Mountains of Paper, Mounting Injustice
Produced by the World Rainforest Movement - 2008
Sreenplay: Antonis Diamantidis and Flavio Pazos
With the support of the WRM International Secretariat Team
Voice: Cecilia Carrère
download the wmv file at higher resolution (100 MB)
source: www.wrm.org.uy
Appeal from literature and journalism for socially and environmentally clean
paper
Paper is a wonderful material, which for centuries has served for a fertile
exchange of ideas among human beings. For us all who use it as an essential
vehicle to share what we think, imagine, dream, know or believe we know, paper
is a wonderful tool that we want to be able to continue using … but not at
the expense of people and the environment.
As people who live in this reality, we are aware of the serious injustices and
inequalities - social and environmental - arising from the world production and
consumption of paper.
In addition to the destruction of forests for making paper, now forests and
grasslands are being replaced by vast monoculture tree plantations, destroying
communities, water, soil and all life. Both the destruction of forests and the
installation of monoculture tree plantations - occupying food-producing land -
bring about enormous damage to the local population, who see their rights
violated, their environment destroyed and their way of life irremediably
affected.
The destructive cycle is continued with pulp production, in which fewer and
increasingly larger companies take possession of land where they plant trees,
of water that their trees and mills consume and contaminate, of political power
acquired through their billion dollar investments, and of the environment that
they destroy in the regions where they are installed.
To destruction are added inequities. The enormous volume of paper produced from
this pulp feeds a "world market" centred on rich and powerful peoples’
consumption. The average figures (that hide enormous inequalities on a
national level), show that consumption per capita is more than ten times higher
in the countries of the North than in those of the South.
To inequity is added excessive consumption. Only as an example it is enough to
see the mountains of paper and cardboard growing night after night in the
streets of New York to understand that most of the pulp
production does not end up as books, newspapers or journals, but simply as
trash. In general terms, at least half the pulp produced goes to the
production of paper and cardboard for wrapping and packaging, most of it
totally unnecessary.
We do not want to have anything to do with paper produced in this way. We do
not want to become accomplices to the social and environmental destruction this
implies. We do not trust certification schemes that have given their seal of
"sustainability" to these same monoculture plantations whose impacts we know so
well.
This situation has already reached intolerable limits and its solution requires
policies discouraging unnecessary consumption, promoting a rational and
socially appropriate use of paper, ensuring an equitable
use among countries and within countries, facilitating the development of
diversified models on a smaller scale for the production of pulp, respecting
both people and the environment.
The above is perfectly feasible and no technical limitations of any kind exist
to prevent it from becoming a reality. The only and real obstacle is the
economic interest of large companies, whose objective is to continue making
profits by imposing an increasingly large and unlimited consumption of paper.
The time has come to tell them that this is enough.
We are therefore appealing to those, who like us want to be able to continue
communicating through this marvellous material called paper, to join in this
struggle for a socially and environmentally clean
paper.
Victor Bacchetta, Nnimmo Bassey, Jordi Bigues, Elizabeth Bravo,
Ricardo Carrere, Antonio Franco, Mempo Giardinelli, François Houtart,
John Karumbizda, Kintto Lucas, George Monbiot, Edgar Morin,
Guillemo Núñez, Wale Okediran, Ike Okonta, Noel Rajesh, Ana
Cristina Rossi, Vandana Shiva
Those who would like to adhere to the appeal can do it at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/writers.html
WRM International Secretariat
Maldonado 1858
CP 11200
Montevideo, Uruguay
Tel: 598 2 413 2989 Fax: 598 2 410 0985
http://www.wrm.org.uy