Here in Riau, Indonesia, signs of the struggle to save the last of Sumatra’s forest is everywhere. Daily, the papers cover stories of timber and oil palm companies destroying forests, engaging in corruption, driving land conflicts, sponsoring violence, and marginalizing indigenous peoples. Today, on the way to a meeting with the local NGO Elang, I passed [...]

On the first day of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Pak Jamaluddin was quiet. He said the air conditioning of Kuala Lumpor gave him the flu. He seemed lost among the groups of palm producers, with their Blackberries and dark suits. Exhausted from the canoe rides, bad roads, the concrete maze of Jakarta, and [...]

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was founded to create a path towards sustainability in the palm oil industry. A voluntary process, oil palm producers, traders, buyers, and NGO’s have joined up to find an alternative to the massive forest destruction, social conflict, and climate chaos the booming palm oil industry is bringing to [...]

As I have written about on Understory before, Sumatra’s Bukit Tigapuluh is one of the last great forests of the world. It’s breathtaking biodiversity, high conservation importance, and value to three indigenous cultures withstanding, Sinar Mas -Indonesia’s largest producer of palm oil and owner of Asia Pulp and Paper- is actively destroying significant portions of [...]

Contrary to a number of sensationalist media reports leading up to this year’s Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, the RSPO is not breaking up. At the core of the controversy has been the effort to include a commitment by all members of the RSPO to reduce their Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. After two years [...]

The RSPO is the world’s largest annual meeting of oil palm industry, environmentalists, human rights advocates, and, most importantly, community members. Today, I watched as a community member from Borneo stood up in front of oil palm producers, NGOs, and technocrats, identified himself as a victim of oil palm expansion, and tore apart the falsity [...]

Fall is glorious in the Twin Cities! Leaves of brilliant reds, oranges and yellows hang in the streets showing off the changing seasons like a painting depicting a powerful symbol of community change.  As the cold of winter creeps in, local Twin Cities folks are both preparing to hibernate for the cold of winter and [...]

A new, hard hitting, RAN case study on Cargill’s oil palm operations in PNG, ‘Commodity Colonialism’, is now available for download HERE. Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a nation that does not easily fit with our society’s dominant ideas of development, property, and conservation. Many Papuans have little interaction with the cash economy; although categorized by [...]

Yesterday’s global call-in day to Cargill’s CEO Gregory Page at his headquarters in Wayzata, MN was a huge success thanks to all of our wonderful supporters and activists!  Great work!  By 10am close to 2,000 people had already placed a call of concern into U.S. Agribusiness Giant Cargill and by the end of the day [...]

The controversy surrounding the US Chamber of Commerce continues. The labor coalition Change to Win recently issued a report on how the Chamber has been hijacked by right wing ideologues, whose opposition to regulation of greenhouse gas pollution has included calling for the EPA to conduct a ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ on climate change. In a [...]