‘Green Desert’: The Way Rural Families Are Winning a Struggle with Brazil’s Wood-Pulp Giant
Perfectly aligned rows of genetically identical trees border the Baixa Verde community in north-eastern Brazil. These uniform trees present a sharp difference to the patches of native Atlantic woodland, one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems globally.
Bordered by nearly 100,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations, Baixa Verde exemplifies a uncommon community triumph over a international corporation in Brazil. The rural settlement exists today due to almost twenty years of legal battles over property claims – but the fight is not over yet.
Following struggles to retain their land, the households now confront an unparalleled safety emergency marked by armed clashes, arson and threats on their lives, within a surge of aggression stemming from a territorial conflict that has escalated since 2024.
Conflicts over land rights have historically been an issue in the area. Securing land deeds is commonly deemed to validate illegal land seizures from traditional communities, and local people had suspected that a pulp-production company was cultivating eucalyptus on government property.
In 2008, a founding member of the Baixa Verde settlement and another community member visited government archives to inspect official papers. They found the page that demonstrated the 3,200 acres in contention were publicly owned. “We were certain that it was public land,” states the founder.
With the document in hand, they organized 91 local families and joined the Landless Workers Movement, a political and social organisation advocating for agrarian reform. Its first action was to take over a section of a tree farm operated by the company, alleging the firm of using public land.
Following two years after the original occupation, the movement secured official acknowledgment that the corporation did not legally own the property section planted by the company. “This ruling was a triumph not just for the community property campaign but for all the social movements of the country,” says a community member who grew up in the encampment and is now a key organizer of the movement.
Following many years of obstacles and court fights, the Bahia state government reached a settlement with the company and the movement in 2016, returning 1,300 hectares of corporate property to the government and giving each household a plot large enough to cultivate their crops. Of the sixty-one households staying, fifty-three have relocated into their assigned lands.
“Winning a right to the land means that we now have a space to care for our children,” says the community leader.
Despite losing the land, a corporate spokesperson asserts that the firm has always functioned with “transparency, community and ecological accountability” and consideration for the area residents. “The corporation has never been convicted of land grabbing and reaffirms that its production areas are lawfully governed and function with the required environmental permits.”
However, in the time following the agreement, the families say they have encountered life-threatening warnings, shooting incidents, destroyed residences, taken crops and destroyed fields.
Per information from the organization, the conflict now centres on property parcels that remain inhabited by farmers affiliated with the local union. When it was facing loss of control of the contested land, the corporation gave 740 adjacent acres to the union – a donation confirmed by the union’s leadership.
“We face significant harassment occurring in this area. Our shelters have been burned down, as well as our cane plantations.”
During the last four years, six organizers of the movement have been assigned protective monitoring by Brazil’s protection programme for rights activists, journalists and environmentalists. The government has suggested that some of these leaders move away, but due to dedication to the cause and bond to their hard-won land, they have refused.
Because of the life-threatening messages he has received, one founder says he has trouble sleeping at night. “I feel genuinely fearful that an incident may occur to my family,” he says.
The movement states that eight families do not feel safe enough to farm their lands, which remain inhabited by agricultural workers reportedly connected to the company.
The company says that during the previous fifteen years, it has allocated “more than 20,000 hectares to land redistribution programs, whether through judicial agreements, contributions to the federal land reform agency, gifts, or straight purchases, to resolve ongoing conflicts in the region.”
The company also says “the creation of the settlements – from planning to parceling and plot allocation – was managed completely by the regional authorities, without interference from the corporation”, and “does not comment on conflicts between social movements”.
One resident is among the two individuals who still live in the old encampment. She says she has been harassed by weapon-carrying individuals who encircled her home and shot at the ground. Because no one lives nearby, the woman – who resides by herself – thinks the gunfire were intended to threaten her out of reclaiming her assigned plot.
During August, the Bahia state government authorised the removal of labor group-associated agricultural workers who remain on Baixa Verde lots – but the decision has not been implemented.
Environmental Challenges and the ‘Green Desert’
Besides defending against danger and aggression, converting lands once used for single-crop eucalyptus farming into agricultural cultivation is now the primary difficulty for the settlement residents. Eucalyptus production is dominated by major international corporations that, since the 1960s, have been transforming agricultural and woodland areas into single-crop farms, driven by international market needs.
The country is the global leading grower of the tree species, a fast-growing, thirsty crop, whose fiber is shipped abroad to make packaging materials and paper products. The majority of the nation’s eucalyptus pulp is exported to Europe, where it is utilized for creating paper products often promoted as a sustainable substitute to synthetic materials – despite the environmental damage resulting from monoculture.
Within Bahia state, the expansion of these plantations has received the regional nickname “emerald wasteland”, due to the disappearance of native species and the critical lack of water and land experienced by households residing close to eucalyptus plantations.
One community leader was raised in the area and recalls the waterway before the area was transformed by eucalyptus monoculture. “We used to cross it in a boat. It was full,” he says. “After the company arrived, it dried up.” He links the resource shortage to the corporation’s appearance in 1991.
The company says it “implements a varied management approach, in which eucalyptus is cultivated in elevated regions, while lowlands, water sources and indigenous plants are preserved. This system guarantees ground conservation, wildlife conservation and the maintenance of water resources.” The company also says it “conducts continuous monitoring of small watersheds in its operational zone” and “creates tree-planting and woodland renewal initiatives in areas near communities”.
Within the adjacent region of Minas Gerais, the eucalyptus region of Turmalina has seen its groundwater level drop by 4.5 metres over the past 45 years, per scientific studies at Minas Gerais Federal University.
Plant life in single-crop tree farms takes in just over a quarter of precipitation to restore groundwater levels – versus a 50% level of absorption linked to indigenous woodland. Three-quarters of farming families interviewed in Minas Gerais reported their harvests suffering by the shortage.
The cultivation of eucalyptus also poses an increased risk of forest fire. Farms are highly combustible that Chile ruled out eucalyptus as a viable climate solution after a series of large wildfires in its domestic plantations.
Notwithstanding ecological dangers, eucalyptus plantations continue to have an important function in the carbon market, with plants being marketed as carbon credits to petroleum companies to offset their emissions. Although facing resistance from activists, in {
