Can California’s New Law Stop Slave Labor In Palm Oil?

Whether you’re one of the 3,200 companies that do business in California with at least $100 million in worldwide gross receipts, or a consumer that buys products from anywhere other than your local mom and pop shops, you better check this out. Effective this month, a new law called the Transparency in Supply Chains Act [...]

Continue reading...

From The Field: Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park And The High Stakes Of The Palm Oil Crisis

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 [...]

Continue reading...

RAN Staff Finds Deforestation And Violence For Palm Oil Unchecked By The RSPO

As the 9thAnnual 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 [...]

Continue reading...

ADM vs. Responsible Palm Oil & Human Rights

Unlike 2008′s showdown, nobody from RAN attended this year’s Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) shareholder meeting to hold CEO Patricia Woertz’ ass to the fire. Nonetheless, ADM did not get away without responding to tough questions about the company’s irresponsible palm oil supply chain. ADM, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors with operations in more [...]

Continue reading...

Cargill Exposed: A Trail Of Human Rights Abuses

Much like the story with palm oil suppliers IOI and KLK, Cargill is again implicated in serious human rights abuses through it’s palm oil supplier Wilmar. News of yet another case of heated social conflict on an oil palm plantation is breaking in Indonesia, and meanwhile Cargill continues to traffic this controversial palm oil into [...]

Continue reading...

What Do Cargill’s Recent Palm Oil Commitments Mean For Its Customers?

“Whether we like it or not it is very largely our industry which is providing the economic incentives for individuals and companies to chop down trees… Between us, we spend billions of dollars buying these commodities. We can make a difference if we buy them differently and better.” – A senior Unilever executive in a [...]

Continue reading...

Judge Kaplan Drastically Overreached With “Unlawful” Injunction To Protect Chevron, International Law Experts Say

US Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan’s bias in favor of Chevron may have led him to drastically overstep his authority, according to several international law experts from around the world who have asked the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to dissolve Kaplan’s preliminary injunction against enforcement of an $18 billion verdict against the [...]

Continue reading...

World Bank Raises The Bar On Human Rights. Will Private Banks Follow?

Last December, I hinted that the World Bank was moving to adopt stronger new standards on Indigenous rights. After nearly three years of deliberation, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, announced its revised Sustainability Framework last month. As the largest source of international financing for companies in the [...]

Continue reading...

Is the “Happiest Place on Earth” Driving Tigers and Orangutans into Extinction?

UPDATE: On October 11, 2012, Disney announced a comprehensive paper policy that maximizes its use of environmentally superior papers like recycled and eliminates controversial sources like those connected to Indonesian rainforest destruction. For more info, visit www.ran.org/disney. Young or old, when one thinks of the Walt Disney Company, the first images that come to mind are almost certainly [...]

Continue reading...

No Joke: Chevron Releases A New “Corporate Responsibility Report”

No, this is not the latest brilliant satirical piece written by the folks over at The Onion. Chevron really has just released a “Corporate Responsibility Report” to highlight “companywide [sic] performance including safety, environmental stewardship, social investments and human rights.” Having read that, you’re probably thinking, “Come on, Mike, give us a break. This has [...]

Continue reading...