Planting trees is not always viewed as an environmental plus. Consider Brazil, where commercial tree plantations cover an estimated 12 million acres (five million hectares). Plantation advocates point out that the industry reforests degraded land and produces much-needed export earnings. But critics complain of a sterile “green desert” whose spread over the past three decades has devastated Brazil’s once-extensive Atlantic Forest, dried up water sources and uprooted local Indian and Afro-Brazilian communities. Concern about the issue is greatest in the southeastern state of Espirito Santo, where a fact-finding panel for the state Legislative Assembly is looking into the controversial record of the country’s largest plantation company—Aracruz Celulose. The hearings follow Espirito Santo’s enactment last October of a ban on the... [Log in to read more]