Global Forest Coalition

GFC members and allies are helping to build a new gender-just map of community-led solutions for forests, people and the planet.

What does a real solution to the climate and biodiversity crises look like?

It might be an agroecological farming system rooted in traditional knowledge. It might be a community defending its territory from extractive industries. It might be women organising to protect forests, strengthen food sovereignty or build more equitable forms of community governance.

And it is not just about what communities are doing. It is also about what makes these solutions possible, and just as importantly, what stands in their way.

These questions are at the heart of a new Gender-Just Real Solutions Map for Forests and Communities being developed by the Global Forest Coalition (GFC), with support from Bread for the World (Brot für die Welt) and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLF). Over three online sessions held in July and August, GFC members and allies from across the Global South have been working together to shape the ideas, criteria and methodology that will underpin the map.

The process began in July with a discussion about what a false solution is, and what makes a solution real. Participants shared examples from their own territories and explored how community-led alternatives differ from false solutions that can reproduce environmental destruction, inequality and corporate control. Importantly, the group agreed that the map should focus on concrete, localised practices rooted in particular territories, rather than treating “solutions” as generic or easily scalable commodities.

The second session put gender justice at the centre. Rather than treating gender as simply a question of whether women are represented or participate, participants explored who does the work, including unpaid care and domestic work; who makes decisions; who controls land, resources and income; and what would make an initiative genuinely gender-just. The discussion also considered how the map itself can challenge the underlying colonial and patriarchal systems that shape relationships between people, territories and nature.

Members of a community forest user group are managing their community forest in Nawalparasi district. Nawalparsi FECOFUN

As Jaqueline Santos of FASE, a GFC member group in Brazil, explained, women in Pará play a leading role in agriculture and in protecting their territories. She also highlighted the importance of women’s groups and support networks in rural communities, where women facing violence can struggle to access formal systems of support.

“Their perspective, their understanding of what constitutes a territory, and their knowledge of what must be preserved and protected are given much greater prominence and attention by women,” said Santos. “In Brazil, we have a situation where it’s very difficult to report violence in the city. In rural areas, it’s very difficult to file a report (…) There’s an entire system that doesn’t support women who have been victims of violence. The state is designed for men. We work intensively on the issue of violence with support groups. There must be women’s groups in these communities, because there’s no space for women in groups where men participate,” she said. 

The third session then turned to a question that is crucial for understanding how real solutions can flourish: what conditions do they require?

Participants discussed ecological, social, economic, political and cultural conditions, including community organising, legal frameworks, self-determination, autonomous governance, community-led financing and gender-responsive practices. They also identified barriers ranging from extractive projects and land grabbing to patriarchal policies, colonial legal frameworks, bureaucracy, lack of funding and the criminalisation of environmental defenders.

Ariella Kabunga of the Integrated Program for the Development of the Pygmy People in Kivu (PIDP) stressed that gender justice requires more than gender-just laws on paper. Women must be able to participate meaningfully in decision-making, influence decisions and take on positions of responsibility.

“We need political and legal frameworks to ensure equal rights for women. But it is not enough to have gender-just laws and policies. It is also necessary to ensure the dissemination, application, and monitoring implementation at the national, local, and community levels. Community organizations and structures must integrate gender into their policies, programs, budgets and decision-making mechanisms,” Kabunga said. “Another fundamental condition is the effective participation of women in decision-making processes. It is not enough to invite women to a meeting. They must have the opportunity to express themselves, influence decisions, and hold positions of responsibility.”

These discussions are now helping to build the map itself. The first set of inclusion and exclusion criteria is being shared with participants for validation and further input, while GFC and the Critical Geography Collective (CGC) are also working with participants to develop a protocol for protecting information and safeguarding data.

The emerging methodology will ensure that the map is not simply a collection of points on a screen. Each entry will tell a story: What is the initiative? Why is it a real solution? Who is involved? Where and when is it happening? And how has it been made possible? Users will be able to explore different kinds of initiatives, from agroecology and forest protection to traditional knowledge, sustainable livelihoods and territories free from extractivism, as well as the conditions that have enabled them to flourish.

The map will therefore be a space to see and learn from each other’s experiences, forms of resistance and social action, rather than imposing a single model of what a solution should look like. As the project’s methodology notes, real solutions are diverse, territorial and shaped by the communities themselves. The map is intended to grow from that diversity and remain open to continued revision and learning.

Ultimately, the goal is to make visible what too often remains invisible: the people, practices, rights and conditions that already offer pathways towards protecting forests, biodiversity and communities, without relying on markets to put a price on nature.

The Gender-Just Real Solutions Map for Forests and Communities is expected to launch in November 2026, with the database continuing to grow beyond the initial launch.

Stay tuned — the map is taking shape.

A map built collectively

The Gender-Just Real Solutions Map is being developed collaboratively with the Critical Geography Collective (CGC) and GFC members and allies working with communities and movements across the Global South. Organisations participating in the design of the map, its criteria and its initial entries include:

• Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) — Bangladesh
• Federation of Social and Educational Assistance Organisations (FASE) — Brazil
• Fundación de Expresión Intercultural, Educativa y Ambiental (FUNDAEXPRESIÓN) — Colombia
• Colectivo VientoSur — Chile
• Programme Intégré pour le Développement du Peuple Pygmée au Kivu (PIDP) — Democratic Republic of Congo
• Instituto para el Futuro Común Amerindio (IFCA) — Honduras
• Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal (FECOFUN) — Nepal
• National Forum for Advocacy Nepal (NAFAN) — Nepal
• Centro de Desarrollo Ambiental y Humano (CENDAH) — Panama
• Zambia Social Forum (ZAMSOF) — Zambia
• Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA) — global network
• Latin American and Caribbean Platform for Climate Justice (PLACJC) — regional network

Have a real solution to share? 

We are also inviting organisations and community groups to suggest initiatives or projects that they think meet the map’s criteria. If you know of a community-led initiative that could belong on the map, please contact Valentina Figuera Martínez, GFC’s Gender Justice and Forests Campaign Coordinator, who is leading the project, at valentinafmartinez@globalforestcoalition.org.

Korean and international civil society organisations have formally called on SK Telecom to end its investment in a cookstove project in Myanmar that has been carried out in collaboration with an abusive military junta, and to put in place a responsible system for managing climate-related risk.

On 11 August, 28 civil society organisations from around the world — including the Myanmar Policy Institute, No Business With Genocide, Plan 1.5 and the Global Forest Coalition — issued a joint letter to Jung Jae-hun, CEO of SK Telecom. Citing the risk of human rights abuses associated with the project and the inflation of its claimed emission reductions, the letter sets out three demands: (1) end the company’s investment in the project; (2) refrain from trading the carbon credits already generated by the project; and (3) establish an internal system to fairly and accurately assess and verify international mitigation projects.

SK Telecom and 11 other SK Group affiliates have invested in the project since March 2018. In February this year, the project became the first in the world to have credit issuance approved under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM). According to the Korean NGO Climate Change Center (CCC), which runs the project, SK Group has obtained 648,783 credits. Other Korean investors, including Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), ended their involvement after the military coup in Myanmar. SK Group’s 12 affiliates are now the only companies still invested in the project.

The signatories to the open letter point out that since the 2021 attempted coup, the project continued to be implemented by the Dry Zone Greening Department (DZGD) — an agency under the command and control of the military junta. Justice For Myanmar, a Myanmar civil society group, has criticised this arrangement, stating that “working with them on projects linked to international carbon market mechanisms lends administrative legitimacy to the junta and effectively grants impunity for their crimes under international law”.

The signatories also note that Sagaing, Mandalay and Magway, three of the regions where the project operated and emissions reductions were claimed during the crediting period (January 2021 to May 2022), are among the areas worst affected by military attacks on civilians. They argue that presenting communities as “beneficiaries” of improved cookstoves when the agency running the project is so clearly linked to the very forces attacking those communities is a contradiction.

Zaw Tuseng, Director of the Myanmar Policy Institute, said: “Communities in Sagaing and Magway are living through airstrikes, displacement, the destruction of villages and severe restrictions on movement. Under these conditions, credible monitoring, meaningful consultation and informed community consent cannot simply be assumed. SK Telecom should not use carbon credits generated under such circumstances to claim climate progress. It must disclose its involvement, suspend the use of these credits and support an independent, conflict-sensitive review that listens directly to affected communities.”

Due to the conditions on the ground, no on-site inspection of the project was carried out over the course of the verification process in any of the project’s locations. The project’s verification reports were prepared on the basis of online interviews rather than field verification, citing the difficult security situation caused by the conflict. Although the project presents women as its principal beneficiaries, only a very small number of women were interviewed as part of the monitoring or verification processes.

The signatories also raise the issue of inflated emission reductions. According to analysis by the European think tank Carbon Market Watch (CMW), the project was approved for the issuance of roughly 7.2 times more PACM credits than its actual emission reductions likely warrant. Most of the credits obtained by SK Group, the organisations say, are “junk credits” that deliver no real emission reductions.

SK Telecom itself has acknowledged that the emission reductions claimed by the Myanmar cookstove project cannot be verified. In its 2024 SK Telecom Taxonomy Report, the company classified the project as ‘not Aligned’ under the Korean Green Taxonomy(K-Taxonomy), citing “practical difficulties in verifying the greenhouse gas emission data of cookstoves used in Myanmar.” The project has thus been excluded from the green economic activities SK Telecom reports to investors. Despite this, it has still been allowed to generate hundreds of thousands of PACM credits for SK Group. 

Sooyoun Han, Policy Campaigner at Plan 1.5, said: “If SK Telecom uses credits with no assured emission reductions to meet its obligations under the Korea Emissions Trading Scheme (K-ETS), the environmental integrity of the scheme will inevitably be undermined. And if these junk credits are placed on the market to be used towards a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will only move further out of reach.” She added: “If SK Telecom ends this investment before it is too late and builds an internal system to assess and verify international mitigation projects, it can prevent this from happening again and demonstrate that SK Group’s ‘Double Bottom Line’ — the simultaneous pursuit of economic and social value — is more than a slogan.”

Oli Munnion, with the Global Forest Coalition, said: “If the very first project to be cleared for crediting under the Paris Agreement’s new carbon market scheme is so clearly mired in controversy due to human rights abuses and over-crediting, what hope is there for the thousands of other projects in the crediting pipeline? If claims of “high-integrity” are to have any meaning whatsoever, then the main organisations behind this project—SK Group as financial backers and the PACM Supervisory Body with ultimate responsibility for oversight—must ensure that these junk credits are never used to offset very real and harmful emissions.”  

The organisations have asked SK Telecom’s CEO to respond to the open letter by 24 August.

Signatories:

60+ Climate Action
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Griffith University
BigWave – Youth Climate Action Group
Biofuelwatch
Blue Dalian
Campaign for a New Myanmar
Carbon Market Watch
Climate Communications Coalition
Colectivo VientoSur
Earth Ethics, Inc.
Extinction Rebellion Korea
Federation of Community Forest Users, Nepal (FECOFUN)
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
Green Korea United
Indigenous Environmental Network
Institute for Green Transformation(IGT)
International Campaign for the Rohingya
Korean Civil Society in Support of Democracy in Myanmar
Korean Federation for Environmental Movement(KFEM)
Korean Women’s Environmental Network(KWEN)
Link-AR Borneo
Myanmar Policy Institute
No Business With Genocide
Plan 1.5
Practicing Buddhist Monk’s Association
Rainforest Action Network
Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente(RedAfros)

This blog was a collaboration between the Environmental Paper Network, Fórum Carajás, and the Global Forest Coalition.

The promise of “green steel” has become an attractive narrative in global efforts to decarbonize heavy industry. After all, the steel industry is responsible for around 7% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Companies highlight claims of reduced carbon emissions, renewable charcoal, and sustainable forestry as evidence that steel production can become environmentally friendly.

In Brazil, some steel producers market eucalyptus-derived charcoal as a renewable, low-carbon or even carbon-neutral substitute for fossil coal. However, behind these claims lies a reality that many rural communities in Brazil know all too well: land conflicts, environmental degradation, and threats to traditional livelihoods.

Illustrating this contradiction is Aço Verde do Brasil (AVB), a Brazilian steel producer that has 50,000 hectares of industrial eucalyptus plantations for charcoal production, and has declared its factory in the state of Maranhão the “world’s first carbon neutral steel plant”. However, long-standing conflicts over land with communities in the area show why industrial decarbonization cannot be assessed through carbon accounting trickery alone. It must also be judged by its consequences for impacted territories and communities.

Formiga Community Faces Intimidation

The community of Formiga in the Baixo Parnaíba region of Maranhão has been in a dispute with AVB over approximately 600 hectares of land for several years. Formiga residents claim the land as theirs under community ownership laws, and argue they hold documents asserting their rights over the disputed area. However, AVB also claims the land as its own, and plans to clear it, in order to expand its eucalyptus plantations.

Earlier this month, Formiga residents were unexpectedly visited by a large group of armed military police officers after AVB filed a complaint alleging that community members had occupied company land. The community rejects this characterization and says that the police contingent arrived without a search warrant.

Mayron Régis, from Fórum Carajás, an NGO that supports local residents and a member of the Biomass Action Network (BAN), explains that “the allegation has no basis. The Formiga community is in a dispute with AVB over 600 hectares and, for some time, residents refrained from planting on this land because of threats made by the company,” he says. “But they decided to begin planting again because they are farmers, and farming is what they know and how they sustain themselves. In response to that decision, the company fabricated this complaint as a way of preventing residents from continuing to cultivate the land.”

The accusation is unfounded. The dispute concerns approximately 600 hectares of land, officially registered in the rural property registry of the national land agency INCRA as owned by the local community.

However, the company claims the land too. For a considerable period, Formiga residents avoided cultivating the area because of threats allegedly made by the company. As farming is the primary source of livelihood for Formiga residents, their collective way of life depends on cultivating their traditional lands. For the community, choosing to cultivate the land was not an “invasion”, but them exercising their right to work the land and sustain themselves, on land they understand to be their own. Rather than seeking dialogue, AVB chose to continue its campaign of harassment and intimidation by filing a complaint that resulted in police intervention. For the community, this represents another attempt to prevent families from exercising their rights.

Communities under pressure across Brazil

 

Events in Formiga are not an isolated example, but rather part of a wider escalation of territorial pressure in the region. Across Brazil, rural communities frequently report that legal action, police operations, and land disputes are used to pressure residents who challenge large-scale agribusiness and industrial projects. As Mayron explains:

“Over the past few weeks, what we have seen in the Baixo Parnaíba region of Maranhão is a considerable increase in attempts to intimidate traditional communities, alongside incursions into traditional territories, particularly by eucalyptus companies and soy growers. It gives the impression that this is all being coordinated. In response, communities in the region are coming together in order to resist the expansion of soy and eucalyptus monocultures, and the landgrabbing and intimidation they bring.”

In 2025, the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra –  CPT) recorded 1,593 rural conflicts in Brazil, 75% of which involved land. The region of Maranhão led the country in recorded cases of violence related to land, with 190 occurrences. The Commission warns that, even when the total number of recorded conflicts falls, violence against communities remains persistently high.

Photo shared in WhatsApp groups by Mayron Regis from Fórum Carajás

Green rebranding and historical impacts

The current conflict in Formiga reflects the historical harm caused by steel production in Maranhão, which the company is trying to cover up through its environmental branding efforts. A 2023 investigation by Veja, updated in 2024, examined the rebranding of Gusa Nordeste into AVB and contrasted the company’s carbon-neutral claims with the environmental and social legacy of the steel and pig iron industries in Açailândia, where AVB’s steel plant is located. The report described how pollution has affected more than 1,000 residents of Pequiá, a community living next to AVB’s steel plant and a number of pig-iron plants. It also looked at numerous previous legal actions taken against steel companies in the municipality, and historical environmental complaints involving the company.

Veja also reported that the carbon-neutral certification publicized by AVB helped open the way for two green-bond issuances in 2021 and 2022, which together raised R$650 million for eucalyptus planting associated with the production of its branded “green steel.” This indicates that environmental labels are not merely a matter of public image or branding: they also facilitate access to substantial financial resources and support the territorial expansion of plantation-based supply chains.

In its response to Veja, AVB rejected the suggestion that its transformation amounted to greenwashing. It described the charcoal it uses as “biocarbon”, and presented it as a renewable and carbon-neutral alternative to fossil coal. The company stated that it had stopped producing pig iron (which steel is produced from) in Açailândia in 2020, that its newer steel production processes were cleaner, and that it continuously monitored environmental conditions and complied with agreements reached with Maranhão’s environmental authorities.

What is “Green” Coal?

The charcoal used by companies such as AVB is often described as “green coal”—a term referring to charcoal produced from eucalyptus plantations under “sustainable forest management” rather than from native forests.

Unlike mineral coal (coal extracted from mines), eucalyptus charcoal is made by harvesting fast-growing eucalyptus trees, carbonizing the wood in kilns, and using the resulting charcoal as a reducing agent in steel production.

Because eucalyptus can be replanted, companies argue that this charcoal is renewable and significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil coal. This is one of the reasons Brazil has become internationally recognized for producing steel with a “lower carbon footprint” than many other countries.

However, calling this product “green” is misleading, even if only carbon emissions are considered. Purely on the basis of emissions, burning charcoal actually results in more atmospheric carbon emissions than burning coal per unit of energy. However, international carbon accounting loopholes allow companies to ignore the emissions from burning biomass, including producing and burning charcoal.

Whether using biomass from plantations rather than native forests produces genuine emissions reductions depends on what is counted: the previous use of the land, changes in vegetation and soil carbon, plantation establishment, harvesting, fertilizers and pesticides, transport, emissions from charcoal kilns, repeated rotations and the time required for newly planted trees to absorb the carbon released, among many other factors and impacts. Biomass is therefore not automatically renewable, sustainable or carbon-neutral simply because trees can be replanted.

The Hidden Costs Behind “Green” Charcoal

Investigations by Deutsche Welle and Mongabay have documented the social and environmental impacts associated with the rapid expansion of eucalyptus plantations in Brazil. Several indigenous-focused organisations have also denounced the practice throughout the country.

A November 2025 briefing by the Latin America Working Group of the Biomass Action Network estimates that Latin America produces around 10 million tonnes of charcoal annually, mainly for the steel industry. Brazil alone produces approximately 7 million tonnes a year (almost all of it from wood grown in industrial eucalyptus monocultures) and around 90% of the country’s charcoal is consumed by the iron and steel sector. It documents how industrial biomass supply chains are linked to land concentration, territorial conflicts, water stress, biodiversity loss, precarious labour and corporate control over extensive areas of land. Some of the most significant impacts include:

Water depletion

Eucalyptus grows extremely quickly and has a high demand for water. Communities living near extensive plantations have reported declining stream flows, disappearing springs, and increasing water scarcity. Although water availability depends on several environmental factors, researchers have raised concerns that large monoculture plantations can significantly affect local hydrology, especially in already vulnerable regions.

Biodiversity loss

Replacing diverse native ecosystems with vast eucalyptus monocultures reduces habitat for wildlife and simplifies landscapes that previously supported rich biodiversity. While plantations contain trees, they do not provide the same ecological functions as native forests. Eucalyptus monocultures are uniform production systems designed for repeated harvesting.

Land concentration

The expansion of industrial eucalyptus plantations often concentrates land ownership in the hands of large companies. This limits access to land for small-scale farmers, traditional communities, and Indigenous peoples, increasing social inequality and intensifying land conflicts.

Community livelihoods

For rural communities, land is not simply an economic asset—it is the basis for food production, culture, memory and collective identity. When access to farmland is restricted or communities face legal intimidation, food security and rural livelihoods are directly threatened.

A green image cannot ignore biodiversity and human rights

Reducing emissions in steel production is an important goal. However, producing “green steel” using charcoal is clearly green in name only, no matter which perspective it is looked at. Climate solutions cannot come at the expense of communities living on and from the land.

A truly sustainable transition must consider not only carbon accounting but also respect for human rights, land tenure, biodiversity, and water resources. If “green steel” depends on practices that displace communities, restrict access to farmland, or generate environmental degradation, then its sustainability claims deserve careful scrutiny.

The situation faced by the Formiga community reminds us that the transition to a low-carbon economy must also be a just transition—one that protects both the climate and the people whose lives are most directly affected by industrial expansion. As global demand for “green steel” continues to grow, governments, investors, and consumers should look beyond corporate sustainability labels and ask a broader question: green for whom?

Photo from Fórum Carajás’ Instagram.