Plantations, poverty and power - Critical Information Collective

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Sappi, Swaziland: 50 years of industrial forestry fails to bring benefits for local people
Sappi, a South African pulp and paper company, rents almost 70,000 hectares of land from the Swaziland
state, of which 54,212 hectares are planted with exotic pine trees. Sappi’s plantations in Swaziland are the
epitome of what is wrong with industrial tree plantations. Species-rich grasslands were destroyed and
people moved to make way for the plantations.
Every year, Sappi clearcuts a total area of 3,000 hectares of plantations, leaving vast scars on the
landscape. When the clearcuts are replanted, the trees suck up water, drying up streams and reducing flow
in rivers. Sappi’s plantations and nurseries can only be managed through the use of chemical pesticides.
What are today Sappi’s industrial tree plantations arrived in Swaziland as the result of an “aid” project
funded by the UK’s Colonial Development Corporation. In 1948, Sir Evelyn Baring, then-High
Commissioner for Swaziland, commissioned Dr Ian J. Craib to produce a study to look at the possibility
of converting 55,000 hectares of grassland in the Great Usutu valley to tree plantations. Craib was a
forester and managing director of Peak Timbers, another plantations operation in Swaziland. 156 Not
surprisingly, given his background, Craib favoured expanding the area of industrial tree plantations.
CDC funded the land purchase and planting started in 1950. By 1958, Swaziland had the largest
continuous area of plantations in Africa. In 1959, Courtaulds, a UK company, formed a joint venture with
CDC to build a pulp mill. The mill opened in 1962, with a capacity of 90,000 tons a year. 157 The mill now
produces about 200,000 tonnes of unbleached kraft pulp a year.
Set up as the Colonial Development Corporation in 1948, CDC’s initial brief was “to develop resources
of Britain’s colonies”. In 1963, it changed its name to the Commonwealth Development Corporation.
Now called the CDC Group, it invests UK tax-payers’ money in the Global South through a series of
finance houses. 158 A bizarre privatisation process allowed the directors of CDC to earn huge amounts of
money, by selling CDC’s fund management arm to themselves for a pittance, renaming it Actis and
running it as a private equity company. 159 CDC’s only shareholder is the Department for International
Development, the UK’s bilateral aid agency. 160
In the late 1980s, despite having been involved in a series of disastrous aid projects, Peter Eccles, CDC’s
general manager, described CDC as the “jewel in the British aid crown”. CDC held up its involvement in
Swaziland as a success story. In Swaziland, as well as the Usutu pulp mill and its associated pine
plantations, CDC has supported sugar plantations.
156 Julian Evans (1988) “The Usutu forest: Twenty years later”, Unasylva, Vol. 40, No. 159, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/s5780e/s5780e04.htm#the%20usutu%20forest:%20twenty%20years%20later
157 Julian Evans (1988) “The Usutu forest: Twenty years later”, Unasylva, Vol. 40, No. 159, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/s5780e/s5780e04.htm#the%20usutu%20forest:%20twenty%20years%20later
158 “Who we are: History”, CDC Group website: http://www.cdcgroup.com/history.asp
159 “Actis & the consultants: The big buy-out sell-out”, Private Eye, No. 1206, 21 March - 3 April 2008, page 29.
“The Actis scandal: The price is frightful”, Private Eye, No. 1210, 16-29 May 2008, page 29.
“Actis: False Profits”, Private Eye, No. 1212, 13-26 June 2008, page 27.
160 “Who we are: Corporate Structure”, CDC Group website:
http://www.cdcgroup.com/~archive/corporate_structure.asp