Razor-straight lines of eucalyptus clones flank the Baixa Verde settlement in north-eastern Brazil. The uniform trees present a sharp difference to the remnants of wild Atlantic forest, one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems globally.
Surrounded by nearly 100,000 hectares of commercial eucalyptus groves, Baixa Verde represents a uncommon local victory over a multinational in Brazil. This agricultural community owes its existence due to almost twenty years of court disputes over land rights – but the fight is not over yet.
After fighting to retain their land, the households now face an unprecedented security crisis marked by violent encounters, fire attacks and death threats, within a surge of aggression stemming from a land dispute that has escalated since 2024.
Disputes over property ownership have long been an problem in the region. Securing land deeds is commonly deemed to validate illegal land seizures from traditional communities, and residents had believed that a wood-pulp manufacturer was planting eucalyptus trees on public land.
During 2008, one of the founders of the Baixa Verde settlement and a local activist visited government archives to review public documents. They discovered the document that demonstrated the 3,200 acres in contention were publicly owned. “We were certain that it was state property,” says the community leader.
Armed with this evidence, they organized ninety-one area households and aligned with the Movement of Landless Workers, a political and social organisation fighting for land redistribution. Their initial step was to occupy an area of a tree farm operated by the company, alleging the firm of using public land.
Two years after the initial takeover, the organization won state recognition that the company did not have legal title to the parcel of land planted by the firm. “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 was raised in the settlement 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 company and the movement in 2016, returning 3,200 acres of corporate property to the government and providing each household a parcel large enough 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 look after our children,” says the settlement representative.
Despite losing the land, a company representative asserts that the company has always operated with “openness, social and environmental responsibility” and consideration for the local population. “The corporation has never been found guilty of illegal land acquisition and restates that its operational zones are legally regulated and function with the necessary ecological licenses.”
Yet, in the years since the agreement, the families say they have experienced death threats, shooting incidents, burned homes, taken crops and destroyed fields.
According to the movement, the dispute now centres on plots of land that remain inhabited by farmers affiliated with the regional labor organization. When it was facing loss of possession of the disputed property, the company gave 740 adjacent acres to the labor group – a donation confirmed by the organization’s directors.
“There is a lot of persecution occurring in this area. Our shelters have been set on fire, as well as our sugarcane fields.”
Over the past four years, six leaders of the movement have been assigned protective monitoring by Brazil’s protection programme for rights activists, journalists and environmentalists. The authorities has recommended that some of these leaders relocate, but out of loyalty to the movement and connection with their fought-for property, they have refused.
Due to the death threats he has obtained, a community pioneer says he has difficulty resting at night. “I feel genuinely fearful that an incident may occur to my family,” he says.
The organization claims that eight families do not feel sufficiently secure to cultivate their plots, which remain occupied by farmers allegedly associated with the company.
The company says that over the past 15 years, it has allocated “more than 20,000 hectares to land redistribution programs, whether through court settlements, contributions to the federal land reform agency, donations, or straight purchases, to settle persistent disputes in the region.”
The company also says “the creation of the settlements – from design to parceling and lot definition – was managed completely by the regional authorities, without interference from the corporation”, and “declines to discuss disputes among activist groups”.
A community member is among the two individuals who still live in the old encampment. She says she has been harassed by armed men who encircled her home and fired weapons nearby. Since there are no neighbors close, the woman – who lives alone – thinks the gunshots were meant to intimidate her out of taking possession of her allocated land.
During August, the state of Bahia authorised the removal of union farmers who remain on settlement properties – but the decision has yet to be enforced.
Ecological Obstacles and the ‘Green Desert’
In addition to protecting against threats and violence, converting lands once used for single-crop eucalyptus farming into agricultural cultivation is now the main challenge for the settlement residents. Tree cultivation is dominated by major international corporations that, since the 1960s, have been transforming agricultural and woodland areas into monoculture plantations, driven by international market needs.
Brazil is the world’s largest producer of eucalyptus, a rapidly developing, thirsty crop, whose pulp is exported to make cardboard and writing materials. The majority of the nation’s eucalyptus pulp is exported to Europe, where it is used to make paper products often promoted as a renewable alternative to synthetic materials – despite the environmental damage caused by single-crop farming.
Within Bahia state, the expansion of these plantations has earned the local moniker “emerald wasteland”, due to the disappearance of native species and the critical lack of water and land faced by families living near eucalyptus plantations.
A settlement founder was raised in the area and remembers the river before the region was changed by single-crop tree farming. “We used to cross it in a canoe. It was full,” he says. “After the company arrived, it dried up.” He links the resource shortage to the company’s arrival in 1991.
The company says it “implements a varied management approach, in which trees are grown in elevated regions, while lowlands, water sources and indigenous plants are protected. This system guarantees ground conservation, animal habitat preservation and the maintenance of water resources.” The firm also says it “conducts continuous monitoring of small watersheds in its operational zone” and “develops reforestation and forest restoration projects in locations adjacent to settlements”.
Within the adjacent region of Minas Gerais, the tree cultivation area of Turmalina municipality has seen its groundwater level decrease by 4.5 metres over the previous four decades, per scientific studies at the state university.
Vegetation under eucalyptus monoculture takes in just over a quarter of precipitation to restore groundwater levels – versus a 50% level of absorption linked to native forest. Three-quarters of agricultural households surveyed in the state 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 practical environmental answer after a series of large wildfires in its national farms.
Notwithstanding ecological dangers, eucalyptus plantations continue to play a significant role in the emissions trading system, with plants being marketed as carbon credits to fossil fuel polluters to offset their emissions. Despite opposition from campaigners, in {
