Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.
This week’s Earth Minute discusses the International Day Against Monoculture Tree Plantations. To listen to the show, go to: http://bit.ly/q6ItPO
Earth Minute September 21, 2011
Wednesday September 21st is the International Day of Action Against Monocultures Tree Plantations–when organizations globally denounce industrial tree plantations, which have had tremendous destructive impacts.
The United Nations allows timber plantations to be called “forests,” despite the fact that tree plantations and forests have nothing in common besides trees.
Timber plantations deplete water and soils; provide no habitat for wildlife; and cause rising rates of sickness from the toxic chemicals used on them.
Forests, on the other hand, provide shelter, medicines, food and clean water to forest dependent communities; give life to countless species that exist nowhere else; and are known as the lungs of the earth because they cleanse the air and regulate the climate.
Conversely, the destruction of forests releases about 20% of global climate emissions annually.
For these and other reasons, scientists around the world issued an open letter demanding the UN distinguish between forests and timber plantations.
To read the letter or for more information, go to our website at globaljusticeecology.org
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.
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