TREES FOR LIFE

We conducted a alternative economic analysis of the "Invisible economy of the peasant farmer" woman in Latin America. This allowed us to have a clearer vision of today's farmer realities.

The woman peasant farmer in Latinamerica begins to work at an early age, sometimes during childhood. Usually she has two responsibilities: the family and the food production. However the first time a woman peasant receives any pay is at the age of 55 when she applies and has the right to receive a pension. This is a recent right in Brazil, but not common in the rest of Laitnamerica.

Frequently women are the head of the household (widows, sick or jailed husbands, etc...) but they do not have the right to apply for credits. And many times they do not even have the right to their land.

Our proposal was to open a space so that the peasant woman can organize within their property with an activity that will generate a rent. An alternative activity to the production of food for the market.

We wanted to create a connection between women of the world and the ecological problems facing the planet. In addition we wanted to influence a social and economical change.

Choosing local trees that take 130 years or longer for the project, we would achieve a parallel goal of confronting the plot of the banks and multilateral organizations that are pretending to use Carbon Credits to subsidize the eucalyptus production through their false propaganda. By planting trees that take 130 years to grow we expose the deceptive program that attempts to plant eucalyptus with public funds and from the Kyoto accords. Since these programs are just looking for business since eucalyptus become ready to market at six or seven years.

Planting these noble species of trees, we are creating a feminine space, in an autonomous economy and organizing the connection of women in the Northern Hemisphere who cannot plant trees to influence global warming with women of the Southern Hemisphere who need to do it, but do not have the money or the social structure to do it.

Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan woman, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, human rights defender recently proposed planting 7 thousand million trees in order to fight global warming.

A proposal in other countries with peasant women farmers following the Brazilian experience with the Movimento de Mulheres Camponesas, would allow the recovery of the environment by adding the possibility that the protected trees will have an economic value while alive, as opposed to a value only as raw materials. For example for water preservation.