The World Rainforest Movement is an international network of citizens’ groups of North and South involved in efforts to defend the world’s forests. It works to secure the lands and livelihoods of forest peoples and supports their efforts to defend the forests from commercial logging, dams, mining, plantations, shrimp farms, colonisation and other projects that threaten them. The WRM was established in 1986 and initially focused its activities on the flaws in the FAO and World Bank’s “Tropical Forestry Action Plan” and countering the excesses of the tropical timber trade and the problems of the International Tropical Timber Organisation. Since 1996 the International Secretariat of the WRM was hosted in Uruguay, and Winfridus Overbeek is the present WRM International Coordinator . Since 1997, WRM publishes a monthly e-bulletin in four languages (Spanish, English, French and Portuguese), which is on the web and widely distributed. WRM maintains a bilingual web site. The WRM bulletin is instrumental in the establishment of permanent links with country-based organisations, which use it to publicise their struggles internationally. Additionally, WRM has produced an important number of books, booklets and briefings -in several languages on the impacts of tree plantations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The WRM will contribute very substantially to Work Package 2 (data base of environmental justice conflicts) with its activist knowledge of tree plantation conflicts, and it will be involved mainly also in Work Package 5 (biomass conflicts, including paper pulp and agro-fuels) and Work Package 10 (international trade).
Winfridus Overbeek. Winnie was elected as the International Coordinator of WRM in January 2011. Winnie has a long standing relationship with WRM since he has been a member of the WRM Board since 2003 and a very close collaborator of the organisation. He is based in the Brazilian town of Vitoria in the Espirito Santo state. He is also an active member of NGO Cepedes and the Brazilian Alert against the Green Desert Network providing support to communities affected by against large scale tree plantations and other large-scale (agro) industrial projects.
Ricardo Carrere. Professional forester, graduated in Uruguay and the “Ecole Nationale des Ingenieurs des Travaux des Eaux et Forets” in France. He lived in England for several years. Since 1988 he concentrated his energies on research and campaigning at national and international levels to both protect native forests and to oppose the spread of large-scale tree monocultures. He is the co-author with Larry Lohman of Pulping the South: Industrial Tree Plantations and the World Paper Economy (Zed Books, London, 1996).
Teresa Perez joined the World Rainforest Movement International Secretariat in 1999. Part of Teresa’s time is assigned as Financial officer, but most of her activities include tasks as Networking officer. She has been involved in different campaigns aimed at supporting local peoples struggles in defense of their rights in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Staff member at the WRM in Montevideo, in charge of database and publications. She has a degree in Management and joined the international secretariat of the World Rainforest Movement in 1999. Currently she is the Financial and Networking Officer for the organisation.
