At World’s Largest Global Forest and Paper Summit, Activists Demand An End to Genetically Engineered Trees
Fate of Chile’s Forests Highlighted
Vancouver, British Columbia – Environmentalists and activists are joining together at one of the largest annual timber industry trade meetings today, the Global Forest and Paper Summit 2005, to condemn the increasing development of industrial monoculture tree farms planted with genetically engineered trees.
Tree farms are vast stretches of land planted with one type of tree. The problems with these farms are multifold: first, native forests are often cut down to make way for these lucrative farms and second, they are sprayed with various chemicals to ensure that only the particular tree of interest grows – all else is killed – which means that no animals or insects can survive in these farms. Additionally, this chemical spraying can and often does contaminate local waterways and communities. Industrial monoculture tree plantations are having a devastating effect in the Global South.
Genetically engineered trees are of particular concern because it is impossible to isolate these trees and prevent their pollen and seeds from contaminating local native forests.
"The development of tree farms in places like Chile is having a devastating impact on native forests and indigenous communities,” stated Aaron Sanger, Chile Program Director for ForestEthics. "Planting those tree farms with genetically engineered trees is like playing Russian roulette with local species and communities – there is no way to prevent the genetically engineered trees from contaminating the native forests, and we have no idea what the long term effects of genetically engineered trees are.”
In a recently released report, "Genetically Modified Trees in Chile: A New Forest Conflict,"* Mapuche biologist Lorena Ojeda writes that the negative effects of single species tree farming in countries of the southern hemisphere in general and southern Chile in particular are the result of destructive timber processes exported from the northern hemisphere. Forests have been greatly impacted. The felling and replacement of native forests with pine and eucalyptus plantations has resulted in animal habitat loss and the alteration of the countryside. Social problems have arisen as well; including the forced migration of people who find themselves surrounded by huge plantations. Mapuche communities have been forced off their traditional lands and into the courts.
Ojeda believes that Chile could be the first country to commercialize genetically engineered tree plantations. Her report states that an incentive for establishing tree plantations in general and genetically engineered trees in particular is the market for carbon credits—part of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanisms that were moved ahead at the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change held last December in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
"Genetically engineered tree plantations must be stopped," said Orin Langelle of Global Justice Ecology Project and the STOP GE Trees Campaign. “There is absolutely no ethical reason in the world to introduce GE trees into plantations and they must not be allowed. They will destroy habitat, worsen global warming and devastate communities."
This is a joint press release by STOP GE Tree Campaign, ForestEthics, Global Justice Ecology Project and Rainforest Action Network.
A related joint press release by Global Justice Ecology Project, STOP GE Trees Campaign, Eco-Nexus and Finland's Peoples Forest Forum will be issued June 3 in Montreal, Quebec as the UN meets to discuss the Cartegeña Protocol on Biosafety.
Read a pdf of Tzeporah Berman's speech at the summit.
