[05-06-10] MST: Stora Enso Feeds the Media Lies

Brazilian eucalyptus plantations of Stora Enso, a giant Finnish-Swedish reforestation company is involved in a serious conflict with local organizations, environmentalists and small farmers. The MST, in particular, is tired of the two faces of Stora Enso. Finnish public institutions have a considerable portion (35%) of the shares in Stora Enso[1], but the government refuses to intervene in the operations by Mika Rönkkö "Lying is what Stora Enso does best," said Joao Pedro Stédile, at MST's headquarters in São Paulo. Stédile, a 56 year old economist, is best known as a leader and a founder of the MST, which, with 1.5 million members, is one of the major social movements in the world. The MST defends the rights of small farmers to their land. Brazil has one of the highest concentrations of land on the planet: 1% of the population controls nearly half the arable area. Due to stagnation of the official program of agrarian reform, movement participants occupy the lands of large landowners. The occupations infuriate landowners and the commercial media reflects their sentiment. The landless are accused of terrorism and, in some parts of the country, criminalized. "Stora Enso has adopted the opinions and methods of the Brazilian elite," says Stédile. "The company is deliberately distorting our words," continues João Paulo Rodrigues, also a coordinator of the movement. Rodrigues is the next generation of the MST, who grew up in the struggle for land. He was raised in a MST settlement and is, in this sense, living evidence of radical land reform. According to estimates of the movement, 380,000 families were settled on uncultivated land. Besides planting, they were able to send their children to school, mainly through the schools of the MST. However, 97,000 families are still waiting for their piece of land in MST encampments, living in tents on the roadside. Stora Enso is accused of delaying land reform, and is regarded with suspicion by environmental organizations. According to João Paulo Rodrigues, the company is in land disputes with those in the encampments, who are among the most disadvantaged in Brazilian society. "In ten years, the MST has obtained 80,000 hectares of land through mass action and intense pressure on the latifúndios [large landed estates], while Stora Enso received hundreds of hectares in just three years. This is unacceptable." Despite all this, Stora Enso and MST agreed to meet in June 2009. The movement wanted to inform executives about cases of abuse by the Finnish company in Brazil. They were eager to overcome the disagreements. "We hoped to resolve these disputes rationally, discussing the conflicts with leaders of the Finnish/Swedish company," said João Paulo Rodrigues. "However, our expectations were dashed when the company publicly attacked us, instead of resolving conflicts and improving its methods" Lauri Peltola, who coordinates communication of the company, said, in August, to the largest daily newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, that Rodrigues had threatened the company with violence if it did not leave Brazil. Another leader of Stora Enso told the same newspaper, that during action on a eucalyptus plantation, landless women allegedly hit police officers with their scythes. The chief executive of Stora Enso, Jorma Karvinen, repeated the charges a week later, the same paper. "It's all lies," states João Paulo Rodrigues. "What I actually said is the opposite: the landless are suffering violence and even deaths as a result of the actions of Stora Enso." The record of land ownership in Brazil is confusing; in the land registries, there are many cases of corruption. Land disputes are common and often violent. In general, it is the agrarian reform activists who suffer most. According to the Comissão Pastoral da Terra [Pastoral Land Commission] in Brazil, more than 1,300 landless workers have been killed in clashes in the past two decades. "The concentration of land held by Stora Enso expands the violence in the countryside. When farmers claim more land for land reform - including those owned by Stora Enso – they are attacked by landlords and police, "said João Paulo Rodrigues. For Stédile, Stora Enso deliberately fed lies to the media. "According to Brazilian newspapers, the company has special permission for its plantations in border areas. The Finnish newspapers talk about threats of violence of the MST. The company never tells the truth." The reputation of the Finnish multinational is being lost. Brazilian prosecutors have initiated several actions against Stora Enso, ranging from allegations of bribes to illegal purchases of land. According environmental organizations, eucalyptus monocultures are damaging to the environment. They cause, among other damage, depletion of ground water, soil degradation and environmental problems caused by pesticides and herbicides. However, for the MST the social problems are the worst. Large farms swallow smaller ones. Employment opportunities in the countryside decrease and there is less land for local food production. The huge properties also delay the land reform, because there is not sufficient land to distribute. A new page was opened in Brazilian politics in 2002, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Partido Trabalhdores [PT – Workers’ Party] became president. The social movements constitute the basis of the party. The MST and small unions were his main supporters in the field. These movements had expected the PT would start a social revolution. That did not happen. The Lula government has made some social reforms, but always through political bargaining. Therefore, the government and the PT disassociated themselves from social movements like the MST. "The second Lula government has slowed agrarian reform. At first there was the goal of settling 100,000 families, but in recent years this goal was reduced to 20,000 families per year. In addition, most new settlements are concentrated in the Amazon - that should be protected, not populated," says Rodrigues. The conflict between Stora Enso and the MST expresses the clash of two development models. "We are not against Stora Enso and the paper industry, but we oppose the economic model in which the land is concentrated in the hands of a small elite," says Rodrigues. For the landless, Stora Enso symbolizes the super-concentration of agriculture that threatens small farmers. “It is based on huge properties and massive investment, with tax exemptions, control of all the farmland and the water supplies and pollutes the environment with pesticides," says Rodrigues. "We want another kind of development that encourages and supports sustainable food production and creates rural jobs." João Pedro Stédile says it is also possible to grow eucalyptus trees on small farms in a sustainable manner. "A small farmer could cultivate say, 2 hectares of eucalyptus in a 10 hectare estate,” suggests Stédile. "But pulp and paper companies do not want to this model, because they think the profits are insufficient. They always require the highest profit, ignoring the social and environmental consequences." Stédile does not have anything nice to say about Stora Enso: "The company sends to Finland pulp produced at its plant in Bahia as raw, unfinished products, the population will not benefit from anything. The earlier colonizers and Brazilian companies, at least produced part of the paper in Brazil. Stora Enso is acting against the law. Many serious lawsuits were launched against the company, which also was involved in corruption. But it still has enormous profits in its operations." "What use is it that the company pays tens of millions in taxes here, but sends hundreds of millions to Finland? Isn’t the Finnish government, the largest owner of the company, ashamed of this neo-imperialist operation"?[2] The Finnish Minister of Defense, Jyri Häkämies (National Coalition Party) - whose responsibilities include subjects related to the direction of companies in which the state participates - has said on several occasions in the Finnish Parliament, the government will not intervene in the operations of Stora Enso. Echoing the minister, Kari Järvinen, CEO of Solidium, the holding company that coordinates state participation in enterprises, Finland did not see the need to take action in relation to complaints about crimes committed in Brazil.[3] Häkämies publicly admitted that the situation of Stora Enso harms the reputation of a company controlled by the Finnish state.[4] Still, Häkämies, a chieftain of the right-wing party in government, argues that the state's responsibility is to create a favorable environment for business, and not intervene in day-to-day operations. "No government in any political orientation, has intervened in the production activities of the company. We are not going to begin to do that."[5] Mika Rönkkö is editor of Le Monde Diplomatique - Finland _____________________________________________________________ [1] To know the constitution of the company's stock, see: http://www.storaenso.com/investors/share/shareholders/Pages/ownership-di... [2] Matter in Helsingin Sanomat on 08/30/2009 http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Stora+Enso% E2% 80% 99s + jackpot/1135248979552 [3] Statements in Helsingin Sanomat on 08/30/2009: http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/artikkeli/Valtio+ei+puutu+Stora+Ensoon+kohdistu... C3% B6ksiin/1135248933531 [4] "Chinese farmers lose their land to Stora Enso's plantations," matter in the Helsingin Sanomat, on 04/26/2009, and "Finnish Trade Unions angered by the transfer of control of Stora Enso in Sweden", Helsingin Sanomat, 23.03.2009 http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Chinese+farmers+lose+land+to+Stora+Enso... http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Finnish+labour unions outraged + + + + at + moving Stora Enso + + + to + orders Sweden/1135244533769 [5] Matter in Yle News, 27/03/2009 http://yle.fi/uutiset/news/2009/03/hakamies_state_will_not_pressure_stor...