‘Verdant Barrens’: How Farmers Are Winning a Battle with Brazil’s Wood-Pulp Giant
Perfectly aligned lines of eucalyptus clones surround the Baixa Verde community in Brazil’s northeast. These identical trees stand in stark contrast to the remnants of native Atlantic woodland, one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems globally.
Encircled by close to 247,000 acres of commercial eucalyptus groves, Baixa Verde represents a uncommon local victory over a multinational in Brazil. The rural settlement exists today due to nearly two decades of court disputes over property claims – but the fight is not over yet.
After fighting to retain their land, the households now confront an unparalleled safety emergency characterized by armed clashes, fire attacks and threats on their lives, within a surge of aggression stemming from a land dispute that has intensified since 2024.
Disputes over property ownership have historically been an issue in the area. Securing land deeds is often considered to validate illegal land seizures from traditional communities, and residents had suspected that a wood-pulp manufacturer was cultivating eucalyptus on public land.
During 2008, a founding member of the Baixa Verde settlement and another community member visited government archives to review public documents. They discovered the document that proved the 1,300 hectares in dispute were publicly owned. “We always knew that it was state property,” says the founder.
With the document in hand, they assembled 91 local families and aligned with the Movement of Landless Workers, a social and political group fighting for land redistribution. Its first action was to take over a section of a tree farm operated by the corporation, accusing the company of utilizing government property.
Two years after the original occupation, the organization won state recognition that the company did not have legal title to the parcel of land cultivated by the company. “This ruling was a triumph not just for the local land rights movement but for all the civil society groups of Brazil,” says a settlement resident who grew up in the encampment and is now a key organizer of the movement.
After years of roadblocks and court fights, the state of Bahia reached a settlement with the corporation and the movement in 2016, returning 3,200 acres of corporate property to the public domain and providing each family a parcel sufficiently sized to cultivate their crops. Of the 61 families remaining, 53 have moved into their assigned lands.
“Securing entitlement to the land means that we now have a place to care for our children,” says the community leader.
Despite losing the land, a corporate spokesperson maintains that the company has always operated with “transparency, community and ecological accountability” and consideration for the local population. “The corporation has never been found guilty of illegal land acquisition and restates that its operational zones are lawfully governed and function with the necessary ecological licenses.”
However, in the years since the agreement, the families say they have experienced life-threatening warnings, shooting incidents, destroyed residences, stolen produce and ruined farmland.
Per information from the movement, the dispute now centres on plots of land that remain inhabited by farmers associated with the regional labor organization. When it was about to lose control of the contested land, the corporation gave 740 adjacent acres to the union – a donation confirmed by the organization’s directors.
“We face significant harassment occurring in this area. Our shelters have been set on fire, as well as our sugarcane fields.”
Over the past four years, six organizers of the movement have been assigned protective monitoring by Brazil’s protection programme for rights activists, communicators and environmentalists. The government has suggested that some of these leaders relocate, but out of loyalty to the cause and connection with their fought-for property, they have declined.
Due to the life-threatening messages he has received, a community pioneer says he has difficulty resting at night. “I am really scared that an incident may occur to my family,” he says.
The movement states that eight families do not feel sufficiently secure to farm their lands, which remain inhabited by agricultural workers reportedly connected to the company.
The corporation says that over the past 15 years, it has allocated “more than 20,000 hectares to agrarian reform initiatives, whether through court settlements, contributions to the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform, donations, or straight purchases, to settle persistent disputes in the territory.”
The company also says “the establishment of the communities – from design to parceling and lot definition – was managed completely by the regional authorities, without involvement from the company”, and “declines to discuss conflicts between social movements”.
A community member is among the two individuals who still reside in the old encampment. She says she has been harassed by armed men who surrounded her house and fired weapons nearby. Because no one lives nearby, the woman – who resides by herself – believes the gunfire were meant to intimidate 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 ruling has not been implemented.
Ecological Obstacles and the ‘Green Desert’
Besides defending against danger and aggression, transforming properties once used for single-crop eucalyptus farming into agricultural cultivation is now the main challenge for the settlement residents. Eucalyptus production is dominated by large multinationals that, from the 1960s onward, have been converting farmland and forest into single-crop farms, motivated by global demand.
Brazil is the global leading grower of the tree species, a fast-growing, thirsty crop, whose fiber is exported to make cardboard and writing materials. The majority of the nation’s tree fiber is shipped to European nations, where it is utilized for creating stationery items often marketed as a renewable alternative to synthetic materials – despite the environmental damage resulting from single-crop farming.
Within Bahia state, the expansion of these plantations has earned the local moniker “green desert”, due to the disappearance of native species and the critical lack of resources and territory faced by households residing close to commercial tree farms.
One community leader grew up in the region and remembers the river before the area was transformed by single-crop tree farming. “We previously traversed it in a canoe. It was full,” he says. “Following corporate establishment, it disappeared.” He attributes the water scarcity to the company’s arrival in 1991.
The corporation says it “adopts a mosaic management system, in which trees are grown in elevated regions, while lowlands, water sources and indigenous plants are preserved. This model ensures soil protection, wildlife conservation and the sustenance of aquatic supplies.” The company also says it “conducts continuous monitoring of micro-basins in its operational zone” and “creates tree-planting and woodland renewal initiatives in locations adjacent to settlements”.
In the neighbouring state of Minas Gerais, the tree cultivation area of Turmalina has seen its groundwater level decrease by 4.5 metres over the past 45 years, according to researchers at the state university.
Plant life in single-crop tree farms absorbs 26% of rainfall to restore groundwater levels – compared with a half of rainfall intake linked to native forest. Three-quarters of farming families surveyed in the state reported their harvests suffering by the scarcity.
The growing of the tree species also poses an increased risk of wildfire. Farms are highly combustible that Chile ruled out eucalyptus as a practical environmental answer after a series of large wildfires in its national farms.
Notwithstanding ecological dangers, eucalyptus plantations continue to have an important function in the emissions trading system, with trees being sold as carbon credits to fossil fuel polluters to offset their emissions. Although facing resistance from activists, in {
