• A wide variety of animal species find food and shelter.

A commercial plantation, on the other hand, is a cultivated area whose species and structure have been simplified dramatically to produce only a few goods, whether lumber, fuel, resin, oil, or fruit. Biological diversity is drastically reduced and one or a few species of fast-growing trees, planted in homogenous blocks of the same age account for a large percentage of the plant diversity found in the plantation. In addition, plantations require extensive and continuing human intervention, including preparation of the soil and fertilization, "weeds" must be removed using herbicides and trees must be planted in regular lots and harvested after as short a growing period as possible.

As far as human communities are concerned, not only do they not inhabit commercial plantations but they are in many cases not even allowed access to the plantation area. At best, they are perceived as a source of cheap labour during planting and later on, when the trees are harvested.

A fine line between forests and plantations?
The distinction between a forest and a plantation, of course, is not always as clear-cut. A "native forest" where economically unimportant species have been eliminated may wind up as simplified, and as in need of constant human maintenance to stay that way, as any plantation. Much of Europe's "forest" falls into this category. On the other hand, some diverse, seemingly "natural" forests either began their existence as plantations, having then been abandoned, or continue to be carefully "cultivated" by local people, as is the case in areas inhabited by the Kayapo in Brazil.

But the industrial tree plantations, which can be expected to apply for CDM carbon credits have a much less ambiguous status. Resulting from an aggressive and thoroughgoing transformation of a landscape, projects currently underway are clearly industrial agricultural crops, consisting of thousands or even millions of trees of the same species, bred for rapid growth, uniformity and high yield of raw material and planted in even-aged stands. They are a far cry from forests as generally understood.

See WRM webpage www.wrm.org.uy/plantations for a detailed discussion on plantations versus forests.

See Transnational Institute webpage for an essay of eucalyptus plantations in Espirito Santo and Minas Gerais, Brasil.