March 13, 2024 • 32 mins
Terrible forest fires that are the result of eucalyptus plantations are becoming an increasing threat. Known as green deserts, these monoculture eucalyptus tree plantations are becoming more numerous as they are built to feed ever larger pulp and paper mills. They sapwater from the environment and destroy biodiversity. But there are those who are fighting the spread of this invasive species.
On this episode of Breaking Green, we will talk with Joam Evans Pim. Pim is a commoner at the Froxan Community, located in Galicia, Spain, where he lives with his family. He is an activist in political, environmental, cultural and human rights issues, particularly focused on reinvigorating rural direct assembly democracy, defending and restoring common lands and confronting destructive mining and other environmentally degrading projects.
He serves as director of the Montescola Foundation and is adjunct professor of peace and conflict research at Abo Akademi University, Finland, where he seasonally lectures on civil disobedience and non-violent action at the master's program on peace, mediation and conflict research.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steve Taylor (00:00):
Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by
Global Justice Ecology Project.
On Breaking Green, we will talkwith activists and experts to
examine the intertwined issuesof social, ecological and
economic injustice.
We will also explore some ofthe more outrageous proposals to
address climate andenvironmental crises that are
(00:22):
falsely being sold as green.
I am your host, steve Taylor.
Terrible forest fires that arethe result of eucalyptus
plantations are becoming anincreasing threat.
Known as green deserts, thesemonoculture eucalyptus tree
plantations are becoming morenumerous as they are built to
(00:42):
feed ever larger pulp and papermills.
They sapped water from theenvironment and destroy
biodiversity.
But there are those who arefighting the spread of this
invasive species.
In this episode of BreakingGreen, we will talk with Dwaam
Evans Pym.
Joam Evans Pim is a commoner atthe Froschan community, located
(01:02):
in Glacier, spain, where helives with his family.
He is an activist in political,environmental, cultural and
human rights issues,particularly focused on
revigorating rural directassembly democracy, defending
and restoring common lands andconfronting destructive mining
and other environmentallydegrading projects.
(01:23):
He serves as director of theMontescola Foundation and is
adjunct professor of peace andconflict research at Abo Akademu
University, Finland, where heseasonally lectures on civil
disobedience and non-violentaction at the master's program
on peace, mediation and conflictresearch.
Joam Evans Pim, welcome toBreaking Green.
(01:46):
thank you.
So, Joam, you live in Galicia,an independent region in
northwest Spain or in theIberian Peninsula.
Could you introduce ourlisteners to the region?
What is it like and who livesthere?
Joam Evans Pim (02:01):
So Galicia, as you say, is in the northwest
corner of the Iberian Peninsula,so by the Atlantic coast.
When people hear about Spain,in many places they have this
idea of a sunny paradise.
Galicia is rainy, it hasmountains, it's relatively cold,
(02:22):
with lots of rain, or used tohave a lot of rain, and it's a
bit different.
It's green and the shades ofgreen have changed.
And that's, I think, one of thethings we could maybe discuss
about today, which is thearrival, since a few decades
back, of eucalyptus plantationswhich have really filled out the
(02:42):
whole region.
Steve Taylor (02:43):
Yes, we want to definitely talk to you about
your work regarding eucalyptusplantations, but I kind of
wanted to fill out some of thehistory.
So it's my understanding thataround World War II a little bit
before, I think, under theFranco dictatorship commonly
owned land in the area wasseized by the state, and so it
was transformed for commercialpurposes, such as mining and
(03:08):
planting monocultural treeplantations.
Could you tell us a little bitabout that history?
Joam Evans Pim (03:15):
So people?
I don't usually know about this,but Galicia is one of the very
few places around Spain, anddefinitely around Europe, where
a lot of land is stillcommunally owned.
I mean, it's owned by the peoplethat live in the villages, not
by the state but by thecommunities themselves, so it's
(03:35):
a form of community lands and infact today two-thirds oh sorry,
one-third of all land inGalicia, two-thirds of kind of
forest lands, but one-third ofall the land in Galicia is still
owned by communities and thiswas a very important pillar of
traditional economy, which wassilbo agro-pastoral, so a lot of
(04:01):
pastoralism, and that had alsoa big importance on how
traditional agriculturefunctioned.
But this all came to a stopwith the dictatorship after the
Spanish Civil War, when Francodecided to take over all of
these common lands owned by thecommunities and that were a
(04:24):
basic pillar of their survivaland then forcibly planted them
initially with pine monoculturesand then, from the 60s onward,
increasingly with eucalyptus,because at this point pulp,
industrial, pulp factories wereintroduced to the region.
(04:44):
So they wanted to have thisabundant and cheap eucalyptus
for feeding these pulp mills.
Steve Taylor (04:53):
So eucalyptus is not indigenous to the territory,
or is it?
Joam Evans Pim (04:57):
No, no, eucalyptus comes from Australia.
There's different species ofeucalyptus there's at least a
dozen present in Galicia at themoment, mainly two, but that are
used for commercial pulp mills.
(05:17):
And the first trees came verylong ago as ornamental trees and
you would see them in someparks or whatever.
But then really the invasion ofeucalyptus, initially as part
of planned industrialmonocultures, started in the 60s
, but then increasingly over thepast few decades, because of
(05:40):
forest fires and the invasivecharacter of this species, we've
seen it spread out in manyplaces.
Where it was, it wasn't everplanted, so from nearby areas or
seedlings it starts to invadevery large areas in addition to
the already very large areawhere it's planted, and
(06:01):
currently this is about half amillion hectares, so a very
large part of lands in Galicia.
Steve Taylor (06:08):
Global Justice Ecology Project and I was on
this trip went to Brazilrecently to look at eucalyptus
monoculture plantations andthere they're called green
deserts.
You know they're green, they'regrowing, but they sap a lot of
water from the region and itreally reduces biodiversity.
(06:31):
What's your observation?
Not only as an invasive species, but do you have an opinion
about eucalyptus plantations andmonoculture overall?
Joam Evans Pim (06:42):
So there's a lot of a lot that can be said about
this.
Some elements have to do, as youmentioned, with the way it
extracts so much water, alsobecause of the plant itself, and
it has some toxic elements thatthen get into the soil and
reduce a lot of biodiversity,even at the microscopic level.
(07:03):
But a lot also has to do withthe management because, for
example, many of theseplantations for decades have
been managed through chemicalweeding, so through herbicides,
agrochemicals that, of course,destroy everything but the
eucalyptus, just like inindustrial agricultural lands.
So this in turn, there's a lotof studies that have been
(07:25):
published over the past decadethat show drastic reduction, for
example, of birds pieces in theareas, drastic reduction of
wildlife basically nearlynon-existent and this also leads
then to conflicts even outsideof the plantations, for example
with boars or the wild animalsthat would have the natural
(07:46):
habitats in dense oak forestswhere they would have enough
food to survive.
But because of the rise ofmonocultures and these green
deserts, as you mentioned, theyend up creating conflicts in
agricultural lands and being inplaces where they have never
been before.
So it's extremely disruptive,both locally, but then also in a
(08:06):
broader perspective, in alandscape perspective and even
in a from a security perspective, because the other side of
these plantations is, of course,the risk, the increasing risk
of forest fire, which arebasically unstoppable when it
comes to dealing with very largeareas with eucalyptus
monocultures.
Steve Taylor (08:24):
Right, you live in a village I think it's Froshan
that experienced a fire in 2016.
Could you tell us a bit aboutthat and the role eucalyptus
played?
Joam Evans Pim (08:39):
So this is a very usual story in Galicia,
because eucalyptus plantationshave been planted just right up
to homes where people lived andthis, of course, creates very
dangerous conditions,particularly in the drier months
in the summer, which many yearsare a bit drier and this
(08:59):
creates conditions for fireballs, as I mentioned, that are kind
of unstoppable if you havestrong winds, and the way
eucalyptus burns they kind ofcatapult pieces even hundreds
and hundreds of meters away, soit's very difficult for
firefighters and communitiestrying to stop fires from
(09:19):
stopping at one point.
So the traditional ways ofstopping these fires doesn't
work.
Froshan experienced many fires.
The largest one was in 2006 andthen a decade later, in 2016,
there was another one, and inboth cases they started just in
the place, by the boundary ofour common lands, with the same
(09:40):
kind of northeastern wind andwhich was kind of driving the
fire towards the community, andin both cases the 2006 one was
especially, you know, heavy anddangerous.
In both cases the fire didn'treach the community because
there was a kind of a green firebreak close to the village that
(10:04):
was dominated by by nativespecies that keep the moisture
in the ground, that have amicroclimate, and that doesn't
mean they cannot burn down, butthey definitely stop the.
They're able to stop the fireand retain it and eventually
allow it to for it to beextinguished.
Other places that had pine andeucalyptus, which are pyrophytic
(10:28):
species, meaning species thattend to do deal better with fire
, both because they regeneratequicker but also because then
the way they spread the seedsand the seeds open up after the
fires, they outgrow any of theother native species.
So this is the, that invasivecharacter, which is facilitated
(10:50):
basically through through fire.
Steve Taylor (10:52):
So under the, the dictatorship, the Franco regime,
land was taken away andmonocultures were planted.
I was reading that Froschangained back its land not too
long ago.
Is that?
Is that true?
Joam Evans Pim (11:12):
Most, most common lands in Galicia were
recovered in the 80s, late 70s,80s, some in the 90s.
Some are still in the processtoday of getting their lands
back from the government.
So it's been a very slow andcomplicated process.
Also because maybe a bit likeindigenous title in some other
(11:35):
jurisdictions, documents forcommon lands sometimes do not
exist.
These are lands that have beenon the community tenure for
literally thousands of years andeven in the case of our
community we have documents fromthe 16th century, the 15th
(11:56):
century, that already talk aboutour commons, and this is true
for many other similarcommunities.
In Galicia there are 3,500common land communities which
are roughly some 700,000hectares under this kind of
community management andownership.
(12:17):
So it's a very large area andit's been a complicated process.
Of course one thing is theownership, and in fact many
communities managed, as forShang managed to regain
ownership in the 80s.
But then the other thing ismanagement and for Shang was
basically under governmentmanagement, even if the
(12:41):
ownership had been regained,until up to the early 2000s, and
it was only after 2002 that thecommunity started to directly
manage the lands 100 hectares,not very big.
There are some communities aremuch bigger, thousands of
hectares, but still since then,mistakes, but also successes,
(13:05):
have been the responsibility ofthe community.
Steve Taylor (13:09):
So in 2017, I believe you started or were part
of at least a very criticalpart of starting volunteers to
take out eucalyptus trees tode-ucalyptalize the land, and so
could you tell us about that?
Joam Evans Pim (13:29):
So, as we talked , we had experience, fire after
fire and every summer.
Every summer, you would be inone of these nights with very
strong wind, wondering if it isgoing to be tonight that we'd
all have to go outside and, inthe middle of the night, start
to deal with this fire comingtowards us.
So we thought that was notreally the way to go about
(13:52):
things and after the 2016 fire,we said we need to do something
about it.
Now, if you think about it, ourvillage is very small, and when
I say very small, it's just sixfamilies, six houses.
There are many villages of thiskind of size.
Others are bigger, but it's abig issue.
It's a big challenge for asmall community, lots of elderly
(14:15):
people to deal with.
What do we do to get rid of allthese invasive species?
Restore native woodlands?
How do we do it?
One of the ideas we had backthen, after that fire, was well,
we know that people arefrustrated.
We know people are angrybecause of the fires we have
every summer after summer, andthere's not really much to do
(14:37):
about it.
People blame the government, orblame communities themselves,
or blame whoever.
But we thought it was importantto create spaces where people
could help and make the changehappen.
And this is what we started Atfirst, very slowly.
So in 2017, we started tocreate these days of action with
(15:01):
volunteers and we have maybe adozen people coming basically to
uproot the eucalyptus that wasstarting to grow back in the
whole area that had been burntdown in 2016.
And over that year and a halfuntil 2018, we basically managed
(15:21):
to get rid of the eucalyptus inthe whole area that was burnt
down the year before and startedto restore the native forest in
that whole area.
And as we were doing it, we said, well, this is something very
interesting, we should be ableto do it in more places, not
just here in our community.
And it was kind of a way ofdoing things where we revived
(15:44):
two traditional concepts.
One is calling Galicia roga,which is a word that means a
call for community action, sowhen community would come
together to fix a road or make awall or build a house to help
other neighbors.
So there's the roga, which isthat call for communal work to
(16:06):
happen.
And then the other one isalbaroque, which would be a kind
of a feast, a celebration, ameal that would be done after
that communal work.
So we kind of did those two.
We brought those two ideastogether and we started bringing
volunteers, working together,celebrating together and, of
course, also planning together.
(16:26):
You know how we could get thisdone in other places.
Steve Taylor (16:29):
Well, that was about five years ago.
You started.
What is it looking like now?
You started with about 20people in 2017, I think.
So what does it look like now?
Joam Evans Pim (16:40):
So, as I was mentioning, we wanted to do
something at a larger scale thatcould benefit more communities
that were facing similarproblems and in April 2018, in
collaboration with Berdegay, avery small environmental
nonprofit, we set up a widerinitiative so people could sign
(17:01):
up from anywhere to becomevolunteers and also so that
people in other communitiescould also, kind of you know,
make themselves available toorganize work on their own lands
to advance with thisEU-colliptication initiative.
So, in April 2018, we startedthe first of these calls for
(17:25):
action with the wider initiative.
We were about 40 people thatday and now it's 1,400 people
registered and getting thosecalls every month, and maybe
we're doing two or three ofthese actions every month in
different locations, most ofthem common lands, but some even
(17:45):
some private lands, but mostlycommon lands.
And so not just cutting downeucalyptus, but also planting
native trees, also acacia, whichis another very complicated
species that, while not being amonoculture because it has no or
very little commercial interestit's also an invasive species
(18:08):
that comes from Australia andthat is really a very, very
difficult to eradicate and hastaken over thousands and
thousands of hectares, even ifnobody is planting it.
So that shows how you know thedefinition itself of invasive
species and how they can createproblems at enormous scales and
(18:30):
that really threaten not onlybiodiversity but even community
safety because of fires, becauseof many other issues 50 years
ago there was about 28,000hectares of eucalyptus In.
Steve Taylor (18:45):
some sources are saying there's about half a
million now.
How are your efforts going?
Is it making a difference?
Are you seeing progress?
Joam Evans Pim (18:55):
So the answer would be depends, and that's how
we in Galicia mostly answer toevery single question.
It depends how you look at it.
So if you consider it from theperspective of the communities
where we work, the change isamazing.
So, for example, in ourcommunity it's 100 hectares.
We, you know, from five yearsback to now we have seasons
(19:18):
again.
You look at I'm looking out ofthe window now and you know I
see an oak forest with no leavesnow, but in a month or so
leaves will start to come out.
In the autumn they will startto fall again, and just a few
years ago all this area I'mlooking out of the window was
(19:39):
basically the pine or eucalyptus.
So in places like Froschangit's made an amazing change and
people that have been coming towork with us and visiting us for
years have seen that change.
Sometimes it's difficult to seeit when you've just arrived and
you didn't know what was itlike just a few years ago.
But even looking at picturesyou can see that.
(20:00):
So it really makes a change inthose places where we've been
working.
Now, if you look at the broaderpicture, of course it's grim.
You know, eucalyptus plantations, as you mentioned, are more
than half a million hectares atthis moment and, in spite of
claims by government thatthey're doing something about it
, these numbers are growing.
(20:22):
So in one decade from now welikely see even a larger number.
And not only that, but we seeplantations happening in places
where they never should happen,where it's even illegal for them
to happen.
We're seeing them in peatlandsthat are being destroyed, in
wetlands, by rivers.
We see a lot of native areasand habitats that should be
(20:47):
protected or should be withinprotected areas just being
devastated with new plantations.
So in that sense, of course,the overall picture is not good,
but we at least are showingthat, where there is will, we
can make that change happen in arelatively short time, even
though landscape transformationis course and the fight against
(21:10):
invasive species is really amulti-generational project,
particularly with summer specieslike acacia trees, where the
seeds that remain in the groundare latent for up to 60 years.
So in 60 years you can stillhave one of those trees popping
up.
Once many of us will already begone.
So it's going to take amulti-generational struggle to
(21:33):
really change things and keepingwhat we're achieving now in the
long term.
Steve Taylor (21:40):
I believe there's some fires going on in Chile
right now.
Do you communicate with anycommunities in Chile, brazil or
other areas where there's theseeucalyptus plantations and this
invasive species?
Joam Evans Pim (21:55):
So we've heard a lot about how what happened to
us some decades ago is notreally spreading across other
countries in Latin America, butalso in Africa, in Asia.
So the typical story goes likea new pulp mill, every time
(22:16):
being bigger and bigger, beingset up and within a radius of a
hundred miles or 200 miles fromthose new factories,
monocultures eucalyptusmonocultures just start to pop
up everywhere, displacingagriculture, displacing other
activities and kind of bringingthis activity and these
(22:40):
plantations everywhere.
A couple of years ago we hadcolleagues from Chile coming to
visit us and actually do a.
I think they were working on adocumentary but also some
journalist pieces to show howyou know this.
Eucalyptus-ation brigades werebeing organized and also trying
(23:00):
to set up something similarwhere in Chile, where this is
already is a very big problem.
We also had last year awonderful experience where
people in Portugal set up a kindof a sister initiative, because
it's a very similar situation,particularly in the northern
half of Portugal, both with thefires and, of course, with the
(23:21):
monocultures, and now there's aninitiative going on, very
similar, to do this kind ofactivity.
So we also see how this issomething that can catch on and,
of course, particularly becausethe way we've been organized is
very, let's say, no frills,very basic, very no staff and
(23:43):
just a lot of energy, a lot ofvolunteers and, you know, a lot
of fun also that goes with it.
Steve Taylor (23:50):
So these paper mills aren't just ecological
problems.
It seems to be a communitysocial problem as well.
Joam Evans Pim (24:01):
Well, they create local problems because,
of course, these are industriesthat are extremely intensive in
the use of water, both in theintake of fresh, clean water but
also in terms of pollution ofatmospheric emissions.
So the main factory that wasestablished here in the 50s
(24:22):
basically annihilated the wholecoastal area that was previously
rich in shellfish productionand other sustainable you know,
economical activities.
Now that has already has gone,there's basically no space for
that.
But then beyond that local area, it's the kind of change it
creates and the dynamics itcreates in the whole, you know,
(24:44):
the whole country in this case.
So it's very devastating interms of biodiversity, in terms
of cultural heritage.
And the most recent developmentis that many of these companies
are not satisfied with justbuying eucalyptus from private
owners or from common landcommunities that have these
plantations in their forests.
Now they want to be managingthe land themselves.
(25:07):
So there's a massive issue withland grabbing at a scale that
has never been seen before andthat even kind of outgrows what
the dictatorship did in its day.
There's a massive process atthe moment going on, with many
communities signing 30 yearcontracts with the paper
(25:28):
companies themselves, not onlythe Spanish ones, but also
navigator, for example, aPortuguese company.
So this will essentially meannot just lots of eucalyptus
everywhere, of course, but alsobreaking for a second time, you
know, in one century theconnection that people have with
their communal lands.
(25:49):
This already happened with thedictatorship and now it's
happening again because thesecommunities that are signing
these contracts with thecompanies basically will have no
say, no management for the nextcouple of generations.
And of course, you can arguethese are decisions communities
are making on their own.
True, they're being decided assuch in assemblies where
(26:14):
commoners participate, but ofcourse it's also in a context
where people are being deprivedof alternatives, of alternative
uses, and where, of course, thewhole system and the whole
public policies around forestmanagement in Galicia have been
geared towards basicallyproviding this pulp for the
(26:40):
factories.
That's the main thing.
We're supposed to be producingthat and everything else is just
secondary.
Our health, our security in theface of bigger and more
dangerous forest fire, ourcultural heritage, our water
supply everything else doesn'tseem to matter, in contrast with
just the need for more and moreproduce for these paper mills.
Steve Taylor (27:07):
So when we went last May to Brazil, one of the
reasons the stop GE treecampaign and global justice
ecology project was there wasthat Brazil is considering
licensing genetically engineeredeucalyptus.
Have you heard of attempts togenetically engineer eucalyptus
(27:30):
to grow faster and do you haveany thoughts about that?
Joam Evans Pim (27:34):
So, from what we know, g trees or eucalyptus in
particular have not beenintroduced here.
One of the reasons maybe has todo with the fact that, because
of our climate and conditions,this is probably one of the best
places in the world in terms ofhaving eucalyptus grow quickly.
However, it's also true that somainly selection has been done
(27:59):
through other methods, bothtrying out different species,
different varieties, not so muchthrough using genetically
modified trees.
However, there's growingchallenges.
Some of these have to do withthe depletion of soils by
(28:20):
successive waves and afterwaves,afterwaves of plantations, many
of which have used chemicalweeding practices which are
basically destroying soils assuch, creating basically dead
soils, and within these.
And then there's, of course,problems with certain insects
(28:42):
that are problematic for theseplantations.
So it wouldn't be surprisingthat eventually, if a solution
for these perceived problemswould come up which would
involve genetically modifiedorganisms, I'm sure they would
consider it.
But I'm aware of also the legalimplications if this would be
(29:04):
possible on the current Europeanlaws or not.
That's something which I'm notreally knowledgeable about.
Steve Taylor (29:11):
They're working on genetically engineered
varieties which are resistant toherbicides, so I guess they
could do more herbicidalspraying without harming their
so-called crop.
Is there anything that I havenot asked you about eucalyptus
and the regrades you haveworking in Galicia?
Joam Evans Pim (29:36):
You know, this is, I guess, the future.
I mean, it's something.
This is a project that isconstantly growing.
Every week we get new peoplesigning up and it has really
been a game changer For usanytime we need to do work in
(29:56):
our lands.
In the last few weeks we'vebeen planting.
We've also been gettingeucalyptus out of the wood.
We've been doing all sorts ofwork and the fact that you can
put out a call and then, 24hours later or less, you have
people signing up to come andagain, once, again and again,
(30:20):
it's amazing.
We have actions with 50, 60, 90people showing up and the
amount of work you are able todo in one day is amazing.
People sometimes arrive at aspot full of eucalyptus and,
because these are not, most ofthe areas where we are working
are not originally plantations,are areas where eucalyptus took
(30:42):
over these lands after the fires.
Under the eucalyptus there's alot of native trees, so the fact
that we're taking them down oneby one and in a way where we
try not to damage some of thenative trees and bushes and
other species that are on thekind of on the forest.
It's amazing because when youfinish work by two o'clock and
(31:05):
you go and have lunch, youalready see the change.
So it's already visible whatyou achieved.
And although it takes a lot ofwork because they will be
popping up again and again, youstill have to go four or five
times maybe to cut out thegrowth of the eucalyptus until
the stumps dry out.
(31:25):
You see the change very quickly.
It will take decades for thoseoak trees, for example, that
we're kind of trying to surviveunder the eucalyptus, to become
a forest again and to become bigoaks that will be there and
will stay there for a very longtime.
But it's.
You start to see that changewith every action and I think
(31:47):
that's one of the reasons whypeople come back again and again
.
Steve Taylor (31:52):
Well, Joam, thank you for joining us at Breaking
Green.
Thank you, it was a pleasureyou have been listening to
Breaking Green a global JusticeEcology project podcast.
To learn more about GlobalJustice Ecology project, visit
globaljusticeecologyorg.
When Green is made possible bytax deductible donations by
(32:15):
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Simply text GIVE G-I-V-E-2,1-716-257-4187.
That's 1-716-257-4187.
Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by
Global Justice Ecology Project.
On Breaking Green, we will talkwith activists and experts to
examine the intertwined issuesof social, ecological and
economic injustice.
We will also explore some ofthe more outrageous proposals to
address climate andenvironmental crises that are
(00:22):
falsely being sold as green.
I am your host, steve Taylor.
Terrible forest fires that arethe result of eucalyptus
plantations are becoming anincreasing threat.
Known as green deserts, thesemonoculture eucalyptus tree
plantations are becoming morenumerous as they are built to
(00:42):
feed ever larger pulp and papermills.
They sapped water from theenvironment and destroy
biodiversity.
But there are those who arefighting the spread of this
invasive species.
In this episode of BreakingGreen, we will talk with Dwaam
Evans Pym.
Joam Evans Pim is a commoner atthe Froschan community, located
(01:02):
in Glacier, spain, where helives with his family.
He is an activist in political,environmental, cultural and
human rights issues,particularly focused on
revigorating rural directassembly democracy, defending
and restoring common lands andconfronting destructive mining
and other environmentallydegrading projects.
(01:23):
He serves as director of theMontescola Foundation and is
adjunct professor of peace andconflict research at Abo Akademu
University, Finland, where heseasonally lectures on civil
disobedience and non-violentaction at the master's program
on peace, mediation and conflictresearch.
Joam Evans Pim, welcome toBreaking Green.
(01:46):
thank you.
So, Joam, you live in Galicia,an independent region in
northwest Spain or in theIberian Peninsula.
Could you introduce ourlisteners to the region?
What is it like and who livesthere?
Joam Evans Pim (02:01):
So Galicia, as you say, is in the northwest
corner of the Iberian Peninsula,so by the Atlantic coast.
When people hear about Spain,in many places they have this
idea of a sunny paradise.
Galicia is rainy, it hasmountains, it's relatively cold,
(02:22):
with lots of rain, or used tohave a lot of rain, and it's a
bit different.
It's green and the shades ofgreen have changed.
And that's, I think, one of thethings we could maybe discuss
about today, which is thearrival, since a few decades
back, of eucalyptus plantationswhich have really filled out the
(02:42):
whole region.
Steve Taylor (02:43):
Yes, we want to definitely talk to you about
your work regarding eucalyptusplantations, but I kind of
wanted to fill out some of thehistory.
So it's my understanding thataround World War II a little bit
before, I think, under theFranco dictatorship commonly
owned land in the area wasseized by the state, and so it
was transformed for commercialpurposes, such as mining and
(03:08):
planting monocultural treeplantations.
Could you tell us a little bitabout that history?
Joam Evans Pim (03:15):
So people?
I don't usually know about this,but Galicia is one of the very
few places around Spain, anddefinitely around Europe, where
a lot of land is stillcommunally owned.
I mean, it's owned by the peoplethat live in the villages, not
by the state but by thecommunities themselves, so it's
(03:35):
a form of community lands and infact today two-thirds oh sorry,
one-third of all land inGalicia, two-thirds of kind of
forest lands, but one-third ofall the land in Galicia is still
owned by communities and thiswas a very important pillar of
traditional economy, which wassilbo agro-pastoral, so a lot of
(04:01):
pastoralism, and that had alsoa big importance on how
traditional agriculturefunctioned.
But this all came to a stopwith the dictatorship after the
Spanish Civil War, when Francodecided to take over all of
these common lands owned by thecommunities and that were a
(04:24):
basic pillar of their survivaland then forcibly planted them
initially with pine monoculturesand then, from the 60s onward,
increasingly with eucalyptus,because at this point pulp,
industrial, pulp factories wereintroduced to the region.
(04:44):
So they wanted to have thisabundant and cheap eucalyptus
for feeding these pulp mills.
Steve Taylor (04:53):
So eucalyptus is not indigenous to the territory,
or is it?
Joam Evans Pim (04:57):
No, no, eucalyptus comes from Australia.
There's different species ofeucalyptus there's at least a
dozen present in Galicia at themoment, mainly two, but that are
used for commercial pulp mills.
(05:17):
And the first trees came verylong ago as ornamental trees and
you would see them in someparks or whatever.
But then really the invasion ofeucalyptus, initially as part
of planned industrialmonocultures, started in the 60s
, but then increasingly over thepast few decades, because of
(05:40):
forest fires and the invasivecharacter of this species, we've
seen it spread out in manyplaces.
Where it was, it wasn't everplanted, so from nearby areas or
seedlings it starts to invadevery large areas in addition to
the already very large areawhere it's planted, and
(06:01):
currently this is about half amillion hectares, so a very
large part of lands in Galicia.
Steve Taylor (06:08):
Global Justice Ecology Project and I was on
this trip went to Brazilrecently to look at eucalyptus
monoculture plantations andthere they're called green
deserts.
You know they're green, they'regrowing, but they sap a lot of
water from the region and itreally reduces biodiversity.
(06:31):
What's your observation?
Not only as an invasive species, but do you have an opinion
about eucalyptus plantations andmonoculture overall?
Joam Evans Pim (06:42):
So there's a lot of a lot that can be said about
this.
Some elements have to do, as youmentioned, with the way it
extracts so much water, alsobecause of the plant itself, and
it has some toxic elements thatthen get into the soil and
reduce a lot of biodiversity,even at the microscopic level.
(07:03):
But a lot also has to do withthe management because, for
example, many of theseplantations for decades have
been managed through chemicalweeding, so through herbicides,
agrochemicals that, of course,destroy everything but the
eucalyptus, just like inindustrial agricultural lands.
So this in turn, there's a lotof studies that have been
(07:25):
published over the past decadethat show drastic reduction, for
example, of birds pieces in theareas, drastic reduction of
wildlife basically nearlynon-existent and this also leads
then to conflicts even outsideof the plantations, for example
with boars or the wild animalsthat would have the natural
(07:46):
habitats in dense oak forestswhere they would have enough
food to survive.
But because of the rise ofmonocultures and these green
deserts, as you mentioned, theyend up creating conflicts in
agricultural lands and being inplaces where they have never
been before.
So it's extremely disruptive,both locally, but then also in a
(08:06):
broader perspective, in alandscape perspective and even
in a from a security perspective, because the other side of
these plantations is, of course,the risk, the increasing risk
of forest fire, which arebasically unstoppable when it
comes to dealing with very largeareas with eucalyptus
monocultures.
Steve Taylor (08:24):
Right, you live in a village I think it's Froshan
that experienced a fire in 2016.
Could you tell us a bit aboutthat and the role eucalyptus
played?
Joam Evans Pim (08:39):
So this is a very usual story in Galicia,
because eucalyptus plantationshave been planted just right up
to homes where people lived andthis, of course, creates very
dangerous conditions,particularly in the drier months
in the summer, which many yearsare a bit drier and this
(08:59):
creates conditions for fireballs, as I mentioned, that are kind
of unstoppable if you havestrong winds, and the way
eucalyptus burns they kind ofcatapult pieces even hundreds
and hundreds of meters away, soit's very difficult for
firefighters and communitiestrying to stop fires from
(09:19):
stopping at one point.
So the traditional ways ofstopping these fires doesn't
work.
Froshan experienced many fires.
The largest one was in 2006 andthen a decade later, in 2016,
there was another one, and inboth cases they started just in
the place, by the boundary ofour common lands, with the same
(09:40):
kind of northeastern wind andwhich was kind of driving the
fire towards the community, andin both cases the 2006 one was
especially, you know, heavy anddangerous.
In both cases the fire didn'treach the community because
there was a kind of a green firebreak close to the village that
(10:04):
was dominated by by nativespecies that keep the moisture
in the ground, that have amicroclimate, and that doesn't
mean they cannot burn down, butthey definitely stop the.
They're able to stop the fireand retain it and eventually
allow it to for it to beextinguished.
Other places that had pine andeucalyptus, which are pyrophytic
(10:28):
species, meaning species thattend to do deal better with fire
, both because they regeneratequicker but also because then
the way they spread the seedsand the seeds open up after the
fires, they outgrow any of theother native species.
So this is the, that invasivecharacter, which is facilitated
(10:50):
basically through through fire.
Steve Taylor (10:52):
So under the, the dictatorship, the Franco regime,
land was taken away andmonocultures were planted.
I was reading that Froschangained back its land not too
long ago.
Is that?
Is that true?
Joam Evans Pim (11:12):
Most, most common lands in Galicia were
recovered in the 80s, late 70s,80s, some in the 90s.
Some are still in the processtoday of getting their lands
back from the government.
So it's been a very slow andcomplicated process.
Also because maybe a bit likeindigenous title in some other
(11:35):
jurisdictions, documents forcommon lands sometimes do not
exist.
These are lands that have beenon the community tenure for
literally thousands of years andeven in the case of our
community we have documents fromthe 16th century, the 15th
(11:56):
century, that already talk aboutour commons, and this is true
for many other similarcommunities.
In Galicia there are 3,500common land communities which
are roughly some 700,000hectares under this kind of
community management andownership.
(12:17):
So it's a very large area andit's been a complicated process.
Of course one thing is theownership, and in fact many
communities managed, as forShang managed to regain
ownership in the 80s.
But then the other thing ismanagement and for Shang was
basically under governmentmanagement, even if the
(12:41):
ownership had been regained,until up to the early 2000s, and
it was only after 2002 that thecommunity started to directly
manage the lands 100 hectares,not very big.
There are some communities aremuch bigger, thousands of
hectares, but still since then,mistakes, but also successes,
(13:05):
have been the responsibility ofthe community.
Steve Taylor (13:09):
So in 2017, I believe you started or were part
of at least a very criticalpart of starting volunteers to
take out eucalyptus trees tode-ucalyptalize the land, and so
could you tell us about that?
Joam Evans Pim (13:29):
So, as we talked , we had experience, fire after
fire and every summer.
Every summer, you would be inone of these nights with very
strong wind, wondering if it isgoing to be tonight that we'd
all have to go outside and, inthe middle of the night, start
to deal with this fire comingtowards us.
So we thought that was notreally the way to go about
(13:52):
things and after the 2016 fire,we said we need to do something
about it.
Now, if you think about it, ourvillage is very small, and when
I say very small, it's just sixfamilies, six houses.
There are many villages of thiskind of size.
Others are bigger, but it's abig issue.
It's a big challenge for asmall community, lots of elderly
(14:15):
people to deal with.
What do we do to get rid of allthese invasive species?
Restore native woodlands?
How do we do it?
One of the ideas we had backthen, after that fire, was well,
we know that people arefrustrated.
We know people are angrybecause of the fires we have
every summer after summer, andthere's not really much to do
(14:37):
about it.
People blame the government, orblame communities themselves,
or blame whoever.
But we thought it was importantto create spaces where people
could help and make the changehappen.
And this is what we started Atfirst, very slowly.
So in 2017, we started tocreate these days of action with
(15:01):
volunteers and we have maybe adozen people coming basically to
uproot the eucalyptus that wasstarting to grow back in the
whole area that had been burntdown in 2016.
And over that year and a halfuntil 2018, we basically managed
(15:21):
to get rid of the eucalyptus inthe whole area that was burnt
down the year before and startedto restore the native forest in
that whole area.
And as we were doing it, we said, well, this is something very
interesting, we should be ableto do it in more places, not
just here in our community.
And it was kind of a way ofdoing things where we revived
(15:44):
two traditional concepts.
One is calling Galicia roga,which is a word that means a
call for community action, sowhen community would come
together to fix a road or make awall or build a house to help
other neighbors.
So there's the roga, which isthat call for communal work to
(16:06):
happen.
And then the other one isalbaroque, which would be a kind
of a feast, a celebration, ameal that would be done after
that communal work.
So we kind of did those two.
We brought those two ideastogether and we started bringing
volunteers, working together,celebrating together and, of
course, also planning together.
(16:26):
You know how we could get thisdone in other places.
Steve Taylor (16:29):
Well, that was about five years ago.
You started.
What is it looking like now?
You started with about 20people in 2017, I think.
So what does it look like now?
Joam Evans Pim (16:40):
So, as I was mentioning, we wanted to do
something at a larger scale thatcould benefit more communities
that were facing similarproblems and in April 2018, in
collaboration with Berdegay, avery small environmental
nonprofit, we set up a widerinitiative so people could sign
(17:01):
up from anywhere to becomevolunteers and also so that
people in other communitiescould also, kind of you know,
make themselves available toorganize work on their own lands
to advance with thisEU-colliptication initiative.
So, in April 2018, we startedthe first of these calls for
(17:25):
action with the wider initiative.
We were about 40 people thatday and now it's 1,400 people
registered and getting thosecalls every month, and maybe
we're doing two or three ofthese actions every month in
different locations, most ofthem common lands, but some even
(17:45):
some private lands, but mostlycommon lands.
And so not just cutting downeucalyptus, but also planting
native trees, also acacia, whichis another very complicated
species that, while not being amonoculture because it has no or
very little commercial interestit's also an invasive species
(18:08):
that comes from Australia andthat is really a very, very
difficult to eradicate and hastaken over thousands and
thousands of hectares, even ifnobody is planting it.
So that shows how you know thedefinition itself of invasive
species and how they can createproblems at enormous scales and
(18:30):
that really threaten not onlybiodiversity but even community
safety because of fires, becauseof many other issues 50 years
ago there was about 28,000hectares of eucalyptus In.
Steve Taylor (18:45):
some sources are saying there's about half a
million now.
How are your efforts going?
Is it making a difference?
Are you seeing progress?
Joam Evans Pim (18:55):
So the answer would be depends, and that's how
we in Galicia mostly answer toevery single question.
It depends how you look at it.
So if you consider it from theperspective of the communities
where we work, the change isamazing.
So, for example, in ourcommunity it's 100 hectares.
We, you know, from five yearsback to now we have seasons
(19:18):
again.
You look at I'm looking out ofthe window now and you know I
see an oak forest with no leavesnow, but in a month or so
leaves will start to come out.
In the autumn they will startto fall again, and just a few
years ago all this area I'mlooking out of the window was
(19:39):
basically the pine or eucalyptus.
So in places like Froschangit's made an amazing change and
people that have been coming towork with us and visiting us for
years have seen that change.
Sometimes it's difficult to seeit when you've just arrived and
you didn't know what was itlike just a few years ago.
But even looking at picturesyou can see that.
(20:00):
So it really makes a change inthose places where we've been
working.
Now, if you look at the broaderpicture, of course it's grim.
You know, eucalyptus plantations, as you mentioned, are more
than half a million hectares atthis moment and, in spite of
claims by government thatthey're doing something about it
, these numbers are growing.
(20:22):
So in one decade from now welikely see even a larger number.
And not only that, but we seeplantations happening in places
where they never should happen,where it's even illegal for them
to happen.
We're seeing them in peatlandsthat are being destroyed, in
wetlands, by rivers.
We see a lot of native areasand habitats that should be
(20:47):
protected or should be withinprotected areas just being
devastated with new plantations.
So in that sense, of course,the overall picture is not good,
but we at least are showingthat, where there is will, we
can make that change happen in arelatively short time, even
though landscape transformationis course and the fight against
(21:10):
invasive species is really amulti-generational project,
particularly with summer specieslike acacia trees, where the
seeds that remain in the groundare latent for up to 60 years.
So in 60 years you can stillhave one of those trees popping
up.
Once many of us will already begone.
So it's going to take amulti-generational struggle to
(21:33):
really change things and keepingwhat we're achieving now in the
long term.
Steve Taylor (21:40):
I believe there's some fires going on in Chile
right now.
Do you communicate with anycommunities in Chile, brazil or
other areas where there's theseeucalyptus plantations and this
invasive species?
Joam Evans Pim (21:55):
So we've heard a lot about how what happened to
us some decades ago is notreally spreading across other
countries in Latin America, butalso in Africa, in Asia.
So the typical story goes likea new pulp mill, every time
(22:16):
being bigger and bigger, beingset up and within a radius of a
hundred miles or 200 miles fromthose new factories,
monocultures eucalyptusmonocultures just start to pop
up everywhere, displacingagriculture, displacing other
activities and kind of bringingthis activity and these
(22:40):
plantations everywhere.
A couple of years ago we hadcolleagues from Chile coming to
visit us and actually do a.
I think they were working on adocumentary but also some
journalist pieces to show howyou know this.
Eucalyptus-ation brigades werebeing organized and also trying
(23:00):
to set up something similarwhere in Chile, where this is
already is a very big problem.
We also had last year awonderful experience where
people in Portugal set up a kindof a sister initiative, because
it's a very similar situation,particularly in the northern
half of Portugal, both with thefires and, of course, with the
(23:21):
monocultures, and now there's aninitiative going on, very
similar, to do this kind ofactivity.
So we also see how this issomething that can catch on and,
of course, particularly becausethe way we've been organized is
very, let's say, no frills,very basic, very no staff and
(23:43):
just a lot of energy, a lot ofvolunteers and, you know, a lot
of fun also that goes with it.
Steve Taylor (23:50):
So these paper mills aren't just ecological
problems.
It seems to be a communitysocial problem as well.
Joam Evans Pim (24:01):
Well, they create local problems because,
of course, these are industriesthat are extremely intensive in
the use of water, both in theintake of fresh, clean water but
also in terms of pollution ofatmospheric emissions.
So the main factory that wasestablished here in the 50s
(24:22):
basically annihilated the wholecoastal area that was previously
rich in shellfish productionand other sustainable you know,
economical activities.
Now that has already has gone,there's basically no space for
that.
But then beyond that local area, it's the kind of change it
creates and the dynamics itcreates in the whole, you know,
(24:44):
the whole country in this case.
So it's very devastating interms of biodiversity, in terms
of cultural heritage.
And the most recent developmentis that many of these companies
are not satisfied with justbuying eucalyptus from private
owners or from common landcommunities that have these
plantations in their forests.
Now they want to be managingthe land themselves.
(25:07):
So there's a massive issue withland grabbing at a scale that
has never been seen before andthat even kind of outgrows what
the dictatorship did in its day.
There's a massive process atthe moment going on, with many
communities signing 30 yearcontracts with the paper
(25:28):
companies themselves, not onlythe Spanish ones, but also
navigator, for example, aPortuguese company.
So this will essentially meannot just lots of eucalyptus
everywhere, of course, but alsobreaking for a second time, you
know, in one century theconnection that people have with
their communal lands.
(25:49):
This already happened with thedictatorship and now it's
happening again because thesecommunities that are signing
these contracts with thecompanies basically will have no
say, no management for the nextcouple of generations.
And of course, you can arguethese are decisions communities
are making on their own.
True, they're being decided assuch in assemblies where
(26:14):
commoners participate, but ofcourse it's also in a context
where people are being deprivedof alternatives, of alternative
uses, and where, of course, thewhole system and the whole
public policies around forestmanagement in Galicia have been
geared towards basicallyproviding this pulp for the
(26:40):
factories.
That's the main thing.
We're supposed to be producingthat and everything else is just
secondary.
Our health, our security in theface of bigger and more
dangerous forest fire, ourcultural heritage, our water
supply everything else doesn'tseem to matter, in contrast with
just the need for more and moreproduce for these paper mills.
Steve Taylor (27:07):
So when we went last May to Brazil, one of the
reasons the stop GE treecampaign and global justice
ecology project was there wasthat Brazil is considering
licensing genetically engineeredeucalyptus.
Have you heard of attempts togenetically engineer eucalyptus
(27:30):
to grow faster and do you haveany thoughts about that?
Joam Evans Pim (27:34):
So, from what we know, g trees or eucalyptus in
particular have not beenintroduced here.
One of the reasons maybe has todo with the fact that, because
of our climate and conditions,this is probably one of the best
places in the world in terms ofhaving eucalyptus grow quickly.
However, it's also true that somainly selection has been done
(27:59):
through other methods, bothtrying out different species,
different varieties, not so muchthrough using genetically
modified trees.
However, there's growingchallenges.
Some of these have to do withthe depletion of soils by
(28:20):
successive waves and afterwaves,afterwaves of plantations, many
of which have used chemicalweeding practices which are
basically destroying soils assuch, creating basically dead
soils, and within these.
And then there's, of course,problems with certain insects
(28:42):
that are problematic for theseplantations.
So it wouldn't be surprisingthat eventually, if a solution
for these perceived problemswould come up which would
involve genetically modifiedorganisms, I'm sure they would
consider it.
But I'm aware of also the legalimplications if this would be
(29:04):
possible on the current Europeanlaws or not.
That's something which I'm notreally knowledgeable about.
Steve Taylor (29:11):
They're working on genetically engineered
varieties which are resistant toherbicides, so I guess they
could do more herbicidalspraying without harming their
so-called crop.
Is there anything that I havenot asked you about eucalyptus
and the regrades you haveworking in Galicia?
Joam Evans Pim (29:36):
You know, this is, I guess, the future.
I mean, it's something.
This is a project that isconstantly growing.
Every week we get new peoplesigning up and it has really
been a game changer For usanytime we need to do work in
(29:56):
our lands.
In the last few weeks we'vebeen planting.
We've also been gettingeucalyptus out of the wood.
We've been doing all sorts ofwork and the fact that you can
put out a call and then, 24hours later or less, you have
people signing up to come andagain, once, again and again,
(30:20):
it's amazing.
We have actions with 50, 60, 90people showing up and the
amount of work you are able todo in one day is amazing.
People sometimes arrive at aspot full of eucalyptus and,
because these are not, most ofthe areas where we are working
are not originally plantations,are areas where eucalyptus took
(30:42):
over these lands after the fires.
Under the eucalyptus there's alot of native trees, so the fact
that we're taking them down oneby one and in a way where we
try not to damage some of thenative trees and bushes and
other species that are on thekind of on the forest.
It's amazing because when youfinish work by two o'clock and
(31:05):
you go and have lunch, youalready see the change.
So it's already visible whatyou achieved.
And although it takes a lot ofwork because they will be
popping up again and again, youstill have to go four or five
times maybe to cut out thegrowth of the eucalyptus until
the stumps dry out.
(31:25):
You see the change very quickly.
It will take decades for thoseoak trees, for example, that
we're kind of trying to surviveunder the eucalyptus, to become
a forest again and to become bigoaks that will be there and
will stay there for a very longtime.
But it's.
You start to see that changewith every action and I think
(31:47):
that's one of the reasons whypeople come back again and again
.
Steve Taylor (31:52):
Well, Joam, thank you for joining us at Breaking
Green.
Thank you, it was a pleasureyou have been listening to
Breaking Green a global JusticeEcology project podcast.
To learn more about GlobalJustice Ecology project, visit
globaljusticeecologyorg.
When Green is made possible bytax deductible donations by
(32:15):
people like you, please help uslift up the voices of those
working to protect forests,defend human rights and expose
false solutions.
Simply text GIVE G-I-V-E-2,1-716-257-4187.
That's 1-716-257-4187.
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