The multinational company Veracel Fibria, owned by the Swedish-Finnish enterprise Stora Enso, is expanding. The company performance is scheduled to be doubled - from currently 1.2 to 2.5 million tons of cellulose per year. In Bahia, the base material for paper is obtained from eucalyptus wood. To date, the monocultures already cover nearly 120.000 hectares. If Veracel implements the plan, the plantations will double in size accordingly.
While the multinational companies reap huge profits, the local people suffer from the effects of cellulose production. The natives fear that the expansion of the plantations will cause more poison to be set free. Monoculture plantations are highly susceptible to diseases and pests. In order to secure the production process, large amounts of toxic pesticides like glyphosate and sulfuramide are employed. These chemicals endanger the regional environment and put people's health at risk. The immense water consumption of the eucalyptus plantations poses another problem: For peasant farmers, water is scarce - which is an immediate threat to the local population's food security.
While Veracel's plantations proliferate, members of the indigenous Pataxó tribe and local peasant farmers take legal action to reclaim their land. They accuse the company of having unlawfully taken possession of the land, and they are afraid that the plantations ruin their agriculture.
For years, the Brazilian organisation CEPEDES has been supporting the population in southern Bahia in organising the resistance against Veracel and its expansion of plantations and factories. For this reason, Rettet den Regenwald invites to sign the letter by CEPEDES to the Governor of Bahia and join the protest against the expansion of eucalyptus plantations.
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