Both the Sekonyer Community and endangered orangutans are losing their forest homes.

Since joining RAN’s forest program over two years ago, I have read and written about the many dire consequences of industrial scale palm oil plantations in Indonesia: one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, critical habitat for endangered species like orangutans destroyed, gross human rights abuses and labor conditions, and social conflict between communities that depend on the forests for their livelihoods and the companies destroying those forests. But until recently, my personal connection to all of this remained largely academic.

Our trip to the wilds of Borneo this month after attending the annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has transformed my theoretical understanding of the problems with palm oil. The experience of witnessing these impacts in person has been staggering, and I found it hard to believe that, even on the edge of a globally treasured, protected area, I was able to document one of the most severe cases of active forest destruction from palm oil expansion I have heard about to date.

What I saw during the four days we toured the forests surrounding Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park was more extraordinary and devastating than anything I could have imagined. The weight of my realization about what’s at stake hit me hard the day we spent walking through old-growth tropical rainforest, seeing wild orangutans, Horn Bills, Proboscis monkeys, and the recent evidence of a Sun Bear clawing a tree for honey, followed by an afternoon watching an excavator tearing down towering trees and digging a drainage canal into one of the last areas of natural forest remaining in the buffer zone of the park. We were on the edge of a community agroforestry project designed to demonstrate an alternative to destructive monoculture in an area almost entirely razed to make way for palm oil plantations.

We watched, horrified, as an irreplaceable hotspot of biodiversity fell before our eyes, two majestic Horn Bills flew overhead, and an endangered Red Langur monkey peered at us through the trees.

After spending a full day documenting human rights abuses with our allies from Save Our Borneo, an organization working on the frontlines of Central Kalimantan’s palm oil expansion crisis, RAN forest team member Lafcadio Cortesi and I took a night bus across Borneo from the city of Palangkaraya to Pangkalanbun. Even though the landscape was shrouded in darkness, the endless sea of sterile palm oil plantations beyond the road stood out throughout our entire 11 hour journey — a grim reminder that the province of Central Kalimantan has one of the fastest rates of oil palm expansion in Indonesia, perhaps even in the world.

The Sekonyer River

Around 4am we arrived in the small port town of Kumai at the office of Friends of the National Parks Foundation (FNPF), the incredible organization my colleague Laurel visited in Bali earlier this year that also operates community development and reforestation projects in Borneo. I collapsed in a makeshift bunk bed and fell asleep to the sounds of Indonesian sunrise: distant speakers blaring Muslim calls to prayer, a singing gecko, a rooster crowing, and a chainsaw running somewhere behind the little house we slept in.

A few hours later we were racing to the edge of the Kumai River on motorbikes to travel by speed boat to the Sekonyer River, the gateway to Tanjung Puting National Park. Tanjung Puting is a globally recognized biosphere reserve and an unparalleled diversity hotspot. It’s home to many endangered species such as orangutans and Clouded leopards. Despite the incredible importance of Tanjung Puting, the park and its surroundings — the buffer zone — are under threat from illegal logging and mining operations and, most ominously, the encroachment of palm oil.

The reckless, short-sighted expansion of palm oil plantations in Central Kalimantan is pushing many of these species to the brink of extinction, literally leaving them with nowhere to go. The disappearing rainforest we witnessed falling is sandwiched between the Sekonyer River, the national park, and 10,000 hectares of plantations. Inside the national park, orangutans have more hope of survival. But orangutans can’t swim, so when we saw a pregnant orangutan mother with her young children on the west side of the river — where the forest was actively being converted to oil palm plantation — my heart sank.

Oil Palm on Peat

The deeper in we got, the more severe the problems. The drainage canals along the edge of the plantations were filled with the dark black water of dissolved peat soil — highlighting the troubling reality that the much of this plantation was on top of carbon-rich peat soils and thus emitting massive amounts of CO2 as it rots upon being exposed to the air. In the converted peatlands, many of the oil palms were growing sideways and some even falling over. It seemed certain that the yields were marginal and the costs — the loss of a thriving and rare ecosystem and community livelihoods — was great. It seemed sure the Indonesian law prohibiting conversion of deep peatlands was being violated.

Responsible for this mess is BW Plantations, an RSPO member with about 100,000 hectares (240,000 acres) of oil palm plantations in Central and East Kalimantan. In addition to its draining of peatlands and destroying primary forests right up against a national park filled with many of the world’s last orangutans, the company is also grossly disrespecting the rights of the local community.

Community secretary Mr. Taufik delivers an impassioned speech about the community's resistance to palm oil expansion. The banner reads: PT Bumi Langgeng Return Community Rights

The vibrant village of Tanjung Harapan on the Sekonyer river has over 100 families who are actively opposing the palm oil plantation and its expansion. Immediately upon entering the village by water, we saw two huge protest banners and a large sign reading, “PT Bumi Langgeng: Return the Rights of the Sekonyer Community.” The community members depend on the forest for their livelihoods and see the encroaching palm oil as a threat to their reliance on community food gardens, agroforestry, and fishing. They are angry that the palm oil plantation has used over 2,200 hectares (over 5,000 acres) of their village lands without any consultation or approval.

During our stay in the Sekonyer community, we slept under mosquito nets on a boat on the river’s edge. Our second night we met with community leaders and they told us their story. We learned that the community has been at odds with the palm oil company PT Bumi Langgeng, a subsidiary of BW Plantations, for many years over a land conflict. In the last several months, community resistance has escalated as land clearing continues at breakneck speed. I could actually hear the bulldozers demolishing forest from the community garden — to say it was unsettling would be a major understatement.

Mother and baby orangutan at Camp Leakey

When the company cut down the community’s native rubber trees around six months ago, it triggered the first demonstration. Police showed up but no one was arrested. The latest demonstration took place just a few months ago after community leaders sent formal letters of complaint to the company as well as the district, provincial, and national governments seeking recognition of their lands, compensation for the 2,200 ha. of community land already taken by the company, and a halt to further expansion into forests and remaining community lands. Community members blocked the canal from the palm oil plantation to the main river. So far they have not received any response.

This is the true cost of palm oil. Is it worth it?

As the cheapest, highest-yielding vegetable oil and now the most heavily traded edible oil in the world, I understand that companies benefit from this lucrative industry so dependent on cheap labor and precious yet cheap rainforests. But at what price are we going to continue expanding this commodity? Expansion of palm oil into ecological and cultural hotspots needs to stop. The community of Sekonyer needs our support to secure their rights and justice. The time is ticking for the orangutans and other species depending on the forests — if they can’t be protected from palm oil expansion on the edge of a national park, the prospects for responsible palm oil look grim.

RAN sent a delegation of four staff to lobby for human rights and rainforest protections at the 9th Annual RSPO Meeting in Malaysia.

As the 9^thAnnual Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) meeting wrapped up on the island of Borneo, the crisis stemming from the uncontrolled expansion of palm oil plantations into rainforests and communities reached a fever pitch.

Consider this: In the few days that RAN’s four staff-member delegation attended the RSPO meeting in SE Asia, the Forest People’s Programme (FPP) released a comprehensive and scathing report that documents Cargill supplier and palm oil giant Wilmar’s complicity in the bulldozing of homes and the use of live ammunition to forcibly evict Indigenous community members on the island of Sumatra.

In a press conference on the human rights impacts of palm oil held during the RSPO meeting, Rukaiyah Rofiq, who goes by Uki and works with the human rights advocacy group Yayasan Setara Jambi, warned that companies producing palm oil under the RSPO umbrella are failing to resolve the social conflict caused by plantation expansion. In a November 24 article in the print version of the Borneo Post titled “RSPO Emboldens Violators of Indigenous Rights – NGO,” Uki said:

Ideally, we had hoped that with the RSPO, these conflicts would be stopped or at least reduced, and the rights of the communities be restored. But we’re not seeing any impact with the RSPO. This is evident in the ninth meeting we’ve had with the RSPO. There has not been any change; the conflicts have not decreased. The presence of RSPO has not reduced or resolved the conflicts.

Uki is referring to the more than 600 cases of social conflict related to palm oil in Indonesia documented by Sawit Watch. In the same press conference, Jefri Gideon of Sawit Watch said: “There is a big hope among everyone that the RSPO can help resolve these conflicts.” He urged RSPO members to go beyond talking about the RSPO principles and criteria and code of conduct and actually implement them.

During the same week, the Jakarta Globe published two articles, “Indonesian Palm Oil Dispute at ‘Crisis Point’” and “Paradise Lost at Hands of Palm Oil Companies“, about a separate conflict surrounding the village of Muara Tae on the island of Borneo.

Muara Tae is in a stand-off with a palm oil firm whose forest clearing threatens the villagers’ entire way of life. Community member Petrus Asuy issued an impassioned plea, saying, “Because of the palm oil plantations, our water has become polluted and many of our springs have dried up. We took our case to the local government, but they ignored us. We are completely against these companies because they have compromised our way of life. What hope is there now for our grandchildren? We are pleading for help for our situation and for this activity to stop.”

It has become abundantly clear that wherever massive international commodity corporations are granted huge forest concessions and allowed free reign to manage them, community conflict and environmental devastation quickly follow.

It is more imperative than ever that companies like Cargill and Wilmar immediately address the serious problems of human rights abuses and rainforest destruction in their supply chains and become a part of the solution to this crisis instead of indiscriminately trafficking palm oil into North American and European markets. Please take a moment to ask Cargill CEO Greg Page to adopt safeguards to keep controversial palm oil out of American food products.

The 9th Annual RSPO Meeting is in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo)

In an interview, Dr. Marc Ancrenanz of HUTAN notes that oil palm plantations cover a staggering 14,000 square kilometers of Sabah, one of the two states in Malaysian Borneo and the number one producer of Malaysian palm oil. This is equal to 20 Singapores planted solely with palm!

In the same interview, Dr. Marc Ancrenanz mentions that genetic studies in Sabah show that the orangutan population has declined by 50% to 90% over the past few decades. This severe decline is due to several causes, such as hunting and the illegal pet trade, but the foremost reason is forest loss as it is cut down and converted to agriculture.

This final frontier — home of our globe’s oldest rainforests and last stands of orangutans — is the setting for this year’s RSPO conference, where strange bedfellows come together and debate the “sustainable” palm oil industry. Activists, industry heavy weights, and the Malaysian Palm Oil Association spend three days playing their respective hands in the struggle over the fate of  tropical forests. Major plantation companies like Sime Darby and Wilmar attend the conference to try and stop the RSPO from making it any more difficult for them to convert rainforest to palm oil plantations, while RAN brings a different set of values to the meeting.

Next week, when families across North America are celebrating Thanksgiving with their families, our team will be attending the 9^th annual Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) conference in Borneo.

Comprised of mostly Indonesia and Malaysia, Borneo is the third-largest island in the world and is known for being one of the most biologically and culturally rich landscapes in the world. Unfortunately, these incredible rainforests are in grave danger from Indonesia and Malaysia’s unchecked agricultural expansion.

Our goal is to advocate for human rights, demonstrate the need for companies to establish safeguards on their palm oil supply chains, and stop the RSPO from certifying forest conversion in the face of this industrial agriculture onslaught. We will gather stories from community members affected by Cargill suppliers, many of whom attend the conference as delegates of Sawit Watch and travel from several different regions impacted by the palm oil operations of Sime Darby, Tribakti Sari Mas, Cresna Duta Agrindo, & Asiatic Persada/Wilmar. The controversy-laden palm oil peddled by these companies is exported around the world by Cargill and ends up in half of the products in your grocery store — think Kellogg’s, Smucker’s, and Girl Scout cookies.

The RSPO has come a long way, but not far enough

Throughout the conference RAN will be advocating for several demands to ensure that human rights and the environment are respected by the palm oil industry: The RSPO must start protecting rainforests and the communities and species that depend on them, and must stop certifying palm oil as “sustainable” if it was grown using the horribly destructive practice of draining carbon rich peatlands and exacerbating climate change. The RSPO must also stop dragging its feet and adopt a greenhouse gas emissions standard if it wants its palm oil certification standard to have any level of credibility.

Lastly, the RSPO must implement an effective grievance process that actually addresses pending social conflict complaints and includes a dispute settlement facility that truly respects human rights.

“Before we had a happy life,” Ms. Gaong said she tells her grandchildren. “Now it’s a difficult life. There’s nothing left for them.”

The future of these children remains at stake until the companies responsible for palm oil plantation expansion in Borneo start respecting human rights.

The recent story in the New York Times titled “Clashes Between Tribes and Agribusiness Increase in Malaysia” tells an all-too common story. It’s not a happy story. It’s the story of farming families getting forced off their land, of vanishing cultures, of corporations trying to “compensate” families for their livelihoods and decades of subsistence with $1,600.

Indigenous people in Malaysia have long complained that their historical claims to their land are being sacrificed in the name of progress. But as the country continues its push toward economic prosperity, with key commodities like palm oil a valuable export, rights groups and lawyers say that encroachment on indigenous land is increasing.

Read the powerful story for yourself. It takes place in Sarawak, which is Malaysia’s largest state on the northwest coast of Borneo. The state is known for its natural and cultural wonders, but Malaysian palm oil producers are destroying Borneo’s carbon-rich peat forests faster than ever before. According to Mongabay and Wetlands International, “more than one third (353,000 hectares or 872,000 acres) of Sarawak’s peatswamp forests and ten percent of the state’s rainforests were cleared between 2005 and 2010. About 65 percent of the area was converted for oil palm.”

The article goes on to say:

The land that he says once thrived with an abundance of crops that fed his family and provided their livelihood has been stripped bare. Young palm trees now sprout from the ochre-colored earth where he says his relatives had lived since before World War II.

Indigenous peoples and forest communities are not the only ones impacted by palm oil expansion. From an interview with Dr. Marc Ancrenanz of HUTAN in 2010:

Genetic studies in Sabah show that orang-utan population have declined by 50 to 90% over the past few decades. This severe decline is due to several causes such as hunting and pet trade, but the foremost reason is forest losses when the forest is cut down and converted to agriculture.

So we have to ask ourselves: Is using palm oil in Girl Scout cookies or Skippy Peanut Butter worth the wholesale destruction of cultural and ecological biodiversity that it creates?

Cargill is the largest importer of palm oil into the US, supplying most food companies in America. Last week, Rainforest Action Network uncovered an alarming connection linking Cargill’s palm oil imports to slave labor on the island of Borneo.

Here’s the scoop. Kuala Lumpur Kepong (KLK)—one of Malaysia’s largest palm oil plantation companies—is the company that I criticized back in my November 2010 blog post with documented testimonials of two palm oil plantation workers who’d encountered 21st century slave labor conditions on the plantations of a KLK subsidiary. The two villagers from Northern Sumatra were lured by representatives of a KLK subsidiary to work in the company’s palm plantations, only to be forced into slave labor conditions for months until they could escape without being paid.

Just last week we confirmed that KLK supplies palm oil to Cargill. Customs data shows that Cargill imported at least 14 shipments of palm oil — totaling at least 10,000 tons — from Kepong Edible Oils (a fully owned subsidiary of KLK) between October 2008 and March 2011.

As we stated in our press release:

Cargill is buying its oil from companies connected to some of the very worst examples of corporate environmental destruction and human rights abuses. This is yet another of many examples RAN has identified in our three years of campaigning on Cargill that demonstrates the immediate need for the company to adopt a comprehensive palm oil policy.

Until Cargill adopts the following basic safeguards, the company can’t guarantee to American consumers that slave labor is not ending up in their food:

SOCIAL SAFEGUARDS – A commitment to resolve social and land rights tenure conflicts, a no-trade position for growers using child or slave labor, adherence to obtaining free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of forest-dependent communities before lands are acquired or developed, and a commitment to implement the United Nations “protect, respect and remedy” framework for human rights.*

ENVIRONMENTAL SAFEGUARDS – A commitment to reduce biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions by ending the expansion of palm oil plantations into High Conservation Value (HCV) areas including critical habitat, peatlands and High Carbon Stock forests and/or remaining natural forests.

PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY – A commitment to transparent and consistent reporting of metrics and targets as well as regular stakeholder and rights-holder engagement.

As if being implicated in slave labor wasn’t enough damage for Cargill’s brand in one week, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and its Indonesia partner, Telapak, recently exposed a juicy scandal that implicates Cargill in a dirty mess of illegal logging through its ties to the same company—KLK.

The evidence provided by EIA and Telapak proves that KLK cleared carbon-rich peat forest in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province illegally as the company failed to secure proper licenses. This scandal was documented on the very first day of Indonesia’s logging moratorium — a cornerstone of Norway’s $1 billion climate deal with Indonesia. According to the report, the Norwegian Government has a $41.5 million shareholding in KLK, thereby standing to profit from the company’s recently exposed illegal clearance.

TAKE ACTION

Ask Cargill to adopt basic supply chain safeguards to prevent palm oil that causes rainforest destruction and human rights violations from tainting America’s food supply.

**A commitment to implement the United Nations “protect, respect and remedy framework” over civil and political, social, economic, cultural and environmental rights of affected communities and vulnerable groups of indigenous peoples, migrant workers, women and children. – Human Right Council, March 2011. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework

And guess what? The RSPO again failed to take decisive action against IOI. Meanwhile, IOI is sticking to its guns and defending its indefensible decision to open land for palm cultivation in violation of the law and the land rights of the Long Teran Kanan people.

Which begs the question: Does the RSPO even care about forests and people?

IOI Pelita Palm Oil Operations in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Click to view larger image. Photo: Eric Wakker.

The international community is outraged and sent the following Open Letter to the RSPO:

Dear RSPO Leadership,

With disbelief and outrage we have taken notice of RSPO’s announcement about ‘considerable progress in the past 21 days with regards to interaction between involved parties‘ on IOI Corporation Berhad Grievance Case. (RSPO website, 25 May 2011). We are dismayed with another prolongation by RSPO, and the lack of transparency in handling the process.

The complainants of the grievance have seen no improvement in the interaction with IOI nor with RSPO. Our feedback to RSPO, given jointly by all complainants, has also made sufficiently clear that we are deeply concerned that IOI Group’s current proposal will not resolve the issues.

Since the previous update on RSPO’s website from 4 May, we have not seen anything black-on-white proving that the company is willing to take responsibility for their illegal opening of land in Ketapang, or their willingness to mitigate the environmental damage done, or their commitment to recognize the land rights of the people of Long Teran Kanan. The company has not communicated with us directly about possible improvements of their action plan.

Instead of considerable progress, since May 4, we have merely seen IOI breaking down progress with increasingly vigilant public denials of its problems in Sarawak and Ketapang. An example of which is an article on IOI’s website that allegations against IOI would just be not true. This will not do.

We again call on the RSPO to take more decisive action to hold IOI Corporation to account, including a suspension of all RSPO certificates for IOI’s estates and mills, until the grievance issues are indeed solved.

With kind regards,
Grassroots
Lembaga Gemawan
Kontak Rakyat Borneo
Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN-AP)
Rainforest Action Network
Sarawak Indigenous Lawyers Association (SILA)
Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (SADIA)
Save our Borneo
Sawit Watch
Tenaganita
Vereniging Milieudefensie
Friends of the Earth Europe
WALHI Kalimantan Barat

Dear Mr. Page and employees of Cargill,

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) would like to extend a formal invitation for you and your employees at Cargill Inc. to attend a screening of your choice, at our expense, of the new IMAX 3D feature film Born To Be Wild.

This inspiring film features exquisite footage of young orangutans and baby elephants and tells the stories of the compassionate humans working to rehabilitate them back to the wild. The film is uplifting in spirit and focuses primarily on these two amazing animals and the heart-warming efforts of people trying to help them, while also highlighting serious but often overlooked issues central to the business operations of Cargill.

Many of the orangutans featured in the film were orphaned because their parents were killed when their rainforest habitat was cleared to make room for palm oil plantations. Orangutans are critically endangered and live only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Unfortunately, this is an all too common story. As the number one importer of palm oil into the United States, Cargill has a unique role to play to ensure that rampant palm oil development does not continue to result in rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction.

We understand that the forests of Indonesia are a long way from Wayzata, Minnesota, and it can be difficult to fully connect the dots between business decisions made here and the costs these incur to people and places literally a world away. There is a very real risk that iconic animals like the orangutan could be pushed into extinction within our lifetimes, but it does not have to be this way. Strangely enough, it may well be businessmen headquartered in places like the Twin Cities who ultimately decide their fate.

So please accept this opportunity to allow IMAX 3D to bring the rainforest to you. We feel so strongly that it is important for you to see this film that we are offering to pay for tickets for the first 100 Cargill employees who email keepuswild@ran.org. We will arrange for tickets to be reserved at the theater confidentially and with no strings attached. To view a trailer for the film and find other background materials on this issue, please visit www.ran.org/wild.

Sincerely,

Becky Tarbotton
Executive Director, Rainforest Action Network

Dr. Birute Mary Galdikas
Director, Orangutan Foundation International

Click image to take action.

After fighting for the return of their ancestral lands for more than a decade, the people of Long Teran Kenan in Malaysian Borneo took a stand earlier this month and reclaimed part of their homeland with a decisive and peaceful act of collective resistance. Their territory had been taken from them and converted into oil palm plantations, which are now owned by the notorious global palm oil giant IOI Group.

In Malaysian Borneo, 2.3 million hectares of land have been converted into palm oil plantations, and there are plans to double that area within the next ten years. However, the Long Teran community has drawn a line in the sand by occupying two palm oil plots that IOI had continued to harvest despite a historic March 2010 decision by a Malaysian court that ruled the plots in question were indeed on native customary lands.

In November 2009, IOI promised not to appeal the court’s decision when it was made. IOI has now not only appealed the decision but has also continued to operate illegally on Indigenous lands and has even gone so far as to break off all negotiations with the community.

Support the people of Long Teran by taking action today.

Negotiations Fall Apart – Police Allow Re-Occupation of Lands to Continue

Last November, RAN participated in a negotiation where Marc den Hartog and Rina Rahayu Latar of IOI Group committed to work diligently to resolve the long-standing conflict at Long Teran. After months of inaction from IOI following the community’s court victory, the people of Long Teran called in the local police to ask IOI Group to leave their native lands where the company does not have the community’s permission to operate.

A few days later, with the court ruling behind them, the community blockaded access to the IOI Group plots, re-seized control of their ancestral lands, and started their own community palm oil harvesting. They were able to successfully sell the palm fruits harvested to a neighboring mill and are determined to make their own decisions on land that was stolen from them in the name of “progress”. A community meeting to discuss daily harvesting plans can be seen in the image below, and if you look carefully you will see the natural forest in the background.

Controversial IOI Palm Oil Trafficked into American Grocery Stores

For American consumers the story does not end with this inspiring example of one community determined to defend its Indigenous lands. IOI Group is a known supplier to Cargill, long a primary target of Rainforest Action Network. The story from this community is only one of many we hear from the rainforests of Borneo and beyond, stories of communities that have been devastated by the global demand for palm oil.

Cargill is the number one importer of palm oil into the US, with palm oil now found in half of all packaged foods found on grocery store shelves. This gives Cargill enormous influence over global palm oil markets, including how palm oil is produced, refined and distributed. For more than three years, RAN has pushed Cargill to adopt basic safeguards that would ensure the company is not importing human rights violations, rainforest destruction, and climate change. Because Cargill has to date failed to institute these safeguards, controversial palm oil is still found throughout American supermarkets.

As we all watch the story of Long Teran Kenan unfold, we are struck by two questions weighing heavily on our minds:

1)   Will IOI Group negotiate in good faith or will it continue to use legal technicalities and contest the legitimacy of the Indigenous community?

2)   How many case studies of dirty suppliers will it take to convince Cargill that safeguards are needed on its supply chain?

Please join RAN by taking action today in solidarity with the people of Long Teran!

The producers of DeforestACTION are searching the globe for 10 passionate, motivated and adventurous youth (age 18-35) to spend five months in Borneo working to save endangered orangutans in the jungles of Borneo. The chosen leaders will be the voice, eyes and ears of the project on the ground in Borneo, work to implement the project and be featured in the film.

Millions of acres of rainforest are sacrificed every year for wood pulp, paper, and land for monoculture palm oil plantations. The disastrous effects of deforestation include climate change, displacement of Indigenous and forest-dependent peoples, and the loss of life and critical habitat for animals such as endangered orangutans.

Hardi Baktiantoro, Director of the Center of Orangutan Protection shared this story from the front lines of deforestation in Asia:

“On paper, orangutans are one of the most ‘protected’ species in the world, yet this is not the case even in so called ‘protected’ areas. I have seen orangutans beaten with wooden sticks and many with crushed skulls. Right information leads to right action and therefore our aim is to investigate and expose crimes against orangutans through photo and video documentary.”

About 90 percent of orangutans live in Indonesia, between Sumatra and Borneo islands, while the remaining 10 percent can be found in Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysia. Both species of orangutans have been place on the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with the Sumatran species listed as critically endangered.

Endangered species in Borneo need your help. You only have until March 18th to create and upload a 90 second video pitching DeforestACTION on why you should be one of their 10 project leaders. Getting excited just hearing about the possibility? Then go for it–when it comes to the world’s forests, there’s no time to lose!

A palm oil mill effluent pond in West Kalimantan, Borneo. RAN’s Rainforest Agribusiness team spent three weeks last fall visiting some of Indonesia’s most controversial palm oil plantations. Click the photo to see more pics from the trip.

It may seem like a silly question: Can fruit cause more pollution than coal? But from the perspective of Indonesian waterways, the answer is most certainly yes.

According to Mukri Friatna, head of advocacy for WALHI (Friends of the Earth Indonesia), “Oil palm plantations ranked first as producers of pollutants, followed by mining companies.” WALHI released a report detailing its findings this past December.

This isn’t the first time that palm plantations and mining corporations have been in competition for the top spot on the list of environmental wrongdoers. As we witnessed while traveling through Borneo, palm and mining joint ventures join hands to plow down rainforests.

Any jungle that has the misfortune of growing atop coal, gold, and boxite reserves is liable to be “removed” to make room for massive mining operations. Once the valuable materials have been extracted, the dusty and nutrient-depleted soil is filled in and palm monocultures begin to expand across great expanses that were once tropical rainforests.

None of which excuses the coal mining industry for anything. WALHI’s findings reveal that while oil palm plantations are responsible for having polluted 31 of Indonesia’s rivers, coal companies dumped toxic waste and other dangerous waste products in 19 more. So even though palm plantations are the undisputed champion of poisoning Indonesia’s watercourses, coal mining is still a serious contender.

Wildlife Do Not Belong in Cages! Photo: Grant Palmer

Illegal trafficking, trade, and poaching of endangered wildlife in Indonesia are not new problems, but these disgusting practices that blatantly violate animal rights and the law have been drawing more attention than usual in international media lately.

Although it gives me hope that more people are paying attention to this rampant problem and that new wildlife protection laws are getting enacted, I am very concerned that little is actually being done to improve this dire situation.

As Tracy McVeigh reports from the UK, Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo) has almost 10% of the world’s tropical forest and an extraordinary biodiversity that constantly multiplies with three new species being discovered there on average every month. It is the only home of some of the world’s most endangered mammals: the Bornean pygmy elephant, clouded leopard, sun bear and orangutan. All of them face extinction if the ancient forest is destroyed.

But there are other species, such as the wild banteng, pangolins, crocodiles, tigers, elephants and rhinos, that are less threatened by habitat loss than they are hunting, according to Erik Meijaard, who reported the following in the Jakarta Globe:

Hunting is happening inside and outside protected areas and enforcement of anti-hunting laws is nearly nonexistent. Only the anti-poaching teams for tiger and rhino protection seem to have had some success in catching poachers and getting them prosecuted. The rest of the hunting goes on largely unnoticed, uncontrolled and unpunished.

Indonesia does have laws against killing, trading or otherwise harming protected species, but apart from a handful of cases in which tiger and rhino poachers were jailed, no one has ever been effectively prosecuted for illegally killing protected wildlife in Indonesia.

A recent report by the wildlife trade organization Traffic suggested that more than 1,000 orangutans are killed or captured each year in Kalimantan for the wildlife trade alone. Recent surveys by the Nature Conservancy and the Indonesian Association of Primatologists (Perhappi) suggest that this figure may be an underestimate, and that many more orangutans are killed simply for local consumption.

I find it very hard to believe that Indonesia is famed for its wildlife biodiversity and yet the illegal catching, caging and selling of its wildlife continues widely unregulated. Watch this heart-wrenching video filmed on an average day in a Jakarta market to get a sense of the scope of the problem:

And things are not much different for Indonesia’s northern neighbor.

Last week Malaysia passed into law a new Wildlife Conservation Act, which on one hand should be applauded, but on  the other it was received with much caution and skepticism as enforcement remains to be seen. The root of this deep-seated concern: Corruption.

Throughout 2010, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, called Perhilitan, was repeatedly named and shamed in the world’s press, including National Geographic magazine, for “covering up widespread corruption, being incompetent, careless, unprofessional and uncaring about wildlife and unworthy of any respect.” Sean Whyte of Nature Alert has been an outspoken advocate on the issue for years and continues pressuring the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) for miserably failing to systematically monitor or report international wildlife trade in South East Asia, with an emphasis on orangutans.

Most CITES-listed species occur in countries where governance is often weak and corruption high.

In addition to orangutans, tigers are protected from international commercial trade through the CITES Appendix I listing, yet tiger numbers are falling alarmingly and efforts to save this magnificent animal have unfortunately not yet lead to a reverse in the decline in tiger populations.

As Malaysian President Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) welcomed in the new Wildlife Protection Act, others scoffed at the legislation, deeming it mired in bureaucratic procrastination:

Unfortunately most cases of wildlife crime end in acquittal either because the procedures are not followed meticulously or the documents are riddled with loopholes.

Cases of wildlife smuggling should be treated like those in narcotics crime and punishment based on the quantum of seizures to help curb smuggling.

It is time to fight wildlife crime effectively, and collective actions must be taken to stop the key drivers that are bringing tigers and other endangered species to the brink of extinction: poaching, smuggling and illegal trade.

The palm oil company operating on Pak Suez' traditional lands have made him a criminal for trying to stop this destruction. Photo: Hendi/Walhi Kalbar

I’ve spent the past week visiting our partners in Indonesia and interviewing frontline communities directly impacted by the palm oil industry. The stories I’ve heard are haunting — tales of human rights abuses, negligent environmental destruction and the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples for trying to maintain some connection to their ancestral lands despite degradation caused by palm oil companies.

For example, just two weeks ago Sinar Mas converted 20,000 hectares of forest into palm oil plantations in the Sintang District of Borneo, and as a result 32,000 people became refugees — something that happens all the time here and rarely gets reported on in the U.S.

When companies like Cargill, Sinar Mas or Duta Palma bulldoze rubber plantations or community farms owned by Indigenous communities, the village leaders call Walhi for support. As I was hanging out in Walhi Kalbar last week, a car full of Dayak men (Indigenous Peoples of Indonesia) arrived at the office with their lawyer. They were just returning from the local jail where Pak Josef Suez, their community leader, was being held due to a land dispute case with the palm oil company in his community, Borneo Ketapang Permai (BKP). Both KML and BKP are subsidiaries of First Resources Limited palm oil company through a  joint venture.

Pak Suez' Community Members in Agony Seeing their Village Chief Criminalized after the Company Stole their Land. Photo: Hendi/Walhi Kalbar

Pak Miguel Deban and Pak Sariano shared their struggle with me:

In 2000, the palm oil company Karya Mufakat Lestari (KML) came to our village, Sei Ilai, in the Sanggau District [in northern Borneo near the border with Sarawak/Malaysia], promising us a better life. They promised to bring our kids a better education, new houses, a new church, and new streets.

So we made a smallholder scheme agreement with KML in which we gave our ancestral lands to the company to develop oil palm plantations and we would manage a portion of them. In our district the people agreed to give KML 7,000 hectares of land, and that for every 10 hectares of land, 4 hectares would be cared for by the people and 6 by the company. But after we gave our land to KML, the company collapsed.

Our village leader, Pak Suez, saw that KML was neglecting their palm plantations on his ancestral land. Seeing that the palm plantations were dying, Pak Suez took the initiative of caring for the plantations because he felt it was his own land so he replanted 1,000 oil palm plants on his own. He spent 500 million Rupiah.

Another palm oil company, BKP, bought out KML but this was not communicated to any of the Indigenous Peoples in the area, not by the company nor by the Bupati [district head]. As far as we knew, the company changed their name to BKP. When the new company, BKP, took over, the communities didn’t understand that KML and BKP had different smallholder scheme rules. For example, BKP didn’t honor the 4/6 hectare people/company ownership ratio. BKP never sat down with the community to make a new agreement and yet they have put Pak Suez in jail because they claim he has taken over 40 hectares of land without permission. Pak Suez feels cheated by the company since he spent 500 million Rupiah replanting his palm plantations and the company only wants to pay him 175 million Rupiah. Pak Suez would be cheated out of what BKP owes him if he had silently settled.

Pak Suez has now been in jail for almost two weeks. Photo: Hendi/Walhi Kalbar

On May 27, 2010 the Bupati called a meeting between BKP and the community, but there was no resolution. On August 26 there was another meeting and BKP tried to reach a new agreement with the community but, fearing more lies, the community did not budge. Pak Suez has now been in jail for almost two weeks.

Pak Miguel Deban, Pak Sariano, Pak Suez’s 16 year-old son, and the other community members I met yesterday traveled 7 hours from their rural village to visit Pak Suez in the Pontianak jail and to meet with his lawyer.

According to the community members, the company’s strategy is to use intimidation to make the families in the Sanggau District fear them. Hundreds of families are now blockading their lands from palm oil companies, and Pak Miguel says that the company will only free Pak Suez from jail if the families stop blocking their land.

It turns out that this smallholder case of social conflict in the Sanggau District is a template for what’s going on across Borneo between palm oil smallholders or non-palm oil traditional land holders and palm oil companies. (In particular it sounds a lot like what happened to the community of Semunying Jaya.) The process of establishing large-scale oil palm plantations is irreversible: Indigenous Peoples contribute their lands and labor to oil palm schemes but lose sovereignty over those lands and natural resources that are central to their identity as Indigenous Peoples.

Faith Joins Hundreds of Children in Asking Mr. Page to Protect Endangered Sumatran Tigers and Orangutans

Last week, over a dozen local Twin Cities community members, including members of the Walker Church social justice chapter, children, and concerned parents, paid Mr. Page – Cargill CEO – a visit.  The group went all the way to the CEO’s home in Wayzata, MN to deliver hundreds of letters, many hand-written, from children around the world who are very upset that he is not doing enough to protect the imperiled rainforests in Indonesia.

The appeals from the hundreds of kids who wrote these letters to Mr. Page are diverse, but all share one thing in common: disappointment that the head of one of the world’s largest privately owned corporations, Cargill, Inc., is putting corporate profit over the interests of forest communities, endangered species and the climate.

Although Cargill has been taking baby steps in the right direction, the company still has yet to adopt a palm oil policy to ensure that its palm oil production and trading arms aren’t destroying rainforests. And what’s almost worse, Cargill recently showed that they can’t distinguish fact from fiction in their failure to de-list Sinar Mas in the wake of heightened public scrutiny by groups including WWF, with whom Cargill is collaborating.

Hundreds of hand-written letters from kids across the globe delivered to Cargill CEO Greg Page's Wayzata Home

It is worth noting that since RAN released our report highlighting Cargill’s problems with palm oil in Borneo, Cargill has engaged with customers including Kraft and General Mills, initiated a supply chain audit in collabroation with WWF, has plans to assess their own HSL plantation in Borneo, and most recently obtained RSPO certification for its PT Hindoli smallholder plantations. These are all important first steps but until Cargill adopts a palm oil policy that publicly verifies the company’s forest safeguards, Mr. Page is going to hear from thousands of additional concerned children.

Before this peaceful group even got to the CEO’s front gate carrying the hundreds of letters, the police came and kindly asked them to leave, promising he would deliver them to Mr. Page himself. The children were disappointed but hopeful that Mr. Page would read the letters and hear the message loud and clear: Mr. Page: Future Generations are Counting on You!

A string of reports have shown that Sinar Mas is actively clear cutting Indonesia’s forests, home to the endangered Orangutan, Sumatran Tiger, and Elephant, in violation of Indonesian law. Not only is Sinar Mas’ palm oil dirty and dangerous, it is also illegal.

Sinar Mas is clearing rainforests in Borneo without proper government approval

With the world’s major buyers of palm oil, including Uniliver, Kraft, Sainsbury and now Nestle cutting  ties with Sinar Mas, Cargill’s support of Sinar Mas’ rainforest destruction and  chain of illegalities has become all the more unacceptable.

The world’s CEOs, environmental groups, and local Indonesian communities all agree: Sinar Mas is a critical threat to the world’s forests, forest peoples, and the climate. Those companies who buy from Sinar Mas have acted, and Sinar Mas is reeling from tens of millions of dollars of contract cancellations.

Sinar Mas built this logging road in primary rainforest without government approval, violating Indonesian law. PT WKS, Riau, Sumatra

Yet Cargill continues to stand by Sinar Mas. The Minnesota based agribusiness giant sells Sinar Mas palm oil worldwide, turning a profit as Sinar Mas illegally burns carbon rich peat forests and forcibly evicts local communities to make way for palm oil. Cargill has repeatedly refused to disclose the size of their palm oil contracts with Sinar Mas subsidiaries and affiliates, contracts  insiders believe Cargill pays Sinar Mas tens of millions of dollars a year for their dangerous palm oil.

Although Kraft and Nestle have canceled their contracts with Sinar Mas, these companies are still not free of Sinar Mas’ palm oil in their global supply chains. Both Kraft and Nestle are large buyers of palm oil from Cargill, and Cargill continues to supply palm oil to the global market from Sinar Mas. Until Cargill cancels with Sinar Mas, Nestle, Kraft, and USA companies such as General Mills, will be forced to support Sinar Mas’ untenable palm oil operations in Indonesia.

Business as usual has become unacceptable for buyers of palm oil. The top management of Unliver, Kraft, and Nestle have all acknowledged that systemic change is needed in Indonesia’s palm oil sector. But Cargill, with their business based on unsustainable clearing and burning of rainforests, refuses to act on the demands of their customers.

Over the past months, Cargill has repeatedly told RAN that they will change their ways if they ‘hear it from our customers’. Well, Cargill’s customers have spoken, and Cargill management must disassociate themselves with Sinar Mas, other worst-of-the-worst palm oil producers, and put an immediate end to deforestation at their own palm oil plantations, or risk being the next palm oil supplier that Uniliver, Kraft, and Nestle cut all ties with.

David Gilbert is a forest program research associate with RAN. He has lived and worked in the forests of the Amazon and Indonesia. He has a special focus on Indigenous rights and tropical forest conservation.

He can be reached at davidgilbert AT ran DOT org

Exhausted from the canoe rides, bad roads, the concrete maze of Jakarta, and the foreign environment of a Kuala Lumpor convention hall, I found Pak Jamaluddin on the second day of the RSPO outside, sitting cross legged on the sidewalk. He waved me over, and I sat with him. He leaned over to me as he whispered: “It is over. Our forest is gone. Duta Palma has flattened the last of it. We are finished.”

A few months before, I visited with Pak Jamaluddin in his village of Semunying Jaya. Deep in the interior of Borneo, his village had become a hotspot of rainforest destruction and human rights abuse at the hands of the palm oil producer Duta Palma.

A Dayak community, Semunying Jaya’s residents had survived for centuries hunting forest pigs and gathering valuable honey, resins, and rattan, which they sold to Malaysian traders that would visit their village.

When I arrived in July, Pak Jamalludin was outspoken, angry, and in the midst of a brutal struggle to hold on to the last of his community’s traditional forest. Almost all of the rainforest surrounding Semunying Jaya had been flattened and burned by Duta Palma. Targeted by the company, Pak Jamalludin was jailed for his efforts to present his community’s case to the company and government. But the remaining rainforest gave Pak Jamaluddin hope, and he tirelessly tried to save it. Motivated by his struggle, I wrote a case study about his community’s case and shot a short film.

Pak Jamaluddin had traveled to the annual meeting of the RSPO in Kuala Lumpor to meet with Duta Palma, and ask for them to respect his community’s right to Free, Informed, and Prior consent, and compensate Semunying Jaya for the destruction of their culture, livelihood, and future. But, reflective of their complete disrespect of RSPO member responsibilities,  Duta Palma did not send a representative to the meeting.

Sitting on the cement, with no Duta Palma representatives at the RSPO and the last of his community’s forest destroyed for oil palm, Pak Jamaluddin did not have any struggle left in him.

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights. He can be reached at davidgilbert@ran.org

“They say oil palm is development. They say Malaysia has cars and big cities because of oil palm. But it is not oil palm, it is from other things, like our oil and our logging. Giant companies, most of them Malaysian, ignore customary land rights and take our land out from under us. They develop it into oil palm. They use only foreign workers, or people from Kuala Lumpur to drive the trucks and run the offices. For the day laborers, they will not even hire us local people, because we are Malaysians and have some basic rights. So they hire Indonesians who have come here illegally and have no rights, no one to protect them from the bad working conditions and horrible pay. The Malay people, who live near us, they all get a few hectares of land from the Company to have their own oil palm, but rather than work that land they too hire Indonesians. The government, using their oil and gas and timber money gives these Malay government jobs too, so even though they live in the countryside they can buy cars. The owners of the Company get rich, so rich. Then they take that money and invest it in oil palm in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, where they can do whatever they want, there are no laws there. And they get even richer.

But us, us people from the forest, who live in the longhouses, what are we left with? Nothing. And the Malay people, who have cars, is this a sustainable economy, that depends on illegal labor and government jobs to support the common man? I think not.

Oil palm does not lead to the development of a country. Wealth, contained in the natural resources of the our forests and controlled by us,  is flattened and burned, and then collected by the world’s rich, from Companies like Sinar Mas, Cargill, IOI, and Duta Palma. Oil palm does not bring wealth to the poor, it takes it away. Oil palm development, like so many neo-colonial trading systems, makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.

Supporting this argument, so powerfully and simply laid out by a man from the last of Borneo’s almost extinct forests with no formal education but a lifetime of wisdom,  is a year long research project. One I hope to complete some day. But for now, lets just take his word for it, as a man who has lost his livelihood, way of life, and future so one of the world’s largest companies, Wilmar, can become a little bit richer.

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights. He can be reached at davidgilbert@ran.org

The good news here is that, yes, in fact we have another species of big cat to examine. The bad news, for the scientists anyway, is that we’ve already been studying this cat for past few decades and no one really noticed the differences:

“The moment we started comparing the skins of the mainland clouded leopard and the leopard found on Borneo and Sumatra, it was clear we were comparing two different species,” said Dr Andrew Kitchener, from the Department of Natural Sciences, National Museums Scotland and lead author of the scientific paper that described the new species. “It’s incredible that no one has ever noticed these differences.”

Incredible indeed. Glad to hear that species like this are being discovered, but sad to know that like almost every sub-tropical mammal and organism, habitat destruction (i.e. forest destruction and agricultural development) is its greatest threat.