Dear friends,
This coming 21 September we will once again be marking the International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations.

As a way of raising awareness about the different kinds of impacts suffered by communities in countries around the world as a result of monoculture tree plantations, we at WRM, Friends of the Earth and the Global Forest Coalition invite you to join in this worldwide day of protest.

You may be wondering what you can do on this day. There are a wide variety of activities that can be planned in our different countries and communities. While the activities chosen will depend upon the possibilities of each one of us, there are a number of ideas that we would like to share with you. For example:

- Meetings about plantations (conferences, seminars, workshops).
- Media activities (press releases, press conferences, interviews with newspapers, radio and TV programmes, internet articles).
- Public events (in urban and rural areas) to inform the public about the impacts of plantations.
- Dissemination of testimonials from people affected by plantations.
- Meetings with government representatives.

However there are also very simple things that can be done at an individual level, such us:
- Hanging a sign/banner in the window of your office or home.
- Putting a bumper sticker on your vehicle.
- Sending your email contacts a message about the meaning of the International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations.
- Placing a banner on your website and on blogs.

We are preparing a series of tools that can help you to organize the kind of activities we have recommended. If you would like to receive them, please do not hesitate to contact us

In addition, remember that WRM has two other tools already developed that are available for use at:
1) The video “Mountains of Paper, Mounting Injustice” (Available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/Videos/Paper_Consumption.html)
2) The “Appeal from literature and journalism for socially and environmentally clean paper” (Available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/writers.html)

Please feel free to write to us if you need further information.

Kind regards,
The WRM Team

Mountains of Paper, Mounting Injustice from WRM on Vimeo.

Produced by the World Rainforest Movement - 2008
Sreenplay: Antonis Diamantidis and Flavio Pazos
With the support of the WRM International Secretariat Team
Voice: Cecilia Carrère


The Appeal from Literature and Journalism for Socially and Environmentally Clean Paper
Paper is a wonderful material, which for centuries has served for a fertile exchange of ideas among human beings. For us all who use it as an essential vehicle to share what we think, imagine, dream, know or believe we know, paper is a wonderful tool that we want to be able to continue using ... but not at the expense of people and the environment.
As people who live in this reality, we are aware of the serious injustices and inequalities - social and environmental – arising from the world production and consumption of paper.

In addition to the destruction of forests for making paper, now forests and grasslands are being replaced by vast monoculture tree plantations, destroying communities, water, soil and all life. Both the destruction of forests and the installation of monoculture tree plantations – occupying food-producing land – bring about enormous damage to the local population, who see their rights violated, their environment destroyed and their way of life irremediably affected.

The destructive cycle is continued with pulp production, in which fewer and increasingly larger companies take possession of land where they plant trees, of water that their trees and mills consume and contaminate, of political power acquired through their billion dollar investments, and of the environment that they destroy in the regions where they are installed.

To destruction are added inequities. The enormous volume of paper produced from this pulp feeds a “world market” centred on rich and powerful peoples’ consumption. The average figures (that hide enormous inequalities on a national level), show that consumption per capita is more than ten times higher in the countries of the North than in those of the South.

To inequity is added excessive consumption. Only as an example it is enough to see the mountains of paper and cardboard growing night after night in the streets of New York to understand that most of the pulp production does not end up as books, newspapers or journals, but simply as trash. In general terms, at least half the pulp produced goes to the production of paper and cardboard for wrapping and packaging, most of it totally unnecessary.

We do not want to have anything to do with paper produced in this way. We do not want to become accomplices to the social and environmental destruction this implies. We do not trust certification schemes that have given their seal of “sustainability” to these same monoculture plantations whose impacts we know so well.

This situation has already reached intolerable limits and its solution requires policies discouraging unnecessary consumption, promoting a rational and socially appropriate use of paper, ensuring an equitable use among countries and within countries, facilitating the development of diversified models on a smaller scale for the production of pulp, respecting both people and the environment.

The above is perfectly feasible and no technical limitations of any kind exist to prevent it from becoming a reality. The only and real obstacle is the economic interest of large companies, whose objective is to continue making profits by imposing an increasingly large and unlimited consumption of paper. The time has come to tell them that this is enough.

We are therefore appealing to those, who like us want to be able to continue communicating through this marvellous material called paper, to join in this struggle for a socially and environmentally clean paper.

Please sign-up the appeal here.