Becky White and the Secret Mission have just released this catchy and hilarious protest anthem/call to action track and music video — featuring RAN’s own Executive Director Rebecca Tarbotton on violin — called “Man Up!” The song calls on people to gather at the White House on November 6 to persuade President Obama to make the right decision and oppose the disastrous Keystone XL Pipeline project, the fate of which is being decided by his Administration right now.

The movement to stop this massively destructive pipeline has brought together a wide array of unlikely allies and has exploded into a national political force to be reckoned with in a very short amount of time. Please check this out and share it widely to spread the word on this crucial and time-sensitive issue!

The White House. Nov 6. Be There.

These are the final moments before President Obama makes a decision to approve or reject the construction of the dirty and dangerous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. On November 6, exactly one year before the election, thousands will come together to completely encircle the White House in an act of solidarity to convince President Obama to make the right decision to reject the Keystone XL.

More than 4000 have already signed up to participate. This is fantastic, but we need thousands more!

Please don’t stay at home this Sunday wondering whether your presence would have made a difference. Come stand with us for clean energy, for human rights, for all of our futures. Sign up now!

“So many lives are on the line right now. The system is crashing. It’s crashing economically and it’s crashing ecologically. The stakes are too high right now for us not to make the most of this moment.” — Naomi Klein at Occupy Wall Street

Driven by relentless and ill advised palm oil expansion, Kalimantan’s carbon rich but relatively unproductive peatlands are being rapidly drained and burned. Across Indonesia, peatland destruction is releasing up to a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year – equivalent to emissions from 200 large coal power plants – in addition to fomenting wide social conflict and destroying critical habitat for orangutans, tigers and other species. Yet economic activities on peat contribute less than 1% to Indonesia’s GDP.  Emissions from sparsely populated rural Central Kalimantan alone now exceed those of Jakarta, a sprawling traffic-choked mega-city of more than 10 million people.

Smoke Over Indonesia Photo: Creative Commons

From September 20-22, Central Kalimantan played host to the annual meeting of the Governor’s Climate and Forest Task Force (GCF).  The GCF brings together California with 15 tropical forest states from the Brazilian Amazon, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia and Nigeria covering 20% of the worlds tropical forests to promote the development of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanisms in carbon markets. Ironically, with heavy smoke from peat fires disrupting flights in and out of the province, the meeting almost had to be relocated to Jakarta.

REDD was initially promoted by industrialized countries as a quick, easy and cheap way to address climate change under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as part of a wider fossil fuel emissions reduction agreement, but prospects for such a new international agreement have declined precipitously since the debacle at the Copenhagen Conference of Parties two years ago. While the urgency and importance of protecting peatlands and tropical rainforests is undeniable, at the same time, the true challenges and complexities of trying to define and implement REDD payment mechanisms on the ground at the sub-national level were in full display at the GCF meeting.

Suwido Limin shows dam constructed to restore drained peatlands and slow GHG emissions

At the formal level, the outcomes of the GCF meeting were fairly straightforward.  Delegates agreed to accept the Brazilian state of Matto Grosso and Madre de Dios in Peru as new members. The next GCF annual meeting will be hosted by the state of Chiapas in Mexico. The GCF established a new fund, with $1.5 million in seed money from the U.S. State Department, to assist with state capacity building. Efforts to expand GCF membership in Europe were endorsed.

Discussions among stakeholders and rights holders in the GCF side events and corridors profiled some of the greater challenges and controversies. Perhaps foremost among these is the need for rights based approaches to promote durable and just forest stewardship and green development, which was put forward forcibly by Indigenous and forest community organization participants.

A strong statement was delivered to the GCF meeting by forest dependent community representatives from Aceh, Papua, Central Sulawesi and Kalimantan calling for, “guarantee on people’ full involvement and representation in every process and stage, especially in the project’s decision-making processes…rights and access to complete and comprehensive information…the right to manage and to utilize the forest and resources within it, which we have inherited from our ancestors…every decision concerning the benefits for the people should be defined by the people themselves.” Underlying and supporting this perspective, including from many GCF delegates, is a growing recognition that durable forest stewardship can only be achieved with full involvement, understanding and support of the forest dependent communities themselves.

As Odigha Odigha (a Goldman Environmental Prize winner who RAN worked closely with in the 1990s), representing Nigeria’s Cross River State put it, “The people in the forest are the ones that must fully understand what REDD is because they have the final responsibility, not people in London, not people in Washington.” Similarly, the former Governor of Papua strongly emphasized community rights and empowerment in his proposals for promoting low-carbon green development pathways in Indonesia’s most heavily forested province.

The GCF delegates have largely returned home, but here in Borneo the peat smoke remains.  Yet, reasons for optimism in Central Kalimantan can still be found in some locally led initiatives. Native Dayak, Sudwido Limin, is not waiting for REDD to take action.  At the tropical peatland research center that he established, Sudwido showed us how they are damming up drainage canals in abandoned peatland areas, restoring forest cover and fighting peatland fires in a community based approach.  The methods they are developing could be widely applied, and combined with a strict prohibition on further peatland conversion would go a long way to leashing in Indonesia’s soaring greenhouse gas emissions. Jakarta, are you listening?

Pak Rusni at PT ISK Photo: David Gilbert/RAN 2009

In a huge win for Indigenous and forest dwelling peoples throughout Indonesia who are struggling to assert their customary land rights in the face of massive palm oil expansion, Chief Justice Mahfud M.D. has ruled that two Articles of Indonesian law used to imprison community members are unconstitutional, unlawful and invalid.

Articles 21 and 47 of Indonesia’s Plantation Act are responsible for the widespread criminalization of forest community members who often end up in jail for defending their land rights against the ever-encroaching expansion of oil palm plantations. Since 2004, palm oil companies, police officers, courts and judges have based legal decisions on Articles 21 and 47. These articles allowed the police to persecute forest communities standing up for their rights, essentially deeming defense of human rights illegal.

Sawit Watch has documented more than 660 ongoing conflicts between Indigenous peoples and local communities with palm oil companies in Indonesia. Criminalization through Articles 21 and 47 led to the arrests and detentions of hundreds of community members. According to Norman Jiwan from Sawit Watch, the judicial review that led to this outcome came about in response to a request made by five victims of the Plantation Act’s concerned articles. The five victims are:

• Vitalis Andi and Japin are members of the Indigenous community from Silat Hulu in conflict with Sinar Mas in Ketapang District, West Kalimantan
• Ngatimin is chairperson of BPMP of Pergulaan village in conflict with London Sumatra
• Muhammad Rusdi, head of village Karang Mendapo community in conflict with PT Kresna Duta Agroindo, a Sinar Mas subsidiary oil palm plantation in Jambi
• Sakri, a farmer from East Java.

According to the Jakarta Globe:

Wahyu Wagiman from the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), who represented the plaintiffs, welcomed the ruling as a relief to more than 600 traditional communities in the country that were threatened by the law. ‘Our next step is to spread the word as wide as possible and to find a way to release farmers currently charged under Articles 21 and 47, including Japin, Vitalis and Ngatimin.’

During my field visits in West Kalimantan last fall, I recorded video interviews of numerous community members fighting for justice, working around the clock to get their fellow community members out of jail. From the community of Long Teran Kanan drawing a line in the sand in response to IOI Corp. failing to recognize their native customary lands to the recent criminalization of community members in Jambi where Wilmar bulldozed Indigenous settlements for palm oil, this legal victory is a ray of hope in an otherwise dismal landscape for Indigenous rights in Indonesia. Criminalizing Indigenous peoples for taking a stand to protect their native customary land rights is unjust. This recent court ruling is a step in the right direction and bodes well for human rights.

Earthdance has partnered with Critical Beats and Cyberset Music to create this one-of-a-kind compilation featuring contributions from Govinda, Bluetech and DJ Spooky in collaboration with Amazon indigenous musicians. Download the new album today!

Some of the world’s hottest DJs, including Govinda, Bluetech, and DJ Spooky, teamed up with Indigenous musicians from the Amazon to create some truly inspirational music. Now it’s your turn to inspire and be inspired by their beats.

Earthdance International, Critical Beats for the Climate, and Rainforest Action Network are teaming up to promote the new compilation, called Critical Beats For Gaia. Proceeds will directly benefit frontline rainforest communities through RAN’s Protect-An-Acre grants program.

RAN’s most recent Protect-An-Acre grantshave supported everything from deforestation mapping and case studies in Indonesia to the Achual community’s permaculture project in the Peruvian Amazon. This work is central to RAN’s mission, as this is where real change happens: on the ground, from community to community. While we can shift markets and demand accountability for U.S.-based corporations, it’s vital to do this work in solidarity with and in support of frontline and Indigenous communities most impacted by the destructive practices we are all trying to stop.

Each year, Earthdance International organizes people around the world to promote synchronized world-wide “events for peace” in September. This fantastic group helps connect activists, meditation communities, peacemakers, and organizations to grow a just and sustainable world, starting with ourselves and our communities and then working to spread the peace globally.

Now, Earthdance and Critical Beats for the Climate have teamed up to create even more possibilities to support frontline communities through the release of this beautiful new compilation. Critical Beats for Gaia features so many incredible DJs and producers, it is the perfect opportunity to spread awareness through music and reach out to people who want to be part of the solution.

Malaysia Sustainable Palm Oil. Photo: astromediashop

As I reported on Monday, the Malaysian government—hand in hand with the country’s largest palm oil companies—is attempting to undermine the RSPO’s “sustainable palm oil” certification standard by creating its own certification. Problem is—the Malaysian palm oil industry’s version of “sustainable palm oil” is pure greenwash which is extremely problematic for the companies and consumers demanding real standards of sustainability that are based on sound science. The entire notion of determining a baseline of “sustainability” for forest preservation will be lost.

Yesterday’s Malaysian paper StarBiz update on the process does not bode well for the species, communities and forests of Indonesia that are most threatened by the expansion of palm oil plantations. It reported that the “draft on the Malaysia Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification scheme is currently being formulated with the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) earmarked as the main moderator.” Does it seems strange to anyone else that Malaysia’s Palm Oil Board – in charge of advocating for palm oil expansion at any cost – is formulating a certification scheme for sustainable palm oil? Where are the scientists, agronomists and ecologists?

The article continues:

“the [Malaysian] Government is serious about introducing its national green palm oil certification scheme as an alternative to the current voluntary Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification…this is an opportunity for Malaysia to tell the world that its oil palms are grown in a sustainable manner and do not involve the clearing of virgin forest.”

Malaysia wants to tell the world that land conversion for its oil palm “doesn’t involve the clearing of virgin forest?” Clearly the preservation of natural forests is important, but what about the Free, Prior, Informed Consent (FPIC) of its Indigenous peoples and forest communities? What about its critical habitat for endangered species like the orangutan? What about its other forested areas that are not natural forest land anymore but secondary forests—key habitat for endangered species and diverse forest peoples? I think Malaysia has more at stake that it cares to admit. Watering down criteria for the “sustainability” of its palm oil plantations could turn out to be nothing short of devastating for the people and wildlife of Malaysia.

Left to right: Wounded Knee DeOcampo (Me-wuk), Tony Cerda (Rumsen Ohlone), Mickey Gemmill, Jr (Pit River), Naiche Dominguez (Apache/Ohlone), Wicahpiluta Candelaria (Rumsen Ohlone/ Apache) at Segorea Te.

Nearly 100 days of continuous prayer on-site at Segorea Te (also known as Glen Cove) near San Francisco, California, has precipitated a precedent-setting victory for the protection of a sacred site and ancestral burial site near Vallejo, California.

Here’s the good news:

Yesterday, the Yocha Dehe and Cortina tribes established a cultural easement and settlement agreement with the City of Vallejo and the Greater Vallejo Recreation District (GVRD). The agreement sets a legal precedent for granting Native peoples jurisdiction over their sacred sites and ancestral lands. The cultural easement forever guarantees that the Yocha Dehe and Cortina tribes will have legal oversight in all activities taking place on the sacred burial grounds of Sogorea Te/Glen Cove. It also represents a significant step forward in enacting tribal sovereignty, as the first such easement under CA Senate Bill 18 to be negotiated at the city and recreational district levels.

Morning Star Gali (Pit River) and Wounded Knee DeOcampo (Me-wuk) – Photo by Scott Braley

For more details, check out the Committee to Protect Glen Cove’s press release.

The historical and cultural value of the 3,500-year old site continues to be spiritually important to California tribes. On April 14th 2011, local Native Americans and supporters began a 24-hour prayer vigil at Sogorea Te to prevent the Greater Vallejo Recreation District from bulldozing/grading a large portion of the sacred site and constructing bathrooms and a parking lot.

Rainforest Action Network is honored to stand in solidarity with the Committee to Protect Glen Cove. We sent an email to our 100,000+ supporters featuring an action alert that helped garner over 1500 emails from RAN activists to decision-makers in the City of Vallejo, Greater Vallejo Recreation Committee, and Native American Heritage Council urging for respect of sacred sites and the Native community. RAN staff and volunteers also organized an awesome benefit event in San Francisco that raised $700 to support the ongoing prayer vigil at Glen Cove. We are so happy to have been able to help impact this important local struggle.

The role that an organization like Rainforest Action Network has in supporting the Native leaders who are protecting Glen Cove isn’t just a good deed to be proud of. It is our responsibility to respect and stand in solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples whose land we live and work on. Thank you and congratulations to everyone who has worked to protect Segorea Te!

The smoke hanging over Pekanbaru

If you think this title sounds hyperbolic, you probably have not visited Sumatra lately. Before traveling here, I had heard stories about the oceans of oil palm that have been planted where rainforest once stood. But I was not prepared for this.

The first sign that something is terribly wrong came before our plane even landed. From 30,000 feet over the Java Sea between Jakarta and Sumatra, there was no sign of land or ocean below. Just a sickly haze stretching to the horizon.

Global climate change is usually an abstraction — a concept that must be imagined or made academic to understand. But here, it’s in your face, tangible and acute. Incredibly, Indonesia has become the world’s third largest carbon polluting country, behind only the US and China — and 80% of those emissions are the result of deforestation.

Stepping off the plane in Pekanbaru, the capital city of the Province of Riau, the assault on my eyes and nose and lungs was immediate. I actually had to suppress an initial panic that I would suffocate from the smoke. Our friends here later told us we were lucky to land at all, as air traffic would likely be cancelled again for lack of visibility. Shipping traffic from Singapore is sometimes similarly interrupted by the intensity of the smog. Our hosts laughed a little uncomfortably, explaining that before the vast deforestation of the past decades there used to be two seasons here: the wet season and the dry season. Now, they said, there are four: the wet season, the flooding season, the dry season and the smoke season.

This land was once rainforest, but has now been cleared, burned, planted, harvested and burned again

The acrid air is the smell of burning peat. It is the smell of palm oil plantations expanding deeper into the heart of what’s left of Sumatra’s once vast lowland jungles. Sumatra’s forests have been so lush, so wildly productive, for so many millennia unbroken, that their photosynthesis has processed immense amounts of carbon out of the air. The trees have quite literally breathed the atmosphere in, sinking its carbon through eons of leaf litter, forming massive reservoirs of underground organic material that has actually built land dozens of miles into the sea.

These steamy, amphibious ecosystems swarm with a cornucopia of life. Elephants and orangutans, tapirs and tigers and every manner of bird and beetle the human imagination can fathom. The truth is, no one has any idea how many species used to live here. Scientists estimate maybe half the species in these forests have yet to be described to science, and with most of these forests now suddenly gone, we will never know what’s already been lost.

These unusual deposits are called peat domes, and Sumatra’s are among the deepest in the world. To make this land fit for industrial palm oil and pulpwood production, however, it must first be cleared and drained, marring the natural landscape with a matrix of massive canals. Exposed to the air, the peat begins to decay, and when it ignites, it smolders in unstoppable fires that open the flood gates of the reservoir, releasing catastrophic quantities of carbon back into the tropical air.

The clearing of these forests has been so fast and merciless, the land and its people are in a distinct state of shock. Both are still reeling from the ongoing assault while struggling to pick up the pieces. Already, what is forever lost is devastating. Many wildlife biologists consider the remaining populations of endemic Sumatran Rhino to be the living dead. Their habitat is too sparse, too fragmented and too disturbed, their numbers too few.

RAN forest campaigner Lafcadio Cortesi walking through decimated forest that is set to become a palm plantation

Yesterday I was able to visit a peat forest for the first time, and to witness the advancing edge of its destruction firsthand. To get there, we traveled ten hours through the night from Riau to Jambi Province, then four hours by car over horrendous dirt roads to South Sumatra. From there we rode motorcycles on thin trails through a barren palm oil plantation to the edge of the peatlands. We continued by foot on a rough trail along a canal dug by illegal loggers to remove logs from the forest. We arrived at the forests edge, battered, sweaty and spent.

Thrilled to see tall trees still standing, I could hardly suppress tears at the tragic effort it took just to reach them. Monkeys howled in the distance. An electric blue butterfly swirled around me. Spiderhunters, dollarbirds, and bulbuls flit overhead while giant crested treeswifts carved gracefully through the air. Then, as if on cue, a chainsaw began to roar just out of sight, followed quickly by the terrible sound of trees crashing through trees to the ground.

A few days ago we watched video footage of an 18 month-old Sumatran tiger slowly dying in a trap set by a pig hunter on an Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) acacia plantation a few hours from our hotel in Pekanbaru. He was one of the last of his kind. 150 breeding pairs are estimated to remain in the wild. These majestic animals have been pushed to desperation in their search for the basics of food, habitat and mates amidst a biological desert of palm oil and pulpwood plantations.

This peat forest took days of travel to reach and was falling as we watched

I would like to tell a happier story, but not at the expense of the truth. Indonesia is at a critical tipping point. But, as severe as the destruction is, all is not yet lost. Taken as a whole, a recent estimate puts Indonesia’s forest loss at 49%. Orangutans still swing freely through the canopy of forests in Borneo and new species of lizards and birds continue to be described to science in West Papua. There remains some hope for the struggling Sumatran populations of pygmy elephants.

And, as communities across Indonesia are struggling to regain their livelihoods and the future livelihoods of their people from being sacrificed for quick profit by companies turning the rainforest into international commodities, there are signs the government is turning around.

Feeling discouraged and distraught after our disheartening trip to the forest, we returned last night to the hopeful news that the Indonesian government has announced a potentially major new direction in forest policy.

Declaring the establishment of a new 89,000 hectares of community-managed forest lands and the enforcement of a decade-old provision of forest law that requires the government to identify areas within the national forest estate that are in conflict with existing forest community land rights, Presidential advisor Pak Kuntoro said that Indonesia’s president supports protecting the land of indigenous communities and that “this is our chance to untangle our convoluted past and make a lasting difference.”

People in the know seem to think the government may be serious this time. After his speech, Kuntoro said to Reuters, “Paradigm shift is imperative, from exploitation to sustainable and responsible use of natural resources.”

Indeed. More power to him.

RAN forest campaigner Lafcadio Cortesi talks with elders of the village of Siabu in central Sumatra

It’s a good thing RAN’s forest campaigner, Lafcadio Cortesi, speaks Bahasa Indonesian so well. Otherwise I almost certainly would have gotten in the car with the undercover intelligence agent who told me to come with him because he “wanted to practice his English.”

We had just arrived in the small village of Siabu, in the Kampar region of east central Sumatra. Our plan was to meet up with a group of displaced villagers and participate in a land reclamation and planting party. The villagers are engaged in a land conflict with a subsidiary of pulp and paper giant APP, and their plan was to plant crops on their traditional lands and prevent the company from further establishing a pulpwood plantation in the disputed area.

Of the dozens of men milling about when we got out of the car, the first to approach me began asking questions about who I was with, what I was doing there, and the like. It quickly became apparent that the whole group was loading onto their motor bikes and moving to a less public location and we were to follow. We were all meant to meet up at the same place, so I was contemplating jumping in with my gregarious new friend, but Lafcadio said, curtly, “No. Travel with us.”

Not generally a curt fellow, Laf explained when we got in the car that our hosts were concerned the mystery guy was there to gather intelligence, though for whom he was gathering it was not quite clear. This was the first of many lessons and insights I gained that day into just how deeply dark and deranged the situation here has become.

Getting to the designated meeting place required hours of travel on a labyrinth of dirt roads through a 250,000 acre acacia plantation that stretched across the land like an infestation of neatly ordered rows of scrawny twigs. We were made to pass through several check points staffed by security personnel who sported the SOS corporate logo of their employer on a patch on one shoulder and a police badge on the other — a fitting display of the cozy relationship between the security state and the corporations whose interests they serve.

Lafcadio with customary elder Pak Datuk

At the second security post we picked up the Tokoh Adat, or customary elder of the local village, a man called Pak Datuk. The armed guards took the identification cards of our driver and Pak Datuk for safe keeping — and so they’d have leverage over the drive and Pak Datuk if anything untoward were to occur beyond the gate.

The gathering place was a promontory at the edge of the plantation overlooking a post-apocalyptic landscape cleared of all vegetation and scarred by a maze of roads leading nowhere. Later we would learn this spot was chosen because it is within the villagers’ ancestral territory, and is an area they hope to reclaim. It had been decided no planting would occur this day, but a meeting would proceed to discuss community goals and next steps.

About a hundred people had gathered, and our arrival created quite a stir. Half of the group surrounded us and jockeyed with one another to shake our hands and have their pictures taken with us, after which it was insisted that we eat. The group included pockets of animated young men smoking clove cigarettes and blaring pop music from mobile phones, elderly women wearing headscarves, and lots of adult men wearing the weathered look of hard-working farmers whose fortune had not come easily.

In the tense environment of present day rural Sumatran society, the simple act of gathering together on disputed territory is an act of resistance, and the day’s meeting did not go unnoticed. In addition to the undercover character we had met earlier, a group of armed law enforcement personnel — including private security, police officers, and at least one quasi-military looking gentleman — had amassed on the outskirts of the villagers’ assembly.

When Pak Datuk stood to speak, everyone circled and fell silent. He spoke with the elegance and authority of a strong and self-assured leader. From the bits whispered to me in translation I understood that he began by stating that his people are bound by three laws. In order, they are God, custom, and then the government. He said the goal of his people is to take action to reclaim their land rights and ancestral territory.

He said his people were given rights by their ancestors and that it is their duty to protect those rights so they can be passed on to their children before they are lost. He said they are bound to be peaceful, to be safe and not to use violence. He said it is crucial they maintain their unity in the face of those who would divide them. He finished each series of pronouncements with the question “Ingat?” (Remember?) or Mengar ti? (Do you understand?) to which the crowd in unison responded “Ingat!” or “Mengar ti!”

A canal cuts through a former village site and elephant habitat

When he was finished speaking, other village leaders spoke and details were discussed about what to plant and how to collect and distribute funds to make the provocative planting project possible. When the group disbanded, we drove away with an older, well-dressed village member named Pak Sudirman who guided us to the site a few miles away where their original village stood.

As we passed through a sea of sterile oil palm plantations, crudely dug canals and dry, exposed earth, he told us how rich this land had once been, not so long ago. Before his people were forcibly evicted by the military in the late 1980’s, their riverside territory had been habitat for elephants and monkeys, and his village practiced a sustainable form of mixed agroforestry that included crops like rubber trees, cassava, banana, chile, papaya, durien, mango, rambutan, jack fruit and a variety of vegetables.

In a darkly ironic twist, the only natural forest still standing in the area was saved because it was made part of a military bombing range. Entering this verdant forest felt like a full sensory massage. The sight of the towering trees, the feel of the moist air, the smell of dank richness, the sound of birdsong and the buzz of insects stood in stark contrast to the vacuous devastation just outside.

Back at the village where the day began, we shared smokes with the village’s men in the home of the traditional village chief. Pak Datuk told us in clear and passionate terms what the demands of his people are for APP, the company behind their conflict. He said the company never asked for their permission to use the land that belongs to them and they have never received any benefit. His demand is for APP to return the land to the community. He followed by asking that customers of APP stop buying products that come from their lands until the important issues of their traditional rights are resolved.

Laf speaks with the village's chief

The stories of these people and this place are a microcosm of what’s happening all over Sumatra and  in Borneo and the rest of Indonesia and Malaysia. People are displaced, forests are cleared, ecosystems are destroyed. Repeat. And until APP and their ilk among the all-powerful logging behemoths are convinced that business as usual is not in their own or Indonesia’s interest, these injustices will continue. Our meetings this week with allies and community leaders are a piece in the growth of a larger movement that is gaining momentum here and at home in the US. Companies like APP can no longer expect to act with impunity.

Dr. Bayu Wirayudha, founder and CEO of Friends of National Parks Foundation

I’ve only been in Indonesia for a few days and already I’ve heard multiple accounts of intimidation, corruption, kidnapping, torture and even murder suffered by our allies here who have been bold enough to speak out and resist the destruction of their forests and villages by palm oil and pulp and paper companies. But I am going to save those dark tales for another post and start this one with a happier story.

I didn’t expect to encounter evidence of RAN’s work in Indonesia until after I finished a three-day personal trip to the island paradise of Bali. After that, my plans were to immerse myself in two weeks of conservation-related meetings and site visits on the islands of Java and Sumatra — that’s what I traveled across the world for. But a close friend of mine who knows of my strong passion for birds told me that while I was in Bali I had to make a point of seeking out Dr. Bayu Wirayudha, the man widely credited with rescuing the iconic and critically endangered Bali Starling from the very brink of extinction (a truly incredible and ongoing story of its own).

It turns out Bayu is also the founder and CEO of Friends of the National Parks Foundation (FNPF), an inspiring organization that I learned has received funds from RAN on more than one occasion. I spoke at length with Bayu at his office/educational center/activist-organizing hub on the outskirts of the village of Ubud, Bali, and learned why FNPF is exactly the sort of frontline ally RAN is proud to support.

It’s important to understand that the threats facing the rainforests and communities of Indonesia are extreme and the challenges encountered by those trying to stem the destruction are immense and extraordinarily complex. Corruption is pervasive throughout the government and corporate spheres, and challenging those entrenched interests often means put your life on the line. The power wielded by the forces of profit and politics are almost beyond comprehension when viewed from the perspective of a villager fighting for their home or a conservationist struggling to save a species from extinction. So it takes some serious savvy to make headway against the seemingly unstoppable tide of forest conversion and community displacement sweeping rapidly across the country.

FNPF staff educate villagers about the importance of conservation

Bayu and his team understand that human rights, cultural survival and biodiversity preservation are inextricably linked in Indonesia. Conservationists here have learned the hard way that without the endorsement and involvement of local communities, desperate and disenfranchised villagers inevitably return to a slash and burn, extraction-based existence, dooming even the best-funded and well-intentioned conservation initiatives to failure. The approach of FNPF is a sophisticated melding of wildlife conservation, habitat protection and community development. Bayu praised RAN for supporting his organization’s vision at a time when other donors were unwilling to invest in such far-sighted plans.

With RAN’s help, FNPF has spent years gaining the trust of communities surrounding the huge and species-rich but conflict-ridden Tanjung Puting National Park on the island of Borneo. More than half of the forested land within the park has already been degraded by logging and agricultural encroachment. They built this trust partially by providing the villages with their first-ever cows and chickens, and the know-how to tend them for sustenance. At the same time, FNPF staff helped the villagers establish agroforestry operations with crops like rubber trees and agar wood that provide sustainable income while maintaining high levels of biological diversity. FNPF is also training local villagers to offer outstanding ecotourism opportunities in and around the National Park, giving locals a way to benefit from this lucrative emerging industry (before, ecotourism profits went exclusively to outsiders).

Villagers learn how to propagate key tree species

Bayu relayed a heartening story about how local palm oil workers now call his staff at FNPF when an orangutan enters the palm plantations, so the animal can be relocated unharmed, whereas previously they would have killed them on sight or called the notorious Forestry Ministry, which would have done the same.

These hard-fought, piecemeal advances may be just a drop in the ocean compared to the immensity of devastation underway across Indonesia’s rainforests, but they provide preciously rare living proof that a cooperative way forward is possible from the heinous mess that exists now. People like Bayu, and projects like those of FNPF, are like saplings rising up from a clear cut forest. With enough light and nourishment, it is these fresh starts that can take root and provide shade for others to do the same.

A spiritual encampment to protect a Bay Area sacred site is now in its 50th day. Local Native community members opposing a proposed development that would disturb the shellmounds, burial sites, and artifacts at Glen Cove have occupied the land to stop construction from going forward. There are many ways that you can help support the struggle to protect this sacred site.

Click image to find out how you can show your support.

Glen Cove is a sacred gathering place and burial ground that has been utilized by numerous Native American tribes since at least 1,500 BC. Today, Glen Cove continues to be spiritually important to local Native communities. It is located just south of Vallejo, California along the Carquinez Strait, a natural channel that connects the Sacramento River Delta to the San Francisco Bay. Glen Cove is known as Sogorea Te in Karkin Ohlone language.

Since 1988, the Greater Vallejo Recreation District (GVRD) and the City of Vallejo have been planning to turn Glen Cove into a “fully featured” public park. GVRD’s current Master Plan calls for the installation of a parking lot, restroom facility, picnic tables, and construction of additional trails, including a paved trail. It also calls for re-grading of large areas of the site, which involves digging that will further disturb burial sites and sacred objects. This planned grading includes “capping” known shellmound/burial areas with 12 inches of soil.

The local Native American community has been outspoken about these plans for the Glen Cove Sacred Site, and their message is unequivocal: “Do not further disturb and manipulate this sacred burial ground of our ancestors.” Spiritual leaders from Ohlone, Miwok, Pomo and other local tribes consider the proposed park development plans to be an offensive desecration of this area.

We recognize that our organization, Rainforest Action Network, is headquartered in San Francisco, which itself is on the traditional land of the Ohlone people. Of the over 400 Ohlone shellmound burial sites documented in the Bay Area in the early twentieth century, only a handful of these sacred shellmound sites remain relatively undisturbed today. Glen Cove in Vallejo, California is one of the last remaining sites.

U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples posted at Glen Cove

Earlier this year, the United States ratified the U.N. Document on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Articles 11 and 12 uphold many of the principles being physically protected by the encampment at Glen Cove. For instance:

Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practice, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of their ceremonial objects; and the right to the repatriation of their human remains. (Article 12)

The Greater Vallejo Recreational District has a responsibility (both ethically and legally) not to ignore the Native community’s demands to stop the development. It is not too late to choose another way. GVRD decision-makers and the mayor of Vallejo could set an example for how to respectfully engage stakeholders and effectively utilize FPIC (Free, Prior, and Informed Consent) principles.

You can help.

Here is a request from members of the Native community working to protect Glen Cove:

“Please give us your support. Get your signature on our petitions, come to our gatherings and meet the descendants of this sacred place. And most importantly, get the word out. Talk to your neighbors, co- workers and friends about respecting sacred sites and the rights of Indigenous People. See our “How to Help” page to learn about more ways to lend support.”

If you’re in the Bay Area, you are invited to visit Glen Cove/Segora Te, and learn about the site and support the protection of sacred sites and human rights.

Rainforest Action Network stands in support of the spiritual encampment at Glen Cove/Segora Te. The local Native community should rightfully be the lead decision-makers who hold authority in matters related to their Sacred Burial Ground.

Unfortunately, like any classic Disney tale, there is a darker side to this story, one that Disney does not want you to hear. Disney’s paper buying practices are driving some of Earth’s most iconic animals towards extinction, and so far the company is doing nothing about it.

Disney is the largest publisher of children’s books in the world, producing over 50 million books and 30 million magazines a year in the US alone. Last year, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) hired an independent lab to conduct tests on the fiber found in children’s books published by the top ten US publishers. Nine of the ten tested positive for fiber linked to Indonesian rainforest destruction, Disney included. See Turning the Page on Rainforest Destruction: Children’s Books and the future of Indonesia’s rainforests.

RAN approached each of the companies before releasing the incriminating data to allow each a chance to address this serious problem. In the year that followed, RAN worked closely with these companies and eight of the original ten have now established commitments not to source their paper from controversial Indonesian fiber. Seven of the ten have agreed to specifically avoid purchasing from the notoriously destructive logging and paper companies APP (Asia Pulp and Paper) and APRIL (Asia Pacific Resources International Limited) altogether.

Sadly, Disney has lagged behind its peers and to date has offered only empty words that do nothing to ensure the company is not still purchasing paper driving rainforest destruction.

Indonesia is a real life Magic Kingdom, home to some of the most biologically and culturally diverse forest ecosystems on Earth. With only 1% of the planet’s land area, Indonesia’s rainforests are home to 16% of all bird species, 11% of all plants and 10% of all mammals. This wealth of life includes endangered tigers, orangutans and elephants, the real life characters featured in Disney’s Jungle Book.

Reckless logging, largely driven by demand for cheap paper products and palm oil, has threatened all of this by causing one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation. The carbon emissions from this large scale deforestation has made Indonesia the world’s 3rd largest greenhouse gas polluting country, behind only the US and China.

Indonesia’s forest products industry is internationally renowned for its corruption and high rates of illegal logging, as well as for its devastating impacts on biodiversity, forest communities and the climate. The vast majority of Indonesia’s pulp and paper — approximately 80% — is controlled by two large and controversial suppliers: APP and APRIL. Over the past decade both have become infamous for their widespread, rapacious demolition of Indonesia’s rainforests and communities.

It’s time for Disney to realize that rainforest destruction is no fairy tale. Rainforest Action Network is putting Disney on notice, and we hope you will join us to get the company to align its practices with the values it espouses and embeds in the stories it tells. Bulldozers and chainsaws have no place in the habitat of endangered species or in the production of storybooks for children. It’s time for Disney to stop doing business with nefarious bad actors like APP and APRIL and to adopt a comprehensive policy that can guarantee parents that reading bedtime stories to their kids will not make them unwitting participants in tiger and orangutan extinction.

Because in the end, it was Disney who helped many of us learn for the first time, it’s a small world, after all.

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!

A member of an Ecuadorean delegation visits Grand Isle, Louisiana with members of the United Houma Nation to see the destruction left by BP's oil spill. Click the image for more photos.

Never mind the 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste still contaminating the Amazon rainforest, which Chevron refuses to take responsibility for. The company has promised to behave itself this time.

I say that not to make light of an obviously very serious situation, but to point out how ludicrous it is that even as we struggle to clean up the last oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (and reports are currently circulating of yet another oil spill in the Gulf), federal regulators have seen fit to award a serial-polluter like Chevron with the first permit for a new deepwater drilling operation since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.

Why is this so appalling? Mainly because Chevron has never met a community it wasn’t willing to pollute if there were profits to be made, which could be seriously bad news for the Gulf Coast residents still reeling from last year’s spill. Chevron doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to protecting the environment, and the company will do whatever it takes to avoid cleaning up its messes. Just ask the people of Ecuador, or the people of Nigeria and Kazakhstan, or even the people right here in Richmond, California — all of whom live every day with pollution from Chevron operations that the company refuses to take responsibility for.

Last year we helped organize a delegation of Ecuadorean leaders who headed to the Gulf Coast to meet with American Indian tribes and share their experiences coping with decades of Chevron’s massive oil contamination. The meetup happened as the Gulf Coast residents were bracing for the impacts of BP’s oil spill. We put out a report, “The Lasting Stain of Oil,” to distill  some valuable lessons for victims of Big Oil’s reckless pursuit of profits. Perhaps now, as Chevron prepares to begin new exploratory drilling operations in the Gulf, is a good time to revisit those lessons:

• Corporate Polluters Will Cover Up Evidence
  Chevron has engaged in numerous cover-up tactics in order to minimize public awareness and try to limit future liability.
• Don’t Trust the Polluter to Properly Clean Up
  Hoping to avoid a major liability, Chevron engaged in a fraudulent remediation, which consisted of covering up a small portion of its contamination, while leaving massive amounts of toxins in the environment.
• Expect a Public Relations Campaign to Gloss Over Impact and Attack Community
  Like Chevron has in Ecuador, oil industry polluters often stick to the same tactics – trying to cast blame on others and distract attention from their own wrongdoing.
• Corporations Will Use Legal Maneuvering and Political Influence to Evade Liability
  Rather than do the right thing and put its resources toward cleaning up its mess in Ecuador, Chevron has instead spent vast sums of money on questionable legal tactics and lobbying, and political arm-twisting.
• Oil Disasters Will Have Long-term Impacts
  Much of the harm from large oil spills manifests years later, and circumstances can change dramatically over time.
• Affected Communities Have the Power to Demand Accountability
  Despite Chevron’s efforts to avoid accountability in Ecuador, the communities have developed strength and resilience by uniting in their struggle for justice, health, and a clean environment.

Read all of the lessons learned over at ChevronToxico.

We sincerely hope another one of these knowledge-sharing sessions doesn’t become necessary, especially because the folks living on the Gulf Coast are only beginning to deal with the full repercussions of BP’s oil spill. But this news about Chevron getting the first post-BP oil spill permit is cause for concern, especially coupled with the fact that Chevron is planning so many deepwater drilling operations in the Gulf that the Houston Chronicle once described it as “a massive floating city about 280 miles southwest of New Orleans.”

Apparently we did not learn our lesson well enough after the BP oil spill.

Little Village Environmental Justice Organization rally to shut down dirty coal power plants in South Chicago

Research shows that carbon offsets aren’t working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stall global warming. That’s why RAN has founded the Climate Action Fund.

In theory, a carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of carbon or greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for or to offset an emission made elsewhere. Rather than reduce its own pollution, for example, a business would pay someone somewhere else in the world to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and then take credit for their contribution.

Sounds good, but does it really work?

A recent report estimates that of the $700 million dollars that are invested in carbon offsets around the world, offset buyers

are often buying vague promises instead of the reductions in greenhouse gases they expect. They are buying into projects that are never completed, or paying for ones that would have been done anyhow, the investigation found. Their purchases are feeding middlemen and promoters seeking profits from green schemes that range from selling protection for existing trees to the promise of planting new ones that never thrive. In some cases, the offsets have consequences that their purchasers never foresaw, such as erecting windmills that force poor people off their farms. Carbon offsets are the environmental equivalent of financial derivatives: complex, unregulated, unchecked and – in many cases – not worth their price.

Stanford University researchers found that up to 2/3 of offsets in international markets are not delivering any additional reduction in emissions compared to business as usual, which means that buyers are getting ripped off and the offsets are doing nothing to slow climate change. The attempt to “buy” our way out of climate change has left us with a corrupt system with little accountability where very little is done to reduce emissions.

At RAN, we began the Climate Action Fund (CAF) to take a fundamentally different approach. Starting with our own organization, we calculate the annual carbon emissions associated with our operations, including travel. We then apply an internal price — effectively a tax — on that carbon. These modest revenues are then invested directly in frontline community groups that are organizing against the extraction and combustion of dirty fossil fuels in the first place.

The Climate Action Fund is also open to individuals and businesses that want to participate in CAF-supported efforts to tackle the root causes of climate change. The CAF contributes 100 percent of donations directly to community organizations that are fighting to protect land and people, as well as to keep millions of tons of CO2 in the ground.

Rainforest Action Network is inspired by the work these frontline community groups are doing and honored to be able to support and promote their amazing work. We hope to be able to get more and more progressive organizations and companies involved with the CAF and learn how to green their business, reduce their carbon footprint and make direct contributions to groups on the frontlines of the battle to end our addiction to dirty fossil fuels and reduce dangerous carbon emissions contributing to climate change.

Get started with Climate Action Fund!

Click image or go to www.ChangeChevron.org/ChevronIsGuilty to take action.

As oil giant Chevron has pursued its “distract, distort, and delay” strategy to evade responsibility for polluting Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, the company has found U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to be very sympathetic to its claims. According to a brief just filed by the Ecuadorean plaintiffs’ US lawyer, Kaplan might even have gone so far as to suggest new abusive legal maneuvers for the company to pursue.

But first, a quick bit of history on “the case,” which actually involves several cases in the U.S. and Ecuador.

This legal battle goes all the way back to 1993, when a group of Indigenous and rural Ecuadoreans filed a lawsuit against Texaco in New York federal court. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001, and Chevron’s lawyers argued that New York was not the proper jurisdiction for the suit. So in 2002 U.S. District Judge Saul Rakoff granted Chevron’s motion to have the case moved to Ecuador. As a condition of the transfer, Chevron agreed to honor the judicial process and abide by the verdict issued by the court in Lago Agrio, Ecuador. But there’s been little to no honor in any of Chevron’s actions since.

In 2011, almost two decades after the initial lawsuit was filed in New York, the judge presiding over the case in Ecuador found Chevron guilty and ordered the company to pay $8.6 billion to clean up its mess. It was a major victory for the Ecuadoreans who had withstood an endless barrage of abusive and bullying legal maneuvers and dirty tricks from Chevron. The company, of course, immediately proclaimed the judgment illegitimate and refused to pay.

So much for honoring the judicial process…

For the past few years, Chevron has embarked on a series of legal tactics here in the United States that are intended to discredit the Ecuadorean court system and smear the reputations of the Ecuadorean plaintiffs and their legal representation. Two weeks prior to the verdict, for instance, Chevron filed a RICO lawsuit against several of the Ecuadorean plaintiffs, as well as their Ecuador- and US-based legal teams.

The RICO suit was just the latest in a long line of abusive tactics. There is evidence that while the case was still in the Southern District Court of New York, Texaco helped write a memo that was sent by the Ecuadorean ambassador requesting that the U.S. State Dept. intervene and cause the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims. Later, Chevron lobbied the White House to pressure Ecuador into dropping the case. The company also attempted to entrap one of the Ecuadorean judges in a sting operation. In fact, Chevron has practically declared war on the Ecuadorean judiciary, filing numerous motions before the court, threatening judges with criminal charges and jail sentences, and taking out ads in national newspapers calling the court, the judges, and the experts corrupt – all conduct that Chevron would never attempt in the United States.

But it’s Chevron’s allegations that the Ecuadorean plaintiffs are mobsters engaged in a vast criminal conspiracy to extort money from the poor little corporate behemoth that is particularly outrageous. And where might Chevron have found a court willing to entertain this absurd allegation? Why, Judge Kaplan’s court, and none other.

US lawyer Steven Donziger, a human rights lawyer who has been fighting for justice for the people of the Ecuadorian Amazon over the past decade, is who Chevron is focusing on as the mastermind behind the imagined criminal conspiracy. Donziger just filed a brief arguing that Chevron filed the RICO suit to evade the promise to abide by the ruling in Ecuador that the company made to Judge Rakoff. The brief also claims that Chevron deliberately neglected to cite the original 1993 lawsuit when filing the RICO suit because that would ensure the case found its way on to Kaplan’s docket and not Rakoff’s.

In addition to being biased in Chevron’s favor, Kaplan allegedly encouraged Chevron to file the RICO suit in the first place. At a September hearing, Kaplan said, “Now, do the phrases Hobbs Act, extortion, RICO, have any bearing here?”— obviously signaling that he’d be willing to hear such allegations made in his courtroom. As Donziger’s brief says, ”It is no wonder that Chevron would seek to have the [RICO suit] assigned to the very judge who invited and encouraged its instigation.”

Kaplan wrote to the U.S. State Department requesting input on the implications of Chevron’s RICO suit for international relations with Ecuador, but the State Dept. replied with a big fat “No comment.” Translation: You and Chevron are on your own, Kaplan.

Sinar Mas Clearing Forest in West Kalimantan, Making Room for Palm Plantations. Photo: Greenpeace

Sinar Mas Group, the notorious international palm oil pariah, recently made a remarkable announcement: The company’s subsidiary, Golden Agri Resouces (GAR), intends to implement a forest conservation policy. Among other things, GAR’s Forest Conservation Policy commits it to a goal of “no new development” on peat lands, High Conservation Value Forest areas or High Carbon Landscapes, respecting Indigenous and local communities, and achievement of RSPO certification for all its holdings by 2015.

Well, sounds good on paper, right?

The announcement is significant for several reasons. First, it demonstrates that global grassroots market pressure campaigns are working. When Indonesia’s largest palm oil producer — whose environmentally and socially egregious production practices have made it the poster child of everything that is wrong with the palm oil industry — announces its intention to move, it’s clear that our message is starting to get through. GAR’s announcement follows years of worldwide negative press and international contract cancellations, most recently from major high-profile companies including General Mills, Burger King, Nestle and HSBC.

Second, while the announcement recycles a number of previous GAR commitments, it is the first time a major palm oil supplier has set clear criteria defining High Carbon Landscapes (HCL). This is a hugely important benchmark for the entire palm oil industry in Indonesia as well as for the pulp and paper sector. (Interestingly, Sinar Mas Group also owns the largest and most notorious pulp and paper producer in Indonesia, Asia Pulp and Paper.) The RSPO needs to include this benchmark in its standards, and it deserves to also be embraced and codified by the government as it moves forward with actions to reduce deforestation — including the upcoming moratorium on forest conversion expected from the President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Carbon emissions from massive corporate-led deforestation and peatland destruction in Indonesia have vaulted it to a third place ranking as the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter after China and the US.  GAR’s HCL criteria are set at a “provisional 35 tons of carbon per hectare,” which should take most valuable standing forest off the table and shift expansion to more degraded lands. GAR, working with forest consultants Tropical Forest Trust, will be doing a study to assess this benchmark over the next 6 months.

Most importantly, however, is what GAR’s announcement says about Cargill.

If GAR is willing to step forward and make such overdue commitments publicly, why isn’t Cargill doing the same for its palm oil business? Cargill needs to clean up its palm oil supply chain and insist on what GAR is promising from ALL of its palm oil suppliers (as well as on Cargill’s own palm oil plantations). Cargill trades an estimated 20-25% of global palm oil production. As long as Cargill continues to trade in unsustainably produced palm oil, the company is a huge part of the problem.

In a recent article dissecting GAR’s new policy, CSR veteran David Logan, who is tasked with helping usher GAR into 21^st Century corporate social responsibility, notes that he’s making sure GAR has a vested interest in improved transparency. Wait a minute, did he say Transparency? What a concept for a massive palm oil company! The kind of transparency he’s advocating is exactly the type of consistent public reporting we’re looking for in a Cargill policy.

Taken just at face value, GAR’s commitments represent a positive signal, both for the company and more widely for the palm oil industry. When even a palm oil pariah like GAR says it will go to bat for forest protection, other major palm oil players like Cargill are going to have to get more serious about their commitments to clean up their palm oil business.

Join our campaign to get Cargill to implement a palm oil policy that ensures that all the palm oil they purchase and trade doesn’t come from rainforest destruction or slave labor, whether from third party suppliers or Cargill’s own plantations — where the company is both destroying the rainforest and abusing worker’s rights.

Sign our petition and ask Cargill to show real leadership in making sure that rainforests aren’t cut down for palm oil.

One last thought: As Mr. Logan raised in his discussion about GAR’s uphill journey towards corporate social responsibility, GAR’s new policy announcement begs us to revisit an important question about the RSPO. If one of the worst players in the industry has essentially committed to surpass the RSPO’s principles and criteria, that calls into question whether or not the RSPO — the only certification criteria that commands any significant percent of the palm oil market — has strong enough standards to make a real difference on the ground in Indonesia.

We’ve watched movies like Split Estate and Gasland, which explain the serious health risks associated with fracking, and we’ve been hearing and reading about thousands of people across the US who are turning out to public meetings and hearings to say “No” to fracking in their community.

Having taken a look at the issue, we developed the following policy position on hydrofracking:

Rainforest Action Network believes that corporations should be allowed to extract and process mineral fuels only if they can do so without harming human health or contaminating the air, water, and soil, or failing to maintain ecological integrity,  with an eye on impacts at all levels: local, regional, and global. This means achieving the following goals:

1. No water pollution: Protecting public health, the environment, and the climate from toxic, hazardous, and carcinogenic chemicals used in the extraction of fossil fuel energy resources;

2. Low emissions: Protecting public health, the environment, and the climate from pollutants emitted during the drilling and ongoing production of energy resources;

3. No-go zones: Protecting sacred areas, fragile ecosystems, high conservation and high carbon value areas, neighborhoods, drinking watersheds, and densely populated areas targeted for energy development;

4.  Landowner Consent: Continuing to develop and then implementing laws and policies that make surface and mineral estates co-equal and ensure that landowners have essential rights to negotiate, including the right to say ‘no’ to energy development.

5.  Indigenous Rights: Honoring the unique right of Indigenous Communities to free, prior, informed consent as defined in the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Consent should be sought via a process that respects the traditional decision-making structures of the community. The process should be mutually agreed upon and recorded, while also complying with and building upon any applicable laws and regulations.

We would love to hear your feedback on this policy.

Members of the Kichwa Indigenous community listen to their names being read from Chevron legal complaint.

At this point, Chevron’s legal strategy in Ecuador has been described many ways: it’s been called a “smear campaign,” it uses “scorched earth tactics,” it amounts to what you might call a “kitchen sink defense,” it adds “insult to injury” for the Ecuadorean plaintiffs. But the company’s latest maneuver is really the most egregious intimidation tactic we’ve seen yet — Chevron has given up on arguing on the basis of evidence altogether, and is just trying to bully its way out of its responsibility to clean up the Ecuadorean rainforest.

I refer, of course, to the RICO lawsuit Chevron filed against the plaintiffs in Ecuador who filed the original lawsuit — the one Chevron is trying to distract all our attention from — to force the company to clean up its 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

The video below is of several victims of Chevron’s contamination learning that, of all things, they are now being sued by Chevron. These people are all from the Kichwa village of Rumipamba. (The video is all in Spanish and Kichwa, but there are English subtitles. Transcript below).

Please help us spread this video. These are the people Chevron is trying to smear, people who have been injured and now insulted by Chevron. It’s time we all stand up to Big Oil — we can’t let companies like Chevron get away with poisoning this Kichwa community, or any community.

Transcript of the video is as follows:

Speaker: Look brothers and sisters this document has come from the United States. This is the lawsuit they have filed against us, the plaintiffs. Here is everything they have sent from there.

Here are our names, brothers and sisters, as you will see.

So that you see that this is real, you’ll see our names here, we’re listed here. What we’re seeing are these names:

Here is: Maria Aguinda Salazar, you’re named here too, sued by Texaco.

Carlos Grefa Huatatoca, you’re being sued as well.

Catalina Antonia Aguinda Salazar, you’re also being sued.

Lidia Alexandra Aguinda Aguinda, being sued.

Patricio Alberto Chimbo Yumbo, also being sued.

Clide Ramiro Aguinda Aguinda, from what I’m reading here, also being sued.

Luis Armando Chimbo Yumbo, Beatriz Mercedes Grefa Tanguila, also being sued.

Brother Lucio Enrique Grefa Tanguila, also being sued, but he’s not here.

Patricio Wilson Aguinda Aguinda, also being sued.

These are our brothers and sisters from this region, from this area, from this community of Rumipamba.

There are a whole lot of other people listed here but they are from different communities, from different regions who are also being sued.

They also live in the region, in the affected area.

So that’s what we’re seeing brothers and sisters…

Now we have to stay alert so that we can fight this.

All together in Kichwa: We reject this! We reject this! We reject this!

I picked up a RAN pamphlet while attending an animal rights conference in Oregon, and was very much taken with their bite-back approach in challenging large corporations. I was inspired by the work RAN was doing to support Indigenous rights and communities. Nothing is more valuable, sacred, and vulnerable than our environment and the species that we share with it. I feel RAN does an amazing job through direct action, my personal favorite, and get corporations to adopt better business practices.

Environmentalism with Teeth

RAN has caught my eye with their commanding and tenacious energy to their campaigns. Not only is RAN able to find ways in which to take action on the issues facing our precious planet, but they turn that action into something exciting and compelling. RAN will get the job done!

About Kitty

In middle school I was exposed to a side of the food industry that I had never seen before through the video “Meet Your Meat.” This video opened my eyes to the animal abuse in the production of industrial foods and changed my life. I went from an apathetic and jaded teenager to an inspired and unstoppable activist for animals and the environment.

Since then, volunteering has become my favorite thing to do. I have recently started cleaning people’s houses in my free time in my efforts to support groups that work to protect the environment, the rights of animals and humans alike. So far I’ve raised over $700.

When not volunteering I simply delight in protesting, meeting new people, jogging, and cooking up a vegan storm in the kitchen!

This week, HSBC became the second international bank in as many months to take a step away from financing in the Tar Sands.

The bank hinted in press reports last year that it was reviewing its tar sands business. Now the London-based bank has come through. In a post to its website, the bank quietly revised its “Energy Sector Policy” to clarify that:

HSBC has policy restrictions where customers are involved in the principal processes of mining, extraction and upgrading. We undertake a balanced analysis of positive and negative impacts to understand whether customers operate in accordance with good practice, focusing on factual data and trends where available. Specifically, we analyse: GHG intensity; water usage; land and tailings pond reclamation; the grievance process in place for local communities; and the extent to which a customer discloses standards and performance.

For the bank we ranked 13th among tar sands financiers last year, it ain’t perfect. The new policy lacks any timelines, targets, or definitions. And the devil’s always in those details.

You have to wonder, for instance, about that “GHG intensity” commitment. Last year the banking giant underwrote $625 million in bonds for TransCanada. TransCanada is now facing a slew of lawsuits and regulatory hurdles over it’s proposed “Keystone XL” tar sands pipeline to Texas. In a request to delay approval of the pipeline, the EPA issued concerns that the product it would carry is  82% more GHG-intensive than conventional crude.

The “local communities” commitment also raises questions. HSBC  raised $100 million in bonds for Enbridge last year. Enbridge is the company working with Chinese oil companies to push the “Northern Gateway” tar sands pipeline through the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest to a tanker port in Northern British Columbia. More than 60 First Nation communities have declared their opposition to the project, calling it a violation of their rights and the integrity of their traditional territories.

Pure greenwash? Only time will tell. And HSBC’s dealings (or not) with Enbridge and TransCanada will be early indicators. Meantime, at the very least, the new HSBC policy is a welcome sign that banks are beginning to recognize that tar sands is a risky business.

For those keeping score, international banks that have developed sector-specific policies that cover tar sands are (in chronological order):

• Dexia – November, ’08
• Rabobank – April, ’10
• RBC – December, ’10
• HSBC – January ’11