Upsetting the Offset - Transnational Institute

Cases
Planting millions of hectares of trees in Southern countries not only is by no
means a substitute for cutting emissions at the source but also has negative
impacts on local communities, with differentiated effects on women and men.
Impacts of Industrial Tree Plantations on Women
When large agroindustrial operations such as monoculture tree plantations
destroy the natural base of traditional communities, everybody is subject to
material and cultural losses that lead to changes in their roles and status but
women are generally left in a more vulnerable position than men.
Within indigenous, rural and peasant communities, women play a
fundamental role as caretakers and food providers for their families and
communities. Subsistence farming, fetching water and fire, keeping and
exchanging seeds, collecting herbs and taking care of the children and the elders
as well as cooking, washing and doing the cleaning are among the several tasks
carried out by women. 8
The arrival of large scale tree plantations deprive women from the access to
the natural resources on which their livelihoods depend whether by destroying
or depriving them from accessing to land, water, food, forest. Women are no
longer able to fulfil their families’ and own needs. The destruction of
subsistence economies increases women’s work overload as they have to work
inside and outside the house for cash.
They usually end-up working as labourers for plantation companies in a
male-dominated system occupying a marginalized position. They are forced into
a hard survival struggle. Industrial tree plantations usually mean rural
displacement, family and community break up, unemployment, low salaries and
economic slavery.
What follows are some cases from around the world that reflect the impacts
of large-scale monoculture tree plantations on women.
In Ecuador, the Dutch FACE Programme for Forestation in Ecuador S.A.,
or PROFAFOR project – promoted under the slogan of: ‘Let us save the
climate!’ – attempts to ‘sequester’ carbon with pine plantations grown in the
Andean Paramo region. A research on the impacts of those monoculture tree
plantations on indigenous and peasant communities 9 shows that the Paramo
soils store a great quantity of carbon in a thick layer. The loss of organic matter
caused by a change in land use, such as the establishment of plantations of fastgrowing
species – pine and eucalyptus – is not compensated by an input of new
litter: ‘There is concern that because of its rapid growth it [the plantation] will
need much water and therefore dry out the soil. With a drier soil some of the
organic matter will disappear, not to be compensated by litter fall, because it is
cuticulous, homogenous and foreign to the soil fauna. Thus there is a fixation of
carbon by the trees above the soil, but a loss of carbon in the soil’. 10
The FACE PROFAFOR forestry scheme has been established through
forestation contracts signed between the company and land holders or local
indigenous communities in exchange for the offer of an income from forestry
activities. Under the contract the communities provided free labour force, went
104