Cargill Admits Buying Palm Oil from Illegally Cleared Orangutan Habitat

Last week, Cargill admitted to doing business with a very dodgy plantation company in Central Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) that has illegally cleared thousands of hectares of orangutan habitat — and has even allegedly hired people to hunt down and kill orangutans. Cargill admitted to Reuters that it bought at least one shipment of palm oil [...]

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Cargill Needs to Come Clean: Demand Transparency

With palm oil in half of all products for sale in US grocery stores, we have the right to know the true cost of its production. Cargill is the #1 importer of palm oil into the US, but the company refuses to be transparent about who it does business with. For instance: Is Cargill still [...]

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Indonesia’s Moratorium On Deforestation Could Be Good For Business, Human Rights, and The Environment… or Not

It’s become clear this week — between Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s comments on tackling corruption and reducing negative environmental impacts of deforestation and Al Gore’s speech extolling the business case for rolling back deforestation and commending Indonesia’s emerging leadership on the issue — that industry elites with a vested interest in maintaining business as [...]

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Land Lost in Lies: Smallholder Schemes Gone Wrong

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 [...]

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RSPO Dispatch: Duta Palma destroys rainforests and lives

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, [...]

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RSPO Dispatch: Tough times for climate and forests, but RSPO still intact

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 [...]

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