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The traditional January summer siesta in Uruguay has been interrupted, not only by constant rainfall but also because there has been no respite in the advance of the pulp mills. They continue with their advertising campaign, based on falsehoods, which are then repeated as truths. Promises and mirages made to a population with a high […]

The project for the installation of two pulp-mills in Uruguay on the river of the same name, has given rise to firm opposition, both in the country and among civil society in the neighbouring Argentine province of Entre Rios, across the river a few kilometres from the location where the pulp mills are to be […]

Multinational timber companies are bringing jobs to Uruguay, but some people are concerned about the environmental consequences – by Oliver Balch, The Guardian UK. Wednesday August 17, 2005. Read it here

Uruguay is in the sights of the pulp industry. The Finnish multinational company, Metsa Botnia and the Spanish company Ence are proposing to install two pulp mills to produce bleached eucalyptus pulp (using ECF process with chlorine dioxide) for export, with Botnia producing a maximum volume of 1 million tons per year and Ence 500,000 […]

Uruguay, a territory blessed by a profuse hydrological network, with soils extending over part of the Guaraní aquifer – one of the largest aquifers in the world – bears the “natural country” logo. This could well be so, with its vast prairies and rich productive soils, with an abundance of water, scant industrial development and […]

Consumerism and poverty are the two extremes of the current world paper market. Manipulation of markets, cartel agreements, establishment of prices and other similar practices give a group of companies the necessary power to control it. In between are pollution of air, water and soil, land accumulation and appropriation by foreign companies, scale increases and […]

Uruguay has been one of the countries in the region that has best and fastest fulfilled the duties others have dictated. Already in 1951, a joint FAO-World Bank mission made a series of recommendations regarding the country’s forestry development, which was the basis for the forestry laws adopted in 1968 and 1987. Their vision implied […]

Like so many other countries in the South, Uruguay has been convinced (by FAO, the World Bank and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, among others) that it should promote large-scale tree plantations. From the start, it was very clear that the objective was to produce sufficient raw material for pulp production and for this reason, […]

Plantation forestry –promoted by the 1987 forestry law and consisting of large-scale monoculture plantations of alien trees– promised an infinite number of benefits to the country: exports, industry, thousands of new jobs. Subsidies, tax exemptions for the import of machinery and industrial equipment, land rates, net worth tax, credits from the World Bank and the […]

The forestry plan promoted by the Government –based on large monoculture tree plantations of eucalyptus and pine– promised large profits to the country, among which employment generation. Not only has this objective not been accomplished, but it has also been seen that the scant employment generated is usually temporary and under working conditions that in […]