Plantations, poverty and power - Critical Information Collective

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consume fewer goods. Less advertising, less packaging and less waste. In June 2008, a group of more
than 50 NGOs in Europe launched the “Shrink” campaign, which is aimed at reducing paper consumption
in Europe by at least half. 69
Last year, Mandy Haggith, the co-ordinator of the Shrink campaign, travelled by train and boat from her
home in Scotland to Sumatra, Indonesia. 70 “I was horrified by how destructive our paper footprint is,”
Haggith says.
“I met Indonesian villagers fighting a land-claim with a paper company that is growing acacia on their
community land to make copy paper for sale in European and North American markets. I asked them
what I could do to help their fight, and they told me to ask people in Europe to use less copy paper. To
show real solidarity with people struggling with multinational extractive industries, it is not enough for us
to shift our consumption from one brand to some other, hopefully slightly less obnoxious, brand. That
only displaces the problem. Consuming differently is not good enough, we need to consume less AND
differently.” 71
Financing overcapacity
Part of the problem lies in the way the pulp and paper sector finances its expansion. The industry is
notoriously cyclical. When paper prices are high, profits are up and the industry invests in expansion –
banks are happy to lend to an industry that is growing. The result is overcapacity and eventually a price
collapse. A drop in demand linked to a slow down in global economic growth has the same effect on pulp
and paper prices. Overcapacity exacerbates the problem. In both cases, the result is that the industry has
to run its mills at less than capacity or start closing down mills.
A quick look at the recent history of booms and busts in the pulp and paper industry indicates what the
industry might have in store in the next few years as the financial crisis causes a slow down in paper
consumption and a squeeze on loans for new pulp mills.
The pulp and paper industry expanded rapidly in the 1980s, followed by a crisis at the end of the decade –
a direct result of the overcapacity in the sector. In 1992, the Financial Times described the problems
faced by the paper industry:
“Pulp and most grades of paper represent classic examples of cyclical industries. And they are becoming
more and more classical as each down-draught of the cycle appears to become increasingly deep and
long.
“One reason is the growing size of paper machines. A world-scale competitive paper plant now has a
capacity of at least 200,000 tonnes a year, and sometimes more than 300,000 tonnes, explains Mr Denis
Christie, paper, pulp and packaging analyst at James Capel.
69 For more information and to sign the pledge to use less paper, see http://www.shrinkpaper.org
70 Mandy Haggith’s book based on her trip: Paper Trails: from trees to trash, the true cost of paper, was published by Virgin
Books on 3 July 2008.
71 I interviewed Mandy Haggith by email, 3 June 2008.
See Chris Lang (2008) “‘Shrink’: A new campaign to stop the madness of paper over-consumption”, World Rainforest
Movement Bulletin 131, June 2008. http://chrislang.org/2008/06/27/shrink-a-new-campaign-to-stop-the-madness-of-paperover-consumption