Fruit Pollutes More Than Coal?

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 [...]

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What’s Your Carbon “FOODprint”?

Brighter Planet has just come out with a report that examines the climate impact of multiple factors along the entire supply chain of producing, transporting, packaging, preparing and discarding our food. The authors find that “In all, food represents 21% of the typical American’s total annual carbon footprint of 28.6 tons CO2e. Of course, that’s [...]

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Malaysian Communities Still Under Threat

In April 2008, I participated in an international fact-finding team that traveled throughout the Malaysian state of Sarawak to document reports that Indigenous communities were being systematically deprived of their land and other basic human rights through collusion between the state government and oil palm companies. Sadly, this practice has not stopped despite more than [...]

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Sumatra hunger strike: the last recourse for a forest community

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

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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: Cargill’s message to local communities – We have no time for you

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

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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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RSPO Dispatch: Oil palm is not development

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

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Commodity Colonialism – Oil Palm development in Papua New Guinea

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

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The elephant in the oil palm plantation: China’s growing influence in the oil palm industry

Here at RAN the agribusiness campaign is hard at work pressuring US agribusiness companies, with a  focus on the massive privately held company Cargill, to stop their dirty and dangerous practices of developing oil palm plantations in the rich tropical rainforests of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea. Cargill has a total of five oil [...]

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