Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

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Global Environmental Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvcha

Conicts over industrial tree plantations in the South: Who, how and why?
Julien-Francois Gerber
Department of Economics, Harvard University, 02138 Cambridge, MA, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history:
Received 26 December 2009
Received in revised form 5 August 2010
Accepted 7 September 2010
Available online 16 October 2010

Industrial tree plantations for wood, palm oil and rubber production are among the fastest growing
monocultures and are currently being promoted as carbon sinks and energy producers. Such plantations
are causing a large number of conicts between companies and local populations, mostly in the tropics
and subtropics. Within a political ecology framework, the present paper investigates the nature of such
conicts as related to the alleged impacts of the plantations, the protesters involved, and the modalities
of the conicts with a special emphasis on their outcomes. Relying on the most comprehensive literature
review to date, corresponding to 58 conict cases, I nd that the prominent cause of resistance is related
to corporate control over land resulting in displacements and the end of local uses of ecosystems as they
are replaced by monocultures. Resistance includes the weapons of the weak and ranges from dialogue
to direct confrontation and from local to international. It often involves NGOs, especially for legal issues.
Demonstrations, lawsuits, road blockades and tree uprooting have been reported in several countries.
Authorities have responded by repression in about half of the cases analysed, while popular struggles
have been able to stop plantations in about one fth, mainly through winning lawsuits or massive social
unrest. While these movements can be regarded as classical land conicts, they usually also have an
ecological content, corresponding to forms of the environmentalism of the poor. The documented large
number of such conicts suggests that policies promoting large-scale tree plantations should be
reappraised.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Tree plantations
Agrarian conicts
Peasant resistance
Deforestation
Global warming mitigation
Political ecology

1. Introduction
In the global South,1 industrial tree plantations are still on
the march: the monoculture of eucalypts has become the
predominant form of industrial forestry development; oil palm
constitutes the fastest growing monoculture; and rubber and
pine trees count among the top four plantation crops in terms of
surface area (FAO, 2001, 2008; Cossalter and Pye-Smith, 2003).
Besides their traditional productive function, such tree crops are
currently being promoted for mitigating climate change
(through sinking atmospheric carbon) and one of them oil
palm for producing agro-fuels (UNCTAD, 2002; UNFF, 2003;
IEA, 2004). Yet these plantations are also causing a large number
of conicts between companies and local populations and
represent one of the most contentious issues of contemporary
sustainable development approaches in the rural South
(Buttoud, 2001).
This paper provides a comprehensive review of the academic
and non-academic literature on such conicts. My objective is to
investigate their nature as related to: (1) the effects of the

E-mail address: jgerber@fas.harvard.edu.

Although tree plantations are also a feature in Northern countries, only
monoculture located in the global South are included in this article.
1

0959-3780/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.09.005

plantations that generate conict (the why? question); (2) the

protesting actors involved (who?); and (3) the modalities of the
conicts (how?), with a special focus on their outcomes. A
theoretical framework for understanding such complex issues is
provided by political ecology dened by Blaikie and Brookeld
(1987) as the concerns of human ecology combined with a broadly
dened political economy. Martnez-Alier (2002) species that
political ecology is the study of ecological distribution conicts, i.e.
conicts over access to natural resources and services and over the
burdens of impacts that arise because of inequalities in power,
property and income among human groups. Political ecology has
largely been characterized by the case study approach, giving rise
to numerous edited volumes juxtaposing case studies (e.g.
Rocheleau et al., 1996; Bryant and Bailey, 1997; Zimmerer and
Bassett, 2003; Peet and Watts, 2004). In the present paper, my aim
is to step back and provide a preliminary synthesis of many case
studies related to resistance against the development of tree
plantations in the global South.
Plantations are large, centrally administered agricultural
estates located in tropical or subtropical countries and organized
to supply external markets (Pryor, 1982). I focus here on
industrial tree plantations (hereafter ITPs), although there are
many different kinds of tree plantations used for different purposes
(FAO, 2001; Evans and Turnbull, 2004). ITPs refers to large-scale
monocultures of tree crops mainly eucalypts, pines, rubber tree

166

J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

and oil palm2 that are managed intensively, which generally

involves the use of agrochemicals, cloned or genetically modied
trees, and short rotations in the case of wood-producing
plantations, hence the term fast-wood plantations. The purpose
of such monocultures is to produce, as quickly as possible and at
competitive prices, high volumes per hectare of typically one
product, i.e. wood, rubber or palm oil (Cossalter and Pye-Smith,
2003; FSC, 2004).
After a description of the materials and methods of the study, I
provide background information on tree plantations worldwide
and pass to the results presenting a general inventory of the
conicts. I then analyze and contextualize the results using
concrete examples as illustrations before concluding.

targeting at plantations; and (6) internal conicts within

communities on issues related to the plantation but not targeted
at the latter. However, grassroots conicts uniquely expressed
through a lawsuit were included as well as resistance against
projects of ITPs not yet established. While relevant, no sufciently
documented cases of conicts between plantation workers and
villagers were found.
3. Background

Unlike most political ecology analyses based on single case

studies, this article explores conicts over Southern ITPs through a
literature review and synthesis of 58 cases of such protest
movements (Table 1). In view of the relative scarcity of social
science research on the issue, my databank is complemented by
local activist knowledge (Escobar, 2008) and grey literature.
About half of the conicts reviewed here are reported by nongovernmental organization (NGO) sources. Because the latter
entail inherent limits related to their impartiality and transparency, my treatment of this material has been cautious, cross-checking
the information between different sources whenever possible (as
half of the conicts have been mentioned by more than a single
source). A one-year eldwork on ITP conicts in Cameroon and
Ecuador (Gerber and Veuthey, 2010, in press; Gerber et al., 2009)
provided me with an experiential background helping me to
evaluate the case study material relevant to this paper.
The use of civil society investigations and publications in
political ecology and ecological economics is hardly new (Paulson
et al., 2003; Ropke, 2005). As explained by Funtowicz and Ravetz
(1994), in many current socio-environmental problems of importance and urgency, where values are in dispute and uncertainties
are high, certied experts are frequently challenged by citizens
ellas-Bolta` (2006) point out that the
groups. Strand and Can
unprivileged may actually perceive aspects of a given socioenvironmental phenomenon more clearly than the well-off as they
are more directly impacted by it. Community-based or activist
knowledge can thus be crucial for social sciences (Rocheleau et al.,
1996; Escobar, 1998, 2008; Martnez-Alier, 2002), yet it is not
mechanically true that research growing out of a community of
poor or oppressed people by itself will bring deeper insights than a
study carried out by, say, the government.
Only well-documented cases of ITP conicts are included in
Table 1, i.e. with enough data on the locations, dates, companies,
tree crops, impacts, protesters, and modalities. ITP conicts are
dened as physical mobilizations coming from neighbouring
populations and targeted at the perceived negative effects of the
plantation. These effects may be economic, socio-cultural or
environmental. In order to keep to this denition and to maintain
homogeneity in the conicts I am investigating, I did not include:
(1) worker or union conicts inside the plantation; (2) conicts
from village planters on issues related to the contractual relation
with the agro-industry (a kind of worker conict as well); (3)
conicts uniquely expressed through protest letters, i.e. without
physical mobilization; (4) conicts uniquely expressed through a
non-grassroots NGO, i.e. without local resistance; (5) conicts
uniquely directed against pulp or palm oil mills, i.e. without

Within the context of the green revolution, the 1960s saw the
launching of large-scale ITP programmes in many Southern
countries. Between 1965 and 1980, the area devoted to tree
monocultures including non-industrial plantations tripled, and
then increased from 17.8 million hectares in 1980 to 187 million
hectares in 2000.3 Subsequently, the area of plantations established for industrial purposes has continued to grow. The genus
Eucalyptus and Pinus for fast-wood, rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis), and oil palms (Elaeis guineensis) constitute the worlds largest
area of ITP in the tropics and subtropics. Here is some background
information on each one of these three major ITP crops:
There were in 2000 approximately 90 million hectares of
industrial fast-wood plantations worldwide mainly composed of
eucalypts, pines, acacia and gmelina (FAO, 2001). A further one
million hectares is being added each year. Some 40 years ago, Brazil
became the rst developing country to establish large-scale fastwood plantations, soon followed by Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.
Other key tropical and subtropical fast-wood planters are China,
India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Venezuela, South
Africa and Swaziland. Fast-wood plantations are mainly used for
paper and, to a lesser extent, charcoal production.
Rubber monocultures cover a total area of about 10 million
hectares (FAO, 2001). They have been planted for the production of
latex over the past hundred years the rst large-scale plantations
were Sri Lankan. 90% of all rubber plantations are located in
Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
Rubber is one of the few plantation commodities whose prices in
real terms did not fall during the last 50 years, due to continuous
demand, notably by the car industry the tyre industry absorbs
more than 60% of the worlds production.
Oil palm plantations have become the fastest growing
monoculture in the tropics. In 1997, they occupied 6.5 million
hectares; by 2007, the area covered was 14 million hectares (FAO,
2008). Of this, at least 4 million hectares were in Malaysia and 6
million hectares in Indonesia, the worlds two largest producers.
The main product of these plantations is palm oil, used in food,
cosmetics and animal feed production. It is now increasingly in
demand for agro-fuel (or biofuel) production, being promoted as a
controversial low carbon solution to climate change (see IEA, 2004,
and Giampietro and Mayumi, 2009, for opposite views on it). The
European Union for instance endorsed a mandatory 10% minimum
target to be achieved by all member states for the share of agrofuels in transport oil consumption by 2020 (EC, 2009). In response
to this growing market, large-scale oil palm plantations are being
developed in many tropical areas.
The impacts of ITPs on biodiversity are a function of what
ecosystem they replace (Evans and Turnbull, 2004). Where they
are established at the expense of native habitats, forests or
otherwise, the net effect on biodiversity will generally be negative
as ITPs provide less suitable habitat for ora and fauna than the
ecosystems they replace (Hartley, 2002; see also Carnus et al.,
2006, for some exceptions). According to FAO (2001), conversion to

2
Oil palm plantations are added to this denition because they share similar
features with other tree monocultures. However, smaller trees or bushes such as
cacao, coffee, tea, cotton, jatropha are here excluded.

3
Data on fast-wood and rubber plantations come from the 2000 Global Forest
Resources Assessment (FAO, 2001). Updated data on tree plantations will be
available in the 2010 edition.

2. Materials and methods

J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

tree plantations accounts for about 7% of the global tropical forest

losses. Carnus et al. (2006) urge for more research on the
relationship between tree plantations and natural forests in order
to assess whether the growing wood production from monocultures has relieved some pressure on natural forests. This
remains a controversial issue. In Chile for instance, it is estimated
that 31% of the native forest in the coastal region was converted to
plantations between 1978 and 1987 (IIED, 1996, cited in Cossalter
and Pye-Smith, 2003, p. 15; see also Clapp, 2001). These processes
are likely to have negative impacts on peasant or indigenous
populations who live nearby because ITPs remove most of the
ecological goods and services provided by forests for instance as
intercropping and grazing land, or for rewood, fodder, food
(game, fruits, nuts, roots, oil seeds, honey), craft, cosmetic and
medicinal plants.
Plantations effects on hydrological and soil conditions are a
controversial issue as they depend on the species, management
practices, and environmental conditions. However, evidence
shows that the growth rate of the tree is correlated with its water
use and eucalypts, for example, are accordingly known to be
voracious water consumers (Patzek and Pimentel, 2005; see a
review in Calder, 2002). Fast-wood plantations tend to destabilize
water cycles provoking reduced water ow throughout the year,
the disappearance of streams during the dry season, and damages
to other (agro-)ecosystems (FSC, 2004). Furthermore, the use of
pesticides is likely to have a potential negative impact on nontarget species and to reduce biodiversity in sprayed areas (Hartley,
2002). The ability of chemicals to accumulate in the water supply
and in other biological organisms including humans has been
pointed out too (FSC, 2004).
A new incentive for the expansion of tree plantations has been
the Climate Change Convention and the emerging carbon
sequestration market. The rationale is that tree plantations can
store atmospheric carbon in the living plants as well as, later on, in
the form of wood constructions and furniture. In line with this, the
Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) allow companies to offset
their emissions and thus meet their pollution targets by
nancing carbon sequestration projects in countries that are not
subject to an emission cap and thereby to gain carbon credits
(COP, 2001). More recently, agro-fuel production projects were
included as possible CDM activities (CDM-EB, 2009). At the time of
writing (June 2010), among the 16 registered CDM projects related
to afforestation/reforestation activities, only two (in Brazil and
Colombia) involve large-scale tree plantations that are not social
forestry projects, and among the eight agro-fuel production
projects under review, only one (in India) is connected to the
development of oil palm plantations (see http://cdm.unfccc.int).
However, new CDM projects involving ITPs are in preparation, e.g.
in Laos and Uruguay (Lang, 2008). This article suggests that carbon
offsetting in tree plantations may come at the expense of a host of
other problems (see UNFF, 2003; Spash, 2010, for opposite views).
There are several actors that promote the expansion of ITPs in
the global South. These include mainly United Nations organisations (especially the World Bank and the FAO), development
agencies (such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency),
consulting rms (such as Poyry) as well as industry associations
which can be very dynamic and effective. In Europe for instance,
the Confederation of European Paper Industries supports its
interest by lobbying at a European level, commissioning research,
issuing press releases, and publishing industry-friendly reports
(Lang, 2008). In Southeast Asia, state and private capital are often
so intertwined that Pye (2009) speaks of a potent palm oil
industrial complex. In fact, governments have played a major role
in ITP expansion in many countries, especially by providing private
sector ITP companies with a range of incentives and subsidies, e.g.
afforestation grants, investments in infrastructure, preferential tax

167

treatments and so on (Bull et al., 2006). Apart from the traditional

nancing bodies of ITPs (i.e. export credit agencies and development banks), new investors have emerged since the 1990s, such as
Timber Investment Management Organisations, Timberlands Real
Estate Investment Trusts, and private equity companies. Different
kinds of funds (pension and endowment funds, sovereign wealth
funds) are also getting involved in nancing the ITP sector. So far
however, these new investors have played only a minor role in the
expansion of ITPs in the South compared to development banks
and governments (Lang, 2008).
4. Results
The discussion section is based on Table 1.4 In the table, each
conict is named by geographic location or given another name
through which the conict is known to an international public.
While compiling the databank, it has been difcult to isolate all the
individual conict cases that occurred within conictive regions,
characterized by high incidence of conict. These regions are: (1)
coastal Brazil (states of Esprito Santo, Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio de
Janeiro, Maranhao, and Rio Grande do Sul); (2) Chile (Araucana
region); (3) Thailand (northern and north-eastern provinces); (4)
Malaysia (state of Sarawak); and (5) Indonesia (Sumatra and
Kalimantan).
Historically, it is possible to distinguish two broad categories of
conicts over tree plantations. The rst one corresponds to those,
between the 19th and mid-20th century, resulting from the
colonial appropriation of the forest and subsequent replacement
by timber or rubber plantations, such as in India (Guha, 1989;
Gadgil and Guha, 1992), Indonesia (Peluso, 1992), Burma (Bryant,
1997) and Cameroon (Konings, 1993). South Asia has witnessed
some of the most well-known cases of peasant resistance to
colonial scientic forestry supervised by German technical
advisers trained in tree plantation economics. While forestdependant villagers classically carried out arson attacks on the
plantations, the taungya system sometimes offered a temporary
solution to the problem of increasing unrest in colonial forest
areas.5 The second category the focus of this article corresponds
to the green revolution monoculture model, from the 1960s
onwards. The databank shows an increase in reported conict
cases during the last ten years, certainly due to the better coverage
by NGOs but also to the general increase in plantation area and
decrease in forest cover (FAO, 2001).
Geographically, the occurrence of the reported conicts
approximates the world distribution of ITPs. Asian conicts
represent 62% of the databank (31% only for Indonesia), while
Latin American conicts correspond to 22%, and the rest concerns
African and Oceanian cases. There is an important bias towards
Indonesia, which has witnessed a massive conversion of customary
(adat) land to oil palm and fast-wood plantations. Between 1967
and 2007, oil palm monocultures have increased about 50 times
(FAO, 2008) and the government is planning to expand the area
under plantation. By 2001, approximately half of its pulpwood
plantations had been established on natural forests (Cossalter and
Pye-Smith, 2003, p. 14). As a result, conicts are numerous and far
from being exhaustively documented. In 2000, Kartodihardjo and
Supriono (2000) found for instance that in the South Sumatra
4
An annex containing more details on each of the conict cases is available from
the author upon request.
5
Under the taungya system, villagers provided labour for clearing, planting and
weeding tree plantations. In return, they were allowed to plant crops for the rst
few years between the trees. As the trees grew, villagers were moved to new land
and repeated the process. This became an important plantation method in several
Asian and African countries. As a result, many villagers became dependent on the
state forestry service and local resistance to the state takeover of forests became
increasingly difcult.

168

Table 1
Reported conict cases worldwide, until December 2009.
Conict cases

Tree crops
Location or
particularity

Date

Cameroon

Kribi region
Southwest prov.
Ashanti country
Michelin
Ogun state
Kwazulu-Natal
East-Cap
Oro province
Milne Bay prov.
Ro Negro prov.
Aracruz
Veracel
Womens Day
Mapuche conict
Choco province
Smurt
Golfo Dulce region
Esmeraldas prov.
San Marcos prov.
IndioMaz Reserve
western part
Smurt
Pegu region
Pheapimex
Wuzhishan
K. Chuly & Socn
Guangxi province
Chipko movement
Appiko movement
KPL
Tumkur district
Bastar district
Chotanagpur area
Midnapore district
Central Java
Wilmar SP (West)
HSL (West)
PTPN XIII (West)
LL (West)
Indorayon (North)
LonSum (North)
PHS (North)
Arara Abadi (Riau)
RAPP (Riau)
PSA (Riau)
Tor Ganda (Riau)
PHP (West)
TSG (West)
Siberut Is. (West)
DAS (Jambi)

1997
1949
1990s
2007
2006
1989
196162
200002
2007
2000
1970s
1993
2006
1997
1997
1978
199394
200307
2003
2005
1990s
199409
1950s
200006
2004
200009
2004
197380
1983
198490
1983
197583
1979
2007
1980s
2006
2000s
2000
2002
1989
1998
2000
1980s
1997
1995
1999
1997
1993
1998
1998

Ghana
Nigeria
South Africa
Papua NG
Argentina
Brazil

Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Ecuador
Guatemala
Nicaragua
Uruguay
Venezuela
Burma
Cambodia

China
India

Indonesia
Kalimantan

Sumatra

Eucalyptus

Impacts

Protesters

Oil
palm

Pine,
rubber,
melina,
acacia,
teak

Loss of
customary
land
(*land
purchase)

Deforestation

X
X
X

R
R

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

R
M
P
P

X
X
X

P
X
X
X
X

P
X

P
M

X
X
MT
P
MP
T

X
X
X

P
R
X
P
T

X
X
X

P
T
X
TP
X
X
X
X
X

AP
X
X
A
A
X
X
X
X
X
X

X*
X*
X*
X*
X*
X*
X
X*
X*
*

Water
shortage

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

Peasants
farmers

X
X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X
X

Women,
particular
role of

Indigenous

X
X
X

X
X
X
X
X

X
X
X
X
X

X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X
X

X
X

X
X

NGOs

X
X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X
X

*
*

Pollution

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X
X

X
X
X
X
X

X
X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X
X
X

J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

Country

KCMU (Lampung)
CA (Aceh)
Sarawak state
Sabah state
highland Uva
Green Isan
Khor Jor Kor
Shell

Malaysia
Sri Lanka
Thailand

1985
1998
1970s
2004
1990
198790
1990-92
198790

X
X
X
X

P
X
X
X

Conicts
Tree
uprooting

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X
X

X
X
X

Lawsuit

X
X

Material
damage
such as
arsons

Repression
(**murder)

X
X
X

X
X
X

Compensation

Project
interrupted

X
X

X
X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X*

X
X
X

X
X

X*
X*

X
X

X
X

X
X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X
X

X
X

X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X*
X
X
X

X
X
X
X

X
X*
X
X

X
X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X
X

X
X

X
X*
X
X*
X*
X*

Gerber and Veuthey (in press)

Konings (1993), Oyono (2005)
WRM Bull. 47
WRM Bull. 138; 140
Chima (2006)
Karumbidza (2006)
Tropp (2003)
WRM Bull. 47; 64
WRM Bull. 125
WRM Bull. 40
FASE and TNI (2003), Fig (2007), Barcellos and Ferreira
(2008), WRM Bull. (several)
WRM Bull. 132; 139; 141
WRM Bull. 104; 129; 141
Montalba Navarro et al. (2005), Carruthers and
Rodriguez (2009), WRM Bull. 48; 126
Carrere (2007), WRM Bull. 94; 100
Velez (2000), WRM Bull. 43; 107; 116
Van den Hombergh (1999), Martnez-Alier (2002)
Granda (2006), Gerber and Veuthey (2010)
WRM Bull. 132
WRM Bull. 104
WRM Bull. 3; 12; 75
Martnez-Alier (2002), WRM Bull. 15; 18; 141
Bryant (1997)
WRM (2005), EFCT (2006)
EFCT (2006)
Shay and Strangio (2009), WRM Bull. 142
Tuohinen (2009)
Guha (1989)
Hegde (1989), Shiva (1991), Gadgil and Guha (1992), Akula (1995)
Guha and Martnez-Alier (1997)
Umayya and Dogra (1983), APPEN (1984)
Anderson and Huber (1987)
Shiva (1989), Gadgil and Guha (1992)
Mitra (2008), DtE (2009)
Peluso (1992)
Marti (2008)
Sofa (2002)
Colchester et al. (2006)
Marti (2008)
Carrere and Lohmann (1996), Potter (1996), DtE (1999), HRW (2003)
Marti (2008)
AI (2000) DtE (2002)
HRW (2003), Noor and Syumanda (2006), WRM Bull. 138
Miettinnen and Lammi (2000), HRW (2003)

169

X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X

References

X
X
X

X
X

J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

Blockades/direct
confrontation

X
X
X
X

Outcomes
Demonstration

X
X

X
X

X
X
X

X
X
X
X
X
X

X
X

X
X
X
X

X
X
X
X
X

X
X
X
X*
X

X*
X*
X

Marti (2008)
HRW (2003)
Noor and Syumanda (2006), Colchester et al. (2006), Zakaria et al. (2007)
Afrizal (2007)
WRM Bull. 18
SawitWatch (1998)
Colchester et al. (2006)
WRM Bull. 12, McCarthy (2006)
BRIMAS (2000), Barney (2004), Colchester et al. (2007)
WRM Bull. 86
Starkloff (1998)
Lohmann (1991, 1993), Carrere and Lohmann (1996), Taylor (1993),
Tegbaru (1998), Lang (2002), Pye (2005)
Lohmann (1993), Carrere and Lohmann (1996), Taylor (1993), Tegbaru (1998),
Lang (2002), Pye (2005)
Lohmann (1991), Lang (2002), Pye (2005)

References
Project
interrupted
Repression
(**murder)

Compensation
Outcomes

Demonstration

Lawsuit

Blockades/direct
confrontation

Material
damage
such as
arsons
Conicts

Tree
uprooting

Table 1 (Continued )

Abbreviations used for plantation companies: CA: Cemerlang Abdi; DAS: Dasa Anugerah Sejati; HSL: Harapan Sawit Lestari; KCMU: Karya Canggih Mandir Utama; KPL: Karnataka Pulpwood Ltd.; LL: Ledo Lestari; LonSum: LondonSumatra Company; PHP: Permata Hijau Pasaman; PHS: Permata Hijau Sawit; PSA: Panca Surya Agrindo; PTPN XIII: state-owned plantation company; RAPP: Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper; Wilmar SP: Wilmar Sambas Plantation.
*
Land purchase by companies.
**
At least one murder occurred.

J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

170

province 14 timber plantations as well as all of the 81 palm oil

plantations had some kind of conict with local communities.6
Agriculturally, the dominant species involved in ITP conicts
eucalypt (33% of the cases) and oil palm (40%) unsurprisingly
correspond to the two largest areas of tree monoculture in the
tropics and subtropics. If there have been much fewer conicts
over rubber plantations, it is likely that this is because most of the
production comes from smallholders. There are however notable
exceptions involving large-scale monocultures in Cambodia,
Cameroon and Nigeria.
5. Discussion
5.1. Impacts
Overall, the most important immediate cause of ITP conicts
remains property. The scale of the impacts and therefore the
conict potential of a given plantation tends to correlate with the
size of its estate. The latter is generally large as ITPs are very
sensitive to economies of scale (Cossalter and Pye-Smith, 2003). In
Indonesia, the optimal size of an ITP is estimated at 30,00050,000
hectares (Hall, 2003). ITPs are established either on state lands or
through the purchase of private land as we shall see next.
Plantations established on state lands through government
sponsored projects or by private concessions face more
opposition than monocultures created on private land: they
concern four fths of the cases reported (Table 1). This pattern is
common in South Asia, where private land ownership is often
highly fragmented, making it impractical for companies to acquire
large, contiguous holdings. The conicts reported here reect the
dependence of local inhabitants upon state lands as they live on
them and/or use their resources. Making state lands available to
private or state-owned plantation companies has threatened local
livelihoods through the ban on ecosystems that were customarily
used as de facto commons and through their subsequent
destruction and replacement by monocultures. Deforestation
was reported in half of the conict cases making it the most
important environmental cause of the protests. In the process of
allocating plantation concessions sometimes with the support of
local elites the state has thus evicted local peasants, frequently
with little or no compensation, and sometimes through military
force. As a result, landless and poor peasants, entirely dependant
on the commons to meet their biomass needs, are forced to engage
in seasonal or long-term migration to urban areas in search of
work. Examples of this scenario have been documented in India
(Shiva, 1991; Gadgil and Guha, 1992; Hiremath and Dandavatimath, 1996; Ravindranath et al., 1996), Thailand (Lohmann, 1991;
Taylor, 1993; Tegbaru, 1998; Pye, 2005) and Indonesia (Hall, 2003;
McCarthy, 2006; Afrizal, 2007).
An African example of wholesale displacement comes from the
former Transkei, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa (Tropp,
2003). There, the Transkeian government established large-scale
pine plantations and sawmill operations in the 1960s and 1970s.
Doing so entailed the removal and resettlement of thousands of
persons, with little compensation. Displacement and the loss of a
homeland have caused these peoples to experience impoverishment, health deterioration, and the loss of cultural sites such as
ancestral burial grounds (Tropp, 2003). A large-scale rubber
plantation in Southern Cameroon established on a state concession has also resulted in the eviction of local inhabitants (Gerber
and Veuthey, in press). In both cases, resistance remained largely
hidden (see below).
6
For the year 2008, the Indonesian NGO coalition SawitWatch claimed to have
registered 513 cases of conicts over oil palm plantations throughout Indonesia
(Marti, 2008).

J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

The establishment of ITPs has also occurred on private land.

Clapp (1998) documents a process of land ownership concentration in the Arauco and Malleco provinces of Chile, where the
military counter-reform of the 1970s promoted a dramatic shift
toward corporate pine and eucalypt plantations. Forestry companies bought up state and private land and also displaced peasants.
In some cases, large landowners sold their land that was previously
worked by tenant farmers who then got evicted by companies. In
other cases, large landowners kept their land and replaced tenant
farmers with trees. At the same time, small- and medium-sized
landowners, often indigenous Mapuche peasants, came under
intense pressure to sell their land to plantation companies, and
many did. Corporations used coercive tactics to get them to sell.
These included eliminating informal common property rights to
areas the companies had already acquired; exposing livestock,
crops, and people to pesticides applied by aerial spraying;
encircling and isolating communities with plantations; and
fencing plantation land and forbidding people to trespass. Many
peasants ended up selling their land and moving to urban areas.
According to Clapp (1998), they beneted little from the sale;
instead, they became landless peasants, experienced the decay of
their indigenous culture, and entered the ranks of the urban poor.
This sets the background to the Mapuche conict reported in
Table 1. Similar processes have been documented in Brazil (Carrere
and Lohmann, 1996), Ecuador (Gerber and Veuthey, 2010) and
Thailand (Barney, 2004), all three involving eucalypt plantations.
Eucalypt plantations have also been associated with water
shortage in a fth of the conict cases.
Although processes of establishing ITPs on state and private
lands are different, results may be similar (Charnley, 2005). On
private lands, smallholders who sold their land and the landless
who were previously employed by local larger landowners must
seek employment elsewhere. On state lands, ITPs threaten
communities with eviction and/or loss of customary rights over
natural resources. A common feature in both cases is out-migration
from the rural areas in which the plantations are established.
While large landowners benet economically when they lease or
sell their land to companies or the government, smaller peasants
are displaced usually to urban poor suburbs. The communities
they leave behind undergo land ownership concentration
implying greater social and power inequalities as well as
dramatic land use changes giving rise to socio-environmental
conicts (Charnley, 2005).
5.2. Protesters
In Table 1, neighbouring smallholder peasants represent the
most important category of protesters involved in such rural
conicts (70% of the cases). A broader literature review reveals that
although community leaders may sometimes play a key role in
fostering the resistance (Afrizal, 2007), local elites more frequently
take the side of the plantation as they are better able to negotiate
individual advantages with the company (Colchester et al., 2006;
Gerber and Veuthey, in press). Forest-dependant indigenous
populations count for almost 30% of the databank cases. They
include Dayak communities in Borneo, Mapuche in Chile,
Tupinikim, Guarani and Pataxo in Brazil, and Maisin in Papua
New Guinea (Tauli-Corpuz and Tamang, 2007). The Penan road
blockades in Sarawak (Malaysia) starting in the 1980s until today,
also directed against oil palm expansion, count among the most
famous examples of indigenous resistance (Gedicks, 1995).
Indigenous peoples usually do not resist in isolation but link
with international environmental and human rights NGOs. A
Papuan indigenous leader protesting against an oil palm plantation
project is reported to have said, unlike our ancestors and
forefathers who fought battles with spears and clubs, we fought

171

this battle with pen and paper, as our land was stolen through pen
and paper (WRM Bulletin 64, 2002, p. 13). In Sarawak, in April
2007, there were over 100 cases regarding disputes over
indigenous land rights in consideration in the courts of the state,
of which about half were related to plantations of oil palm and
timber for pulp and paper (Colchester et al., 2007, p. 97).
Many of these conicts result from a threat to the subsistence
ethics (sensu Scott, 1976) of local communities and the language
of environmentalism is accordingly found convenient and often
mobilized by the affected populations. Within Southern rural
grassroots movements, there are indeed since the early 1990s new
concerns for identity and also for environmental values (Edelman,
2001; Brass, 2002). Escobar (1998, p. 60) describes such family of
movements as organizations that explicitly construct a political
strategy for the defence of territory, culture, and identity linked to
particular places and territories, and mediated by ecological
considerations. Martnez-Alier (2002) has proposed the term
environmentalism of the poor, emphasizing the fact that such
movements contest the unequal distribution of ecological goods
and bads resulting from so-called development. In so doing, they
are distinct from the mainstream current of environmentalism
seeking ecological modernization and eco-efciency, and also from
the older environmentalist current aimed at conserving a pristine
nature without human interference.
The specic role of women in initiating and/or sustaining
resistance has been prominent in some of the listed conicts
(about 10% of them). The important participation of women in the
Chipko movement in the Indian Himalaya has been frequently
commented upon. The involvement of Chipko women was due to
the encroachment of state-owned pine plantations that deteriorated their socially constructed reliance on natural resources
(water, food, wood). Although Guha (1989) refuses to characterize
it as a feminist movement (as e.g. Shiva, 1989, does), women
were capable of playing a more dynamic role than the men who, in
the face of growing waged work and commercialisation, tended to
lose sight of the long-term environmental interests of the village
economy (see also Agarwal, 1992). This has been observed again,
more recently, in Brazil. In 2006, on International Womens Day,
about two thousand peasant women destroyed greenhouses and
thousands of eucalypt saplings belonging to Aracruz Celulose.7
Every year since then, on the same day, women carry out actions
opposing the expansion of ITPs and other agribusinesses. As a
female leader wrote, for us, pulp is a synonym of poverty,
unemployment and rural exodus. [. . .] Human health particularly
that of women and children, is endangered by the encroachment of
the green desert, that destroys biodiversity, dries up rivers,
increases contamination, pollutes the air and water, and threatens
our life (Vicente, 2007, p. 14; see also Valdomir, 2007). Rocheleau
et al. (1996) and others have shown that women are often at the
forefront of grassroots environmental movements as a result of the
traditional gender division of labour making them more directly
and more rapidly affected by ecological disruptions.
Since the 1980s advocacy NGOs mainly environmental have
played an important role in ITP conicts. They participated in one
way or another in about half of the reported cases (Table 1). NGOs
have been especially active on legal issues. Also, grassroots
environmental activists tend more and more to exchange
7
Many plantation specialists regard Aracruz Celulose as the archetypal fastwood plantation company. It holds the growth record for eucalypts and is the
worlds largest producer of bleached eucalypt pulp, producing 20% of the world
production. Its occupation of 350 000 hectares of land implied rural displacements
and environmental disruptions, generating an important protest movement
crystallizing in the Alert Against the Green Desert network. Created in 1999,
the latter is composed inter alia of various NGOs and rural associations, and is
concerned with enforcing the agrarian reform, promoting local food production and
conserving natural resources (Fig, 2007; Barcellos and Ferreira, 2008).

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J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

information with international networks (Waterman, 1998). In

Ecuador, for instance, a resistance campaign to a large-scale
eucalypt plantation was launched by a grassroots NGO seeking
support from a national organization the NGO Accion Ecologica
as well as from international networks, especially the World
Rainforest Movement (WRM). Accion Ecologica was itself, since the
end of the 1990s, inuenced by the WRM on ITP issues and the
WRM became concerned with this topic in part because of
Vandana Shivas denunciation, in the 1980s, of the impacts of
eucalypt plantations in India (Gerber and Veuthey, 2010).
Indonesia provides another striking example with SawitWatch, a
national coalition of NGOs protesting against oil palm monocultures, which joined the international NGO Forest Peoples
Programme on several ITP campaigns. Alerted by local organizations, Northern NGOs have also pressured funding agencies and
foreign investors in industrialized countries to reconsider their
support for specic projects. These interconnected levels of
activism are mutually reinforcing and they certainly represent
together a new and growing kind of environmental justice
movement (Escobar, 1998; Edelman, 2001).
Involved in ITP conicts, I distinguish ve levels of NGO activism
corresponding to specic forms of organization. First, a few
international NGOs or transnational advocacy networks have ITPs
as one of their main issues mainly the WRM, Forest Peoples
Programme, Friends of the Earth International and Global Forest
Coalition. Second, there are regional NGO networks specialized on
resistance to ITPs such as the Latin-American Network Against Tree
Monocultures (RECOMA), the Southern African Plantation Action
Network (SAPAN), and the Towards Ecological Recovery and
Regional Alliance (TERRA) in the Mekong region. Third, there are
specialized national NGO coalitions such as TimberWatch in South
Africa, SawitWatch in Indonesia, the Guayubira group in Uruguay,
and the Alert Against the Green Desert network in Brazil. Fourth, at
the national level, there are several NGOs that have the struggle
against ITPs as one of their main targets such as Accion Ecologica in
Ecuador, the Costa Rican Environmentalist Association (AECO), the
Federation of the Organizations for Social and Educational Assistance (FASE) in Brazil, the Project for Ecological Recovery (PER) in
Thailand, and the Indonesian Environmental Forum (WALHI). Fifth,
there are local NGOs that resist ITPs such as the Foundation of
Ecological Defence (FUNDECOL) in Ecuador and many others. This is
not to say that there is no tension between the different levels, for
instance on issues of legitimacy, accountability, as well as on the
very denition of the socio-political alternatives that are pursued
(Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Jordan and Van Tuijl, 2000).
5.3. Conicts
I schematically distinguish four broad phases that have been
more or less observed in several ITP conicts: (1) the setting-up of
the plantation, (2) the initial protests, (3) the conict, and (4) the
outcomes.
The rst phase governs the politico-economic modalities ruling
the establishment of a given ITP. Many governments have put in
place economic incentives attracting agro-industries (Cossalter
and Pye-Smith, 2003; FSC, 2004; Bull et al., 2006) or they have been
pressured under structural adjustment programmes to develop
export plantations (Friedmann, 1993). In this context, companies
negotiate with authorities the conditions of their establishment.
Projects are generally accepted by governments on the basis of the
revenues they will bring. Soon after, the company and the
government try to convince local populations that the project is
either not going to affect them negatively or that they will benet
from it (Carrere and Lohmann, 1996). In the best cases, an impact
study is carried out, a compensation plan is set up (including new
infrastructures) and jobs are promised (for a review on job

opportunities in the tree plantation sector, see Charnley, 2005). As

a result, the neighbouring population often becomes divided,
sometimes along class or gender lines. Depending on the cases,
local inhabitants sell their land or are prohibited from accessing
the concession area. Those who resist may be evicted by force.
The second phase is characterized by the rst perceived impacts
and the rst reactions. When the plantation has already largely
started, neighbouring people who did not move away or get a job in
the plantation begin to realize that their livelihoods are being
affected (loss of land, income, biotic resources and water) and try to
do something about it. Affected villagers usually hold community
meetings and send protest letters. However, in many cases they have
no other choices than the weapons of the weak (Scott, 1985). The
latter refer to any act by members of powerless groups aimed at
resisting the companys land occupation or at expressing their own
requirements (e.g. fair compensation). In ITP conicts, these
everyday forms of resistance take different appearances such as
pulling up stakes put down by survey teams, tearing down company
signs, refusing to cooperate, arson attacks, stealing the companys
goods such as wood, oil palm fruits, latex, and even vehicles (see e.g.
Kartodihardjo and Supriono, 2000). This kind of class struggle
requires no or little coordination and planning; it is generally
anonymous and avoids all direct confrontation with authorities; and
it benets from a tacit support from the majority of the community.
Because such resistance mostly remains without written traces,
there are few data on its actual prevalence in ITP conicts although
it may represent a very common form of resistance to such
monocultures (see Peluso, 1992; Bryant, 1997; Tropp, 2003; Gerber
and Veuthey, in press). In fact, most conicts may actually never go
beyond this form of protest.
Alternatively, if the resistance does go further, and if protest
letters remain unanswered, national-level NGOs may enter into
the conict on the local peoples initiative or by themselves
usually by providing legal advices and resources. According to Hall
(2003), NGO participation has frequently been motivated by the
sharp distinction, in ITP regions, between elite benets and
peasant impoverishment. In almost half of the cases reported in
Table 1, NGOs helped villagers to lodge a complaint against the
company for instance for the non-fullment of the compensation
plan. These NGOs may become allied with local organizations, as in
the late 1980s when the Indonesian Environmental Forum
(WALHI), a leading Jakarta-based NGO, began working with
Sumatran grassroots NGOs in surveying abuses by companies
(Carrere and Lohmann, 1996). In many other ITP conicts however,
NGOs have not played any role.
During the third phase, villagers (and NGOs) are confronted
with the authorities inactivity or hesitant actions and decide to
pursue the conict further. Inhabitants are told by ofcials that the
land is not their land, that compensation will come, or that there is
no scientic evidence for the alleged impacts on, for instance,
water shortage or pollution, as reported by Gerber and Veuthey
(2010) in coastal Ecuador. Consequently, the affected communities
get together and carry out a number of actions to defend what they
perceive as their rights. Demonstrations were held in half of the
cases reported here, for instance in front of governmental houses in
the provincial or national capital. Sometimes protesters are able to
hold meetings with government ofcials and company managers,
and sometimes they physically confront police forces. Road
blockades the equivalent of worker strikes in the rural sphere
were carried out in about 45% of the cases as well as, to a lesser
extent, the uprooting of plantation trees (20%), particularly
eucalypts that are associated with water shortage. The commercial
tree species are sometimes symbolically replaced by locally useful
trees (Gadgil and Guha, 1992; Guha and Martnez-Alier, 1997).
Some innovative forms of protest can be noted. During the 1970s
in India, the Chipko movement became one of the most famous cases

J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

of Southern environmentalism for hugging forest trees (or

threatening to) rather than allow them to be logged and replaced
by state-controlled pine plantations (Guha, 1989). This protest
technique has been repeated during the 1980s by the Appiko
movement in the Indian state of Karnataka (Shiva, 1991; Akula,
1995). Between 1987 and 1992 in Thailand, the Green Isan and
Khor Jor Kor mega-projects of eucalypt plantations were met with
erce resistance by local inhabitants.8 Among the tactics used was
that of ordaining large trees with orange Buddhist cloth in order to
prevent them from being cut down. The famous monk Phra Prajak
Khuttajitto was an important gure in this respect and helped
villagers in opposing the plantations (Lohmann, 1991; Taylor, 1993).
Sometimes, as in the Arauco province of Chile, resistance
became violent. In 1997, Mapuche protesters occupied a portion of
a pine monoculture and burnt two trucks of the plantation
company. This incident marked the beginning of what has been
called the Mapuche conict or even the Chilean Chiapas
(Montalba Navarro et al., 2005; Carruthers and Rodriguez, 2009).
Police repression immediately took place in the area while
Mapuche organizations continued to protest against the plantation
model and its local deleterious effects (see above). In 2002, a 17year-old Mapuche activist was shot by the police during eviction
from a plantation estate. Two months later, more than a dozen
hooded Mapuche with homemade shotguns and Molotov cocktails
invaded the same plantations worker camp, setting re to the
quarters. The conict has remained until today unresolved.
The fourth phase corresponds to the outcomes of the resistance
and is developed in the next section.
5.4. Outcomes
In about half of the cases reported in Table 1, authorities have
reacted with physical violence (with or without arms), the
destruction of peoples belongings (e.g. homes, gardens), and/or
the accusation of terrorism (as in Chile) or of communism (as
in Indonesia or Thailand), which implies especially severe
punishment. Repression has been particularly associated with
road blockades as such action aim at paralysing the companys
activities. In one fth of the cases, at least one protester died
because of the repression linked with ITP conicts.
Sumatra has been the region most heavily impacted by deadly
repression related to ITPs. Since the fall of Suharto in 1998,
inhabitants neighbouring ITPs have begun to openly complain
about the loss of their land seized during the 1980s and 1990s with
little or no compensation. In the case of Arara Abadis plantations in
the Riau province of Sumatra, villagers have protested by setting
up road blockades, charging tolls for use of community roads,
and seizing company vehicles and equipment (Noor and Syumanda, 2006; Marti, 2008). Such actions have been met with
violent attacks by Arara Abadis private militia, sometimes
accompanied by state police. In 1999, 2000 and 2001, clubwielding company enforcers attacked three villages, beating and
abducting residents (HRW, 2003). Since then, violence has been
escalating.9
8
The Green Isan (1987-1990) and the Khor Jor Kor (1990-1992) projects
launched by an alliance of the pulp and paper industry, the Royal Forestry
Department and the army aimed at regreening North-eastern Thailand by
planting eucalypts. The second project was even more brutal than the rst one: its
plan included the eviction of ve million residents as part of an effort to plant
around 1.4 million hectares of eucalypts (Carrere and Lohmann, 1996). Pye (2005, p.
109) notes that it represented a pinnacle of state-directed authoritarian forestry.
It also generated the biggest social movement yet against tree plantations (see
below).
9
In 2008, policemen and paramilitaries attacked a village with tear gas and a
helicopter dropped an incendiary bomb on a protesting village. Two inhabitants
were killed and many people were injured while others were arrested (WALHI,
2008).

173

In several countries, activism critical of the national industry

sector carries risks. In Southeast Asia, villagers-NGOs alliances
have provoked ofcial backlash. Villagers may be beaten, arrested,
or co-opted, while local and national NGOs may be faced with
closure and intimidation. International campaigns, if they are seen
as linked with local struggles, may increase government intolerance of local groups even further. Yet alliances can also bring
empowerment. In the mid-1990s, the lawsuits initiated by WALHI,
for example, helped catalyze coordination among Sumatran NGOs
on broader environmental issues and laid a foundation for further
united actions. The lesson for protesters was that by presenting
their demands as coming from forums rather than from individuals
or organizations, villagers and NGOs can be protected to some
extent from corporate or ofcial retribution. At the same time, the
experience of the lawsuit which was lost helped impress upon
urban-based NGOs the importance of patient work in the eld with
villagers and rural NGOs (Carrere and Lohmann, 1996).
Popular struggles have been successful in interrupting ITP
projects in about one fth of the listed cases through three broad
mechanisms: (1) winning a lawsuit such as in the Sarawak (see
Barney, 2004) or in the Oro province in Papua New Guinea (WRM
Bulletin 64, 2002); (2) winning over sectors of the government
such as in Venezuela where the government recently expropriated
a plantation company to the benet of local farmers (MartnezAlier, 2002; WRM Bulletin 141, 2009); and (3) massive social
unrest such as in Thailand where protest movements became so
strong in 19851989 and 19911992 that authorities had no other
choice but withdraw their projects and powerful companies had to
stop their operations and pay damages to local villagers (Lohmann,
1991; Carrere and Lohmann, 1996; Lang, 2002, 2008; Pye, 2005).
These examples show how apparently powerless villagers can
change the situation once they organize.
6. Conclusion
The immediate cause of ITP conicts is mainly related to the
large-scale occupation of state land customarily used by local
inhabitants. Power concentration, displacements, water shortage
and an end to the local uses of natural resources have frequently
been reported in areas where plantations are established.
Resulting resistance may keep to the weapons of the weak or
be collectively pursued further through various actions. NGO
activism has been important especially on legal issues and is
operating at different levels. Authorities have overall more often
reacted by repression than by negotiation, sometimes with
extreme violence. Yet popular struggles have been able to interrupt
plantation activities in some places through winning lawsuits,
convincing sectors of the government, or through massive social
unrest.
From a theoretical perspective, such conicts are reactions
against the process that Harvey (2006) has called accumulation by
dispossession, according to him todays dominant form of
capitalist accumulation. They are agrarian in the classical sense
as they relate to the distribution of land property but they are also
environmental. Protesting peasants or indigenous peoples see ITPs
as exogenous encroaching agents undermining their access to
natural resources and services, whether land, water or biotic
resources. As such, ITPs are perceived as threatening their
livelihood and therefore their subsistence ethics. Accordingly,
resistance movements nd it increasingly convenient to use the
language of environmentalism and thus correspond to the
environmentalism of the poor (Guha and Martnez-Alier,
1997; Martnez-Alier, 2002).
The mass base of such movements is mainly found within
indigenous or non-indigenous smallholders (or middle peasants)
and not within rural labourers, wealthier peasants or large

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J.-F. Gerber / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 165176

landowners. In his classic book, Wolf (1969) argued that

smallholders are especially vulnerable to land expropriations
and other changes introduced by the world market economy, and
that they are therefore particularly disposed to mobilize for
restoring economic stability. Also, he pursued, they have the
independent economic base even if undermined that the
landless sharecropper or plantation worker lack. Smallholders
have thus both the reasons and the resources to resist. His theory
which contrasts with other theories that view smallholders as
politically apathetic (Paige, 1975) nds some support in
plantation conicts. I add that smallholders are especially inclined
to link with environmental justice ideas and to contest
mainstream agro-industrial development as they tend to be more
directly sensitive to ecological disruptions than wage-earners or
absentee owners (see e.g. Va Campesina, 2008). Their communities may also show, in some areas, rests of pre-capitalist social
solidarity, hence capacity to resist (Bernstein, 1996, p. 28). In sum,
ITP conicts represent a new and notable point of convergence
between agrarian and environmental movements.
It is often said that the negative impacts of ITPs are caused by
bad management practices and that the solution to most problems
is therefore mainly technical (see e.g. Cossalter and Pye-Smith,
2003). Political ecologists, on the contrary, argue that solutions lie
rather within the political sphere: the establishment of a given tree
plantation remains a power issue creating winners and losers
(Carrere, 1999). While local populations and ecosystems are
seldom among the beneciaries, managers and shareholders of the
plantation industry and of its creditors clearly count among the
main winners (Lang, 2008). Local needs and aspirations rarely nd
the political space where to be expressed, hence the frequent
conict cases seen as a substitute for such lack. The political nature
of the establishment of ITPs cannot be changed by good
management once they are there. Of course, some technical
measures can avoid or mitigate the environmental impacts (use of
less toxic agrochemicals, maintenance of patches of natural areas,
monitoring, etc.) but it is not realistic to think that technical
measures will by themselves solve the social impacts related to, for
instance, land issues.
In view of the large number of reported conicts worldwide
and keeping in mind that such conicts represent an important
indicator of plantations social impact (FSC, 2004, p. 10) ,
policies promoting large-scale ITPs must be radically reappraised.
In particular, government subsidies that have crucially supported
most of the worlds ITPs must be reoriented towards community
and other small-scale forest management (Bull et al., 2006). The
same recommendation applies to multilateral and bilateral
development agencies which have the mandate of reducing
social distress. Cossalter and Pye-Smith (2003) note that subsidies
have the perverse effect of making plantations viable on land
which may be better put to other uses, such as agriculture,
community forestry, forest conservation or logging. Moreover,
subsidies reduce the cost of raw materials to the industry, thus
making plantation products cheaper and encouraging further
their consumption. In contrast, environmentally sound policies
should fundamentally focus on consuming less plantation
products (mainly paper) and recycling more, particularly in
industrialized countries. This is also relevant with respect to
todays urgent need for effective strategies halting global
warming. The promotion of monocultures as carbon sinks or as
agro-fuel producers is not a socially and environmentally
sustainable option. Again, a wise approach to decrease carbon
dioxide emissions is to promote a drastic reduction of fossil fuel
consumption. Northern countries, once again, must be particularly targeted in view of their historical disproportionate use of
energy resulting in a massive carbon debt that they owe to the
South and which has yet to be paid.

Acknowledgements
The author thanks Joan Martnez-Alier, Giorgos Kallis and
Ricardo Carrere for comments on earlier versions. Ramachandra
Guha and Larry Lohmann are also acknowledged for their advice.
Any remaining errors are my own. The Cogito Foundation
(Switzerland) provided nancial support as well as project
CSO2010-21979.

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