Green Deserts of Brazil with Anne Petermann

Deforestation of Brazil's Amazon rainforest is a well-known threat to the world's environment, but the loss of natural biodiversity to so-called "green deserts" resulting from expanding non-native eucalyptus plantations for pulp and paper production, is a lesser known ecological and social disaster that is likely to worsen if genetically engineered trees are used.

Spearheaded by Global Justice Ecology Project, the Campaign to STOP GE Trees brought together members from the United States, New Zealand, Ireland, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada in Brazil to document the impacts and meet with communities on the front lines.

The group also met to develop plans for the international campaign to stop the commercial development of genetically engineered trees and to support and highlight opposition to pulp company Suzano's rapid expansion of industrial eucalyptus plantations, and potential use of genetically engineered (GE) eucalyptus trees modified to tolerate toxic herbicides.
 
GJEP and the Campaign met with Brazilian NGOs, indigenous and Quilombola communities and  Landless Worker Movement members in order to document and amplify the voices and concerns of rural communities on the frontlines of resisting the devastating social and ecological impacts of industrial eucalyptus plantations.

On this episode of Breaking Green, we spoke with Anne Petermann.  Petermann co- founded Global Justice Ecology Project in 2003. She is the international coordinator of the Campaign to STOP GE Trees, which she also co founded. Petermann is a founding board member of the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series. She has been involved in movements for forest protection and indigenous rights since 1991, and the international and national climate justice movements since 2004. She participated in the founding of the Durban group for climate justice in 2004, in Durban, South Africa, and Climate Justice Now in 2007 at the Bali Indonesia UN climate conference. She was adopted as an honorary member of the St. Francis- Sokoki band of the Abenaki in 1992 for her work in support of their struggle for state recognition. In 2000, she received the wild nature award for activist of the year.

Photo by Orin Langelle.

For more information visit: https://globaljusticeecology.org/brazil-2023/

This podcast is produced by Global Justice Ecology Project.

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Transcript

Steve Taylor  
Welcome to breaking green, a podcast by global justice ecology project. On breaking green, we will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, Steve Taylor. Deforestation of Brazilian rainforest is a well known threat to the world's environment. But the loss of natural biodiversity to green deserts resulting from Eucalyptus plantations for pulp and paper mills, is a lesser known ecological disaster that is likely to worsen with the use of genetically engineered trees. Spearheaded by global justice ecology project. The campaign to stop GE trees brought together members from the United States, New Zealand, Ireland, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada in Brazil. Their purpose was to develop plans for the international campaign to stop the commercial development of genetically engineered trees and to support and highlight opposition to pulp company Suzano's rapid expansion of industrial eucalyptus plantations, and potential use of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees modified to tolerate toxic herbicides. GJEP and the campaign met with Brazilian NGOs, indigenous and Quilombola communities and landless Worker Movement members in order to document and amplify the voices and concerns of rural communities on the frontlines of resisting the devastating social and ecological impacts of industrial eucalyptus plantations. On this episode of Breaking green, we will talk with Anne Petermann. Anne Petermann co founded global justice ecology project in 2003. She is the international coordinator of the campaign to stop GE trees which she also co founded. Petermann is a founding board member of the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series. She has been involved in movements for forest protection and indigenous rights since 1991, and the international and national climate justice movements since 2004. She participated in the founding of the Durban Group for Climate Justice in 2004 in Durban, South Africa, and Climate Justice Now in 2007 at the Bali Indonesia UN climate conference. She was adopted as an honorary member of the St. Francis Sakoki band of the Abenaki in 1992 for her work in support of their struggle for state recognition. In 2000, she received the wild nature award for activist of the year. Anne Petermann, welcome to Breaking Green.

Anne Petermann  
Thanks so much, Steve.

Steve Taylor  
So it's it's been a while since you've been on Breaking Green. Since then, you have headed an international delegation of the STOP GE Trees Campaign to Brazil. Tell us about that.

Anne Petermann  
Well, the international campaign to stop genetically engineered trees tries to meet face to face periodically, so we can talk, you know, really hash out the strategy that we're going to use to deal with the problem, the growing global problem of genetically engineered trees and the potential commercialization of genetically engineered trees. And we hadn't been able to meet face to face since COVID. So this was our first opportunity since COVID, to get together. And we decided to do this in Brazil, because in 2021, the government of Brazil legalized the commercial release of trees, eucalyptus trees, genetically engineered for herbicide resistance. And so we decided to meet in Brazil, not just meet as an international campaign, but meet with different groups from Brazil that we wanted to be in contact with and network with and be able to support their work on the issue.

Steve Taylor  
So tell us a little bit about who was on the delegation and who that delegation met with.

Anne Petermann  
The delegation was a very diverse delegation, which was great. So we had people join the delegation from as far away as Japan and New Zealand. We had people from North America, South America. We had a lot of indigenous participation from Latin America. We had Mapuche a participation, a Guarani woman from Argentina. The only continent we did not have representation from, unfortunately was Africa. And we had organized for some people from Mozambique, which is also dealing with Eucalyptus plantations, but the the visa process for getting them into Brazil was just unbelievable. So you know, we started several months in advance, but it turns out that you need at least six months of preparation to be able to travel from Mozambique to Brazil for whatever reason. But besides that, we had a great representation. And then we had some really excellent people from Brazil from a group called FASE, which is a group that's been around for decades doing work similar and related to what we do, World Rainforest Movement, and several other groups that were from Brazil itself.

Steve Taylor  
Well, that sounds like a big delegation. How many people was that?

Anne Petermann  
 Ah, well, it ranged, the International delegation was around 11 People 11 or 12 people. And then we had anywhere from 10 to 12 people join us from Brazil, depending on the, you know, where we were at the time. So it got as as large as about 30 people. But I'd say overall, you know, there are about a dozen people who traveled with us for the whole time.

Steve Taylor  
So you met with indigenous communities you met with FASE, I believe also the MST

Anne Petermann  
and also Quilombola communities and the Quilombolas are actually descendants of escaped African slaves. And they have their own communities, their own territories, in in some of the forested regions and in many regions that are now surrounded by eucalyptus plantations. And they are also seeking territorial sovereignty.

Steve Taylor  
Well, you also met with some government officials, so some ministries as well, correct?

Anne Petermann  
Yes. So we started out the delegation in Espirito Santo and Bahia where some of the longest term resistance has been going on for decades, really, to industrial eucalyptus plantations. And then from there we traveled to Brasilia, which is the Capitol and met with different ministries of the government, where we were we spoke to them about the demands from the communities and groups that we met with in Espirito Santo and Bahia, presented those demands to the ministries very formally and also in person in meetings. And then from there, we traveled to Matta Grosso do Sul, which is the state in Brazil, where the expansion of eucalyptus plantations is just unbelievable, and where some of the largest pulp mills in the world are being planned.

Steve Taylor  
Well, let's let's unpack that a bit. That's a lot. What is the connection to Brazil with genetically engineered trees? Why is the STOP GE Tree Campaign in Brazil?

Anne Petermann  
Sure. Well, Brazil has a history of being one of the country's if not the country in the world that has the most industrial plantations of Pulp and Paper monocultures and timber monocultures, specifically eucalyptus and pine. And because they are they have so many eucalyptus plantations already, one of the companies in Brazil that is responsible for these plantations is called Suzano, which is I think they're the largest pulp and paper company in the world. And they also are very involved in the genetic engineering of trees for industrial purposes, you know, to make their plantations more, more friendly to their pulp mills and also more valuable financially. So in 2021, they were given permission by the Brazilian government to commercialize a variety of their genetically engineered eucalyptus tree that is modified to tolerate being inundated with the herbicide glyphosate. And people probably are familiar with glyphosate or also it's called Roundup in the US is its commercial brand, because of all the lawsuits against it, that people can see on TV. You know, commercials all over the place because of its connection to non Hodgkins lymphoma and other cancers. So there's already an enormous amount of this herbicide being used in Brazil on the GMO soy plantations. And now this is threatened to expand into these genetically engineered eucalyptus plantations.

Steve Taylor  
For those who haven't seen a eucalyptus plantation. Could you give our listeners an idea of what that looks like? And what that is displacing?

Anne Petermann  
Sure, they call eucalyptus plantations in Brazil green deserts, because while they look green from a distance, when you get up close, you see that they are these straight lines of trees, with nothing underneath them. There's nothing in the understory. There's no plants, there's no animals, there's no birds there, they're completely silent. The only thing you can find in these eucalyptus plantations are ants and termites, literally. And so that you know, they're they're really destructive, and they grow extremely fast. That's the other problem with them. So, when I started working on the issue several, you know, probably two decades ago, they were growing at the, at the rate of about seven to 10 years from being planted to being harvested. And now it's down to three to five years. So these things are growing large enough to be cut for pulp and paper in three to five years. So you can imagine what that's doing to the soil and to the water, you know, just an enormous uptake of, of nutrients and water required by these plantations. And they go on forever. You know, we were in a bus, looking out the windows at these plantations in Espirto Santo and Bahia and later in Matta Grosso do Sul, and just hours and hours and hours in the bus have nothing but these eucalyptus plantations on both sides of the road. It was really stunning.

Steve Taylor  
It's hard to understand until you see it yourself. How the term green desert, what that means and how it applies to eucalyptus plantations.

Anne Petermann  
Yeah, it's exactly it's it's I mean, they are they are green deserts. And not just because they have no biodiversity. People can't live in them, either. People can't use them, they provide no food for wildlife. The leaves that fall off the trees actually have a toxic compound in them, which suppresses any other vegetation from being grown. And then there are literal deserts in the fact that they're just taking all the water. So when we talked to communities in these areas where these eucalyptus plantations are, they spoke about losing their water about having no access to water, you know, the lakes disappearing, the rivers disappearing. Because these trees are so water intensive.

Steve Taylor  
Brazil is a large, large country, and there's a lot of different communities. But there is a history of resistance to eucalyptus plantations in Brazil.

Anne Petermann  
There is exactly. When we have a global justice ecology project first traveled to Brazil, which was in 2005. We were on another delegation and a meeting about genetically engineered trees and tree plantations, in Espirito Santo and we went into some of these communities that were actively resisting what was at that time Aracruz Cellulose, but has now been taken over by Suzano. And we saw we visited these communities that had literally gone into the plantations, cut them down and then used the wood to build structures and houses, community centers and so on. People basically taking back their land, or in the case of the MST, which stands for the landless workers movement, having a place for landless people where they could live where they could grow crops where they could, you know, be together and have a life, as opposed to having to go to the cities and live in the slums. The MST feels like the eucalyptus plantations are not a productive use of the land. And under the Brazilian Constitution, unproductive land can be taken by landless people for the purpose of living and growing crops and so on. So they interpreted that to include eucalyptus plantations, and they're still doing it today. So we visited, not the exact same communities, but nearby communities that are doing the same work, you know, they're still trying to take over pieces of these eucalyptus plantations, trying to get their land rights back from these from the timber companies so that they can reestablish their territories where the eucalyptus plantations have taken over, and so forth.

Steve Taylor  
Could you tell us a little bit about indigenous communities and something called land demarcation and somewhat of the landscape a 30,000 foot view of, of what's going on with that in Brazil?

Anne Petermann  
Basically, there are there are hundreds of indigenous groups in Brazil that are trying to get back the lands that were stolen from them over the years through different means. And, you know, they've had some success under the previous Lula administration prior to the Bolsonaro administration, which was a very repressive regime. You know, Lula is back in power but the Bolsonaristas are still in Congress. So they're having a very hard time moving far forward with land demarcation. But when we met with people that was one of their number one demands was winning back title legal title to their land. So right now people are living in the forest. They're living on these lands, but without legal title to their land, which they get through the land demarcation process. There's nothing to stop ranchers, large landowners, miners, etc, from just taking the land and you know, using it for whatever industrial purpose they want. So people want legal title to their land so that they can be protected and their land can be protected.

Steve Taylor  
And these are people such as the Quilombola who who had lived there for generations, they had settled there, they had lived there. So these are ancestral lands,

Anne Petermann  
Correct, yes. The indigenous peoples, you know, have been there since the beginning and they want the titles to their traditional ancestral lands back. And in the case of the Quilombola's, you know, they've lived on these lands for many generations and they want legal title to those lands. They're not in conflict at all that the you know, the the indigenous movements, the indigenous communities and the Quilombola communities, even though Quilombolas are not indigenous, they support each other's struggles for land, demarcation and land rights. But they're both having both of those groups are having a hard time right now getting those land rights.

Steve Taylor  
Because of extractive industries?

Anne Petermann  
Right. Yeah. The the large landowners, the ranchers, the miners, you know, Brazil is open for business as far as we could see, when we were visiting there. It's crazy. The amount of the massive soy plantations and eucalyptus plantations, the mining that is just going, you know, going wild in the landscape. It's it's really, it's really hard to see. And people are fighting it, they're fighting it on the ground, and they're trying to get their land rights back. But boy, it's it's a tough struggle right now.

Steve Taylor  
And there has been some successes, but there's so some current challenges as well. So could you talk about PL 490?

Anne Petermann  
Sure, yeah. Many of the struggles that the Indigenous peoples have been waging for several decades, have resulted have have in fact resulted in some land title, having resulted in some land demarcation victories. But there has just been while we were in Brazil, in fact, this law called PL 490, is what it's called in Congress. The Senate has another name for it, which isn't occurring to me right now. W hat it says is that, it basically opens up indigenous people's lands for extraction, even more than it already is, and strips, many of the indigenous peoples land demarcation titles that have been won, it strips them away. And it does this by saying that this this obscure thing that says if you didn't have your land title, if you didn't settle on this particular land that you have now, in 1988, then you don't get to keep it. It's going to be taken away from you. And the thing about 1988, that was right after the Brazilian military dictatorship went out of power. And so under the military dictatorship, which started in 1964, a lot of indigenous peoples were stripped of their lands, and, you know, forced off of their lands. So they're going back to 1988, when a lot of indigenous peoples had already been displaced. And they're saying this is the this is the this is the line in the sand. This is where you have had to have had, it had to have been on your territory in 1988. Or you don't get to keep your land. So all of those land demarcations that happened since 1988 will be stripped away.

Steve Taylor  
Wow. Well, when you were in Brazil, there was a large protests regarding that.

Anne Petermann  
 There was it was in Brasilia, there was a huge indigenous contingent, which you have to understand Brazil is an enormous country, and Brasilia the capital is in the middle of nowhere. So for people, indigenous people to get there is an enormous undertaking of you know, being on buses, or, you know, flying in a plane, it's incredibly difficult to get there. So the fact that there was such a large indigenous presence speaks to the impact of this regressive legislation and the resistance to it.

Steve Taylor  
But there's also the issue that you were talking about, and and the reason why the campaign was there was because of the specter of genetically engineered Eucalyptus.

Anne Petermann  
Sure, yeah, that was the main point of us going to Brazil was to start talking about the additional destructive social and environmental impacts that would be caused by these genetically engineered eucalyptus trees that were modified for herbicide tolerance. So already, when we were hearing the testimony from these communities that are impacted by the existing non genetically engineered eucalyptus plantations, they were talking about the loss of water, they were talking about, you know, the heavy contamination by chemicals that are sprayed from planes and drones onto the eucalyptus plantations and their communities because they're so close together. And they were talking about, you know, how this is impacting their health, how it is impacting their ability to have traditional hunting and fishing, because you know, the land is so toxic. The problem now with these genetically engineered eucalyptus plantations, is it will lead to enormous increases in the amount of herbicides toxic herbicide being sprayed on these plantations. Right now the trees don't tolerate the herbicides, so they have to do smaller spraying or spraying before the usually it's spraying before the eucalyptus plantation is actually planted to clear out the site, so they can put the clones in the ground. But with the genetically engineered eucalyptus, they could spray the plantation at any time, in any amount that they want. And what we saw with genetically engineered soy and other crops that are modified to tolerate glyphosate is the amount of herbicide being used on those areas increased by 300, to 600%. So that is, you know, a huge concern. And Brazil, which is already one of the largest consumers of agro toxins on the planet, that they can now you know, increase that use increase the contamination of the water increase the contamination of soil and air and crops and livestock and people. So that's what we were talking to people about, you know, as a as a kind of a red flag, but also as a as a reaching out a hand in solidarity to say, you know, we are working on this issue, we would like to work with you, we would like to take your concerns to the to the government of Brazil, as well as to the international community and support your resistance to these plantations and help you stop the the evolution of these plantations into genetically engineered tree plantations.

Steve Taylor  
So how, how was that message received?

Anne Petermann  
People were very concerned when they heard about, you know, eucalyptus trees that are not only going to do what they're already doing, you know, as far as environmental impacts and social impacts, but will would be even worse. It would have even more agri toxins that was very concerning to people. People were very interested in working with us. And they, they helped us create these demands that we presented to the government that we've distributed to more of the international community. And we know what this isn't the end of it. We left Brazil, of course, but that's not the end of our work. This is just the beginning of this relationship. Because as as Brazil goes, so goes the world. I mean, if Brazil commercializes these genetically engineered herbicide resistant eucalyptus plantations, they're not going to stop there, you know, these will be exported to other countries, other countries will develop these trees. This is not just a problem exclusive to Brazil, this would be a trend that we could see happening globally. And it would have tremendously dangerous impacts. So stopping in Brazil is absolutely critical.

Steve Taylor  
But you also had a member of delegation from Argentina in Argentina has had some experience with this, correct?

Anne Petermann  
Correct. Yeah, Argentina being right next to Brazil. This, the woman that attended with us, was a Guarani woman. And she was talking about how you know, Brazil and Argentina have such an open border when it comes to trading GMOs or exporting and importing GMO, she was very worried about Argentina, taking on these genetically engineered eucalyptus plantations, either importing them from Brazil or creating the technology in Argentina and deploying it in their eucalyptus plantations. That's another country where there are a lot of eucalyptus plantations.

Steve Taylor  
So tell us a little bit about the demands you you mentioned, who were making these demands, and who were they made to?

Anne Petermann  
The demands that we recorded, we're from a couple of MST communities that we met with that have, you know, actually, that are actually doing a lot of really important agro ecological work. And they have actually a whole agro ecological school, training people in the region, how to grow organically, and do this in really, really interesting and important work, as well as Quilombola communities in that region who are suffering very directly the impacts of eucalyptus plantations, literally surrounded by them in some cases, as well as sugarcane plantations. So they were talking to us directly about what the impacts are that they are experiencing. And as I've mentioned, the loss of water and the contamination from chemicals are already at the top of that. So making the plant excuse me changing the the plantations over to genetically engineered trees would only make that worse. So they were testifying to us about the existing plantations of these industrial eucalyptus monocultures. As well, as the impacts have already mentioned, they were talking about security from the companies invading their communities. So drones, surveillance drones coming into their communities, you know, watching them actually a drone went into someone's house. Security coming by and monitoring what they're doing because they want to make sure that they're not actually you know, developing a resistance to the company. So, you know, just really regressive repression that these people are experiencing. So we were documenting all of that, and bringing it to, to the to the government in Brasilia. We also had plans to meet with an indigenous community, the Pataxo community up in Bahia. Unfortunately, the roads were so bad, there had been some heavy rains. And we were unable to get to that very remote indigenous community, but they are another community that is actively resisting Suzano's was eucalyptus plantations.

Steve Taylor  
Well, I know you were very disappointed not being able to make that meeting, but a lot of other meetings were made. Could you tell us about any other indigenous communities you met with?

Anne Petermann  
Yeah, when we got to after the Brasilia part of the trip, we went to Matta Grosso do Sul to look at the massive expansion of of eucalyptus plantations that's going on right now. And we met with a community called the Ofaie community that has this really devastating history of relocations. They had, they were originally on this very rich territory where they could hunt and they could fish fishing was a major part of their of their tradition. And you know how they fed themselves. And they were relocated to a part of land that was away from the river because the power company wanted the river for a hydroelectric dam. So they were relocated from their traditional territory next to the river, and put on this piece of land that was far away from the river, then that land they had to move away from as well onto this territory where we visited them, which was literally 45 square kilometers. So this very small piece of land that we if you look at it from a Google Map Image, from an aerial view image, you can see it's just this little island of  lush forest in the middle of a soy monoculture. On one side, sugarcane on another side and eucalyptus plantations on the other side, so it's, you know, it's it's kind of a, it was a very sad thing, but the community itself was very resilient. They had their own school, they were teaching the children about the history of the Ofaie people, they were teaching the children that their traditional language, they had managed to resurrect the language that was almost lost. And so it was a really inspiring story in that respect of people that were determined that their culture shall continue, even though there are only about 100 members of the community that are left after all of these relocations.

Steve Taylor  
Wow, that sounds like quite the meeting. So at some point did some communities, where they represented in the delegation, when you met with the ministries,

Anne Petermann  
We were fortunate enough to have a woman from one of the Quilombola communities, Josenea, that came with us to the meetings with the with the ministers, because we were presenting these these demands and these impacts directly from the communities. We wanted to have someone from the communities with us, we felt that you know that it didn't make sense for us as an international delegation to be presenting the concerns of communities, it had to come directly from the communities. And so we were very lucky that this woman, you know, joined us on the delegation to Brasilia, and was able to speak to these ministers directly.

Steve Taylor  
How did the ministers respond? 

Anne Petermann  
The Minister of indigenous peoples was, for obvious reasons, as we've talked about, with the the regressive law going through Congress a little bit distracted and focused on, you know, their own agenda at that moment. But the Minister of the Environment was extremely supportive of the demands and had a lot of ideas on how those demands could be advanced and addressed, as well as did the Ministry of Agrarian Development. And, you know, that's basically the ministry of small farmers, if you will, and they were also very helpful. And when we talked to that ministry representative, it wasn't the minister himself. You know, he was saying that he didn't he didn't really understand what this genetically engineered tree business was about, that that didn't make any sense to him. And, you know, which was good. That was really nice to hear from a government official agreeing with us that GE trees are not a good idea. So those were the three ministries we met with. And then we also met with the environmental caucus. And that was another instance where people were very feeling very overwhelmed by this Congress that was still so controlled by agribusiness. But overall, the the meetings were positive, our Quilombola representative, left feeling good, like she had new tools to bring back to her community that could help them with their land demarcation process, with their fight against Suzano, and the eucalyptus plantations, with their fight for clean water access, and so forth.

Steve Taylor  
You did mention that the Secretary with the Ministry of agrarian development had said that genetically engineered eucalyptus makes no sense. So I want to listen to an audio clip from that meeting.

Audio Clip  
I confess to you that just yesterday, when we got the demand, they asked for this meet meeting I was thinking of as an agronomist, thinking a little about the origin. And sort of what the researcher and professor I was thinking about how hard it is to think about all the different indirect impacts of planting eucalyptus, like life cycle, and how many experiments would have to be done, the height of the plants, all that goes into very complex field and it makes no sense in my vision, to have a transgenic associated with glyphosate. It's a crop that in a few years it grows up gives shade, and it ends up developing anyway, its much more linked to market interests of the corporations that want to sell herbicides than to any economical, interesting production.

Steve Taylor  
The Secretary was quite straightforward about how genetically engineered eucalyptus makes no sense and has really been put forward by corporate concerns. But industry is marching forward in Brazil.

Anne Petermann  
They are indeed yeah, and Susanna in particular, in talking about the eucalyptus plantations, Matta Grosso do Sul, which is a quite a large state in Brazil. On one side of it, it's all Pantanal wetlands, which are these incredibly rich, diverse wetlands. And on the other side is this this Serato forest, which is like a dry Savanna forest, also really rich and diverse and incredibly important ecosystem. And over the years, over the past decades, GMO soy has largely taken over the Pantanal. But the Cerrado forest has been a little bit left alone. But in the last 10 years, the eucalyptus plantations, the monoculture eucalyptus plantations have just been exploding into the Cerrado forest. And now what is happening is Suzano is building in the process of building the largest pulp mill in the world, in Matta Grosso do Sul in the middle of the Cerrado. And plans to have somewhere between 60 and 100 kilometer radius of eucalyptus plantations completely surrounding the mill, basically, they want to not have to drive their trucks as far when they cut the trees down and bring them to the mill. They want them handy. So it's just creating this, you know, this this incredibly, it's a dead zone. The scale of this plant is is a little bit hard to imagine. But they have 10,000 workers who are building it, it just goes on and on. We drove past it in the bus. And literally we drove past it for a couple of minutes, you know, just enormous facility that's under construction. And you know, there's a lot of issues with the workers there. There's a lot of worker safety issues, the housing is pretty dismal. We drove by that as well. And it's this like a giant Quonset hut, where all of these workers are just you know, stuffed in like sardines. And there have been different. It's been reported in the newspapers about the safety issues that these that are being raised in these worker's encampments, towns their, you know, these little towns have been just taken over by workers and the company. There's like crises in infrastructure. I mean, the whole thing is just a giant mess is what it is. And it's it's because there is this new global huge jump in demand for pulp and paper. And Brazil is hoping to be take the lead in meeting that new global demand. Chile is next in line and Latin America. They're number two. But yeah, Brazil wants to, wants to take that and take the advantage of just expanding the industry like crazy to meet this new global demand.

Steve Taylor  
And there's a lot heard about the Brazilian rainforest. And there's a lot a lot heard about the Lula administration, but less is heard about this pulp and paper expansion.

Anne Petermann  
Yeah, um, I'm not sure why that is. Except that maybe, you know, we haven't been doing a good job of getting out the word. But, you know, the world rainforest movement is an organization that's really been leading the charge as well as in Brazil, there's a group called alert against the green deserts network, which is a network of organizations in Brazil that are trying to raise the alarms about this Green deserts expansion. They have a slogan, plantations are not forests, because, again, you know, you see these things from a distance and you think, Oh, look, look at all the happy forests. There's forests all over Brazil, but they're not they're not forests, they're industrial plantations, they are, you know, as far from a forest as a cornfield is from a prairie, you know, there's no comparison. So people are trying to raise the alarm. There's another organization called the environmental paper network that's in the process of doing a huge report on this global expansion of the demand for pulp and paper and how Brazil and other countries in Latin America fit into that. But it's not just Suzano there's another company called Arauco, which is actually out of Chile. That plans that is getting permits right now to build what will be the largest pulp mill in the world. So after, after Susana was done, building the largest pulp mill in the world, Arouca wants to come in right behind them and build the largest pulp mill in the world.

Steve Taylor  
There seems to be a competition. So who can be the largest pulp mill here?

Anne Petermann  
Yeah, who can be the biggest jerk? I don't know. But anyway, you know, so that's causing another huge expansion of of industrial eucalyptus plantations in the Cerrado forest. The the really ironic and horrible thing about it beyond the the straight up destruction is the fact that these companies will get carbon credits for destroying the forest and putting in these industrial tree monocultures for pulp and paper mills. It because they're, you know, literally growing trees, and that's what forest carbon offsets are given for is for literally growing trees. It doesn't matter that you've just destroyed a carbon rich forest to grow this very paltry plantation, you now can get forest carbon credits for it. And it's, it's part of this global carbon market scheme where you know, you can somehow replace fossil or displace fossil carbon by by absorbing it with biological sources, which is anyway, the science behind that is ridiculous. But the point being that eucalyptus plantations are already proven to store about a quarter of the carbon of a native forest. So when you destroy a native forest, the native Cerrado Forest, besides releasing all of that carbon out of the soil, and out of the trees and all of the the life that used to be in that forest, you're putting in these these eucalyptus plantations that don't store very much carbon at all, and will be harvested in three to five years to be turned into pulp and paper, which will put the carbon right back into the atmosphere. And on and on and on. It's the whole thing is just so ludicrous. It's it's hard to put your brain around it, and yet, Suzano is doing that so they're getting the money for the pulp and paper, they're getting money for the forest carbon offsets, and the result in Brazil is just a hellscape.

Steve Taylor  
It's quite shocking. Forest carbon credits or carbon credits for displacing local communities, indigenous peoples, creating a green desert, causing water shortages, increasing fire safety threats are increasing fire threats, and reducing biological diversity. It seems to be quite an ecological scam.

Anne Petermann  
It's a huge ecological scam.

Steve Taylor  
But we did note that this is getting less less coverage than rainforest destruction. But this delegation did receive some pretty good media coverage in Brazil so far.

Anne Petermann  
Yeah, we did. We got quite a bit of media coverage in Brazil and also in Chile, there was a journalist with us from Chile who has gotten some articles published there, which is important. As I mentioned, Chile being the next country in line after Brazil trying to expand their eucalyptus plantations. So that was important and yeah, globally this is an issue that I think is starting to get more attention, it really needs to. We have an enormous quantity of, of material that we are going to be using to continue this work. You know, we didn't just stop because we left Brazil, we have, you know, 1000s of photographs, we have, you know, 10s of hours of video that we will be putting together into material for the for public outreach, you know, not just in English we have, we can do it in Spanish and Portuguese and other languages. Because this is an issue that's not just in Latin America, it's not just in the United States, it's in, you know, it's in it's in Africa, it's an Indonesia, it's in the genetically engineered tree problem is in Europe, you know, this is a global issue. And it comes down to really, are we as a species as a culture going to, you know, learn how to live with the planet? Or are we going to continue to rely on these techno fixes and false solutions, like genetically engineered trees and forest carbon credits, to try to weasel our way out of this global crisis that we're in? Or are we going to come together as communities and figure out the real solutions, including in the United States, in particular, demand reduction and a reduction of paper consumption, which is key to dealing with what's going on in Brazil.

Steve Taylor  
So as a resource for our listeners, listeners can go to globaljusticeecology.org/brazil-2023 to see some of these photos, videos and news stories regarding the trip.

Anne Petermann  
Thank you. Yes. And there will be more coming as as we go. And as we are able to process all of that content. 

Steve Taylor  
Anne is there something you'd like to discuss or say that I haven't asked you about?

Anne Petermann  
Just one quick thing, which is that the we will now be heading to Chile this fall. Look, you know, following up on the Brazil work, we're going to be going to Chile and meeting with people there. In the same vein of looking at this massive pulp and paper expansion and the threat of genetically engineered trees in Latin America. And we didn't touch too much on the wildfire issue. But you mentioned it briefly. The wildfire issue with Eucalyptus plantations is extreme. It's less so in Brazil because of the climate there. But it has been an enormous problem in Chile were in 20, the 2016 2017 summer fire season, and the 2022 23 summer fires season. were historically the worst in that country's in, you know, since that country was founded. And they started in Eucalyptus and pine plantations. So yeah, it's it's all of the issues that we talked about with Brazil. And in Chile, you add on to that the wildfire problem and the massive destruction of of communities and native forest that are caused by wildfires that start in these plantations. So we'll be looking at that more closely in the fall, and hopefully we'll be able to tune back in and explore that more.

Steve Taylor  
Well Anne Peterman thank you for joining Breaking Green.

Anne Petermann  
Thank you very much, Steve.

Steve Taylor  
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai