Plantations, poverty and power - Critical Information Collective

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paper industry along ecological lines. She concludes that a complete restructuring is the only way that the
industry can begin to address the environmental problems that it has created. 701
With this sort of alternative structure of the pulp and paper industry in mind, the following list is a
suggestion for how paper should be produced. It is not intended to be a set of guidelines for investing in a
“sustainable” pulp and paper industry. Instead it is intended to be a way of alerting both the industry and
its financiers to the problems currently created by the industry.
Paper should be produced:
•without destroying native forests;
•without establishing large scale monoculture tree plantations;
•without impacting on local peoples’ rights and access to land and livelihoods;
•without resulting in extensive environmental impacts: depletion of water resources, biodiversity loss,
introduction of invasive species;
•without polluting air, water and soils; and
•without benefiting from government direct or indirect subsidies (including ECAs, multilateral banks, or
bilateral aid).
Any pulp mill project that cannot meet these guidelines should not be funded and should not be built.
This may seem impossible to achieve, or hopelessly idealistic. But there is no such thing as “responsible
investment” in the pulp and paper industry, as it currently exists. Why should the industry be allowed to
continue establishing vast areas of monoculture tree plantations in the South Why should the industry be
allowed to “restructure” by sacking thousands of workers in the North while it employs cheaper labour in
dangerous and often temporary jobs in the global South Why should the industry continue to expand,
continue to promote wasteful consumption and continue to produce huge amounts of greenhouse gases
Why should the pulp and paper industry be allowed to continue destroying local communities’ and
Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods and environments
Currently, development “aid” is one of the factors that helps to support the industry to continue business
as usual, rather than looking for innovative solutions to the problems that it is creating. For this reason,
this report demands an end to “aid” to industrial tree plantations. It also demands an end to “aid” to the
pulp and paper industry, for the simple reason that aid is supposed to promote development which is
beneficial to communities in the South. Industrial tree plantations and the pulp and paper industry are not
beneficial to communities in the South.
701 Maureen Smith (1997) “The U.S. Paper Industry and Sustainable Production: An Argument for Restructuring”, MIT
Press.