Palm oil day laborer in Sumatra, Photo by David Gilbert/RAN

Fortunately the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took into consideration the complexity of the issue in its latest ruling about biofuels derived from palm oil. Late last week, the EPA excluded palm oil biodiesel from the U.S. renewable fuel standard—a small yet significant reprieve for Indonesia’s rainforests, where palm oil plantations are a major cause of rainforest destruction.

The EPA found that biofuels derived from palm oil aren’t a good choice for the climate because, once the carbon footprint of palm oil production is factored in, they can no longer meet the 20% emissions-reduction standard for biofuels.

It’s encouraging that the EPA sees the terrible toll the industrial production of palm oil biodiesel has on the environment. Indonesia is already the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S. Some 85% of Indonesia’s emissions result from clearing rainforests and draining carbon-rich peatlands, activities driven heavily by the rapid expansion of the palm oil industry.

Widely considered a “clean” agrofuel, palm oil has more environmental implications to consider than just the emissions it produces when burned. According to the Center for International Forestry Research, biodiesel from palm oil grown on peat has a 200 year carbon debt. This means it would take 200 years of production for these palm oil plantations to replace the carbon lost from land conversion. And once you consider the amount of fuel used for palm oil cultivation and transcontinental shipping, palm oil can be one of the worst fuel sources for the climate.

Looking at the harsh and immediate realities of today’s climate science, it’s clear that a 200-year turnaround is 200 years too late. There are already too many demands on Indonesia’s rainforests coming from the palm oil industry.

According to the US Department of Labor the Cultivation of Palm Oil in Some Countries Relies on Slave Labor

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 requires retailers and manufacturers to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains.

This new law comes at a critical time when one of the largest importers of palm oil into the U.S. and trader of 25% of the world’s palm oil — Cargill, Inc. — still refuses to adopt supply chain safeguards. Without proper safeguards in place, Cargill continues to purchase, trade and profit from palm oil grown on lands stolen from local communities and other palm plantation areas with active, ongoing social conflict and human rights violations, including slave labor.  Indeed, the U.S. Department of Labor has placed Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil on its “Red List” of products produced by child and forced labor. Cargill has repeatedly been made aware of these problems, but has yet to acknowledge the abuses or take action to resolve them.

Here’s the joint press statement we released with As You Sow’s Responsible Sourcing Network and Green America:

Advocacy groups say slave labor connected to palm oil, chocolate and cotton production will provide initial test cases for compliance with the new Transparency in Supply Chains Act

San Francisco, CA – Leading environmental and corporate social responsibility organizations say that chronic human rights abuses associated with popular products like chocolate and cotton tee shirts will join controversial food additive palm oil to provide initial test cases for companies striving to comply with California’s Supply Chain Transparency Act (SB 657). The new law that went into effect Jan 1^st, 2012, requires retailers and manufacturers to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains. The law applies to all corporations doing business in California with more than $100 million in worldwide gross receipts – an estimated 3,200 companies.

A roundtable focused on the new California law was held at the Bay Area Council in San Francisco on January 6^th and was attended by advocacy organizations, attorneys, state representatives and executives from several Bay Area corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, McKesson, PG&E, Levi Strauss, Gap Inc. and Safeway. Following the roundtable, representatives of Rainforest Action Network, Responsible Sourcing Network and Green America issued the following statements.

Rainforest Action Network’s (RAN’s) Forest Program Director Lindsey Allen commented:

“California’s new law is designed to give consumers the information they need to make more informed choices about what products they buy. In addition to the widespread destruction of rainforests that result from palm oil production, it has been clear for many years that slave labor, debt bondage and human rights abuses on plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia are part of what has made palm oil into the cheap and ubiquitous food additive it is today. In 2010, the US Dept. of Labor confirmed this by placing palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia on its List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.

It is past time that companies like agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. acknowledge the true costs of palm oil and this law’s transparency requirements are a first step. The law’s mandate that companies report what they are or are not doing to address slave labor in their supply chains will help to publicly distinguish corporate leaders from laggards when it comes to aligning products with the values consumers care most about.”

Green America’s Fair Trade Campaigns Director, Elizabeth O’Connell said:

“For more than ten years, consumers have called on chocolate companies to take more responsibility for their supply chains and ensure that forced, trafficked, and child labor were not used to harvest their cocoa beans.  While some companies have taken voluntary steps to prevent labor abuses, such as third party certification, other major companies, including Hershey, continue to drag their feet.  The passage of California’s SB657 will require that all companies disclose what they are doing to prevent labor abuse in their supply chains, and therefore, pressure laggards like Hershey to finally address these issues.

Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN) Director Patricia Jurewicz said,

“Investors are looking for more than just the transparency this statute requires. Even more important to investors will be seeing the new steps companies are taking to minimize reputational risks and be proactive in eliminating slavery from the products they sell. For example,  we are  tracking for the investment community if companies have signed our pledge and are participating in our initiative to stop forced child labor in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan.”

For more information:

The US Dept. of Labor 2011 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor

http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/PDF/2011TVPRA.pdf

Effective Supply Chain Accountability: Investor Guidance on Implementation of The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and Beyond

http://www.iccr.org/issues/subpages/pdf/11.17.11SupplyChainGuide.pdf

Compliance is Not Enough: Best Practices in Responding to The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act

http://www.verite.org/sites/default/files/VTE_WhitePaper_California_Bill657FINAL5.pdf

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Rainforest Action Network runs hard-hitting campaigns to break North America’s fossil fuels addiction, protect endangered forests and Indigenous rights, and stop destructive investments around the world through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action. For more information, please visit: www.ran.org.

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America (formerly Co-op America) provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. For more information, go to: http://www.GreenAmerica.org.

Responsible Sourcing Network is a project of the non-profit organization As You Sow. RSN addresses human rights violations and environmental destruction in the supply chains of consumer products at the raw commodity level. For more information, please visit www.sourcingnetwork.org.

Cargill, Guilty as Charged

Last week, over 40 Minnesota residents made a citizens’ arrest of Cargill, Inc. in front of the company’s downtown Minneapolis office at the Grain Exchange. I walked away from the event struck with inspiration and hope. Why? In addition to being amazed that so many enthusiastic people braved below-freezing weather to hold Cargill accountable for its crimes against nature, I thought that this event was particularly significant in that it demonstrated the growing unity of voices in opposition to Cargill’s destructive power.

Our Cargill campaign is bridging movements and building strong allies beyond simply environmental and human rights organizations. RAN has been running a campaign to pressure Cargill to clean up its palm oil supply chain for several years, but we’re up against the world’s largest privately held corporation. We need a larger justice army than just RAN alone. RAN is small but mighty — but Cargill’s annual revenue of $119 billion is larger than the GDP of 70% of the world’s countries. It’s one of the most secretive, sketchy operations in the world (see for yourself). We can’t expect the richest family in America — the Cargill MacMillan family — or top decision makers within the company to do right by people and the planet. We have to force them to. And when I say we, I mean a swarm of us.

And that’s exactly what we’re witnessing.

This past weekend I noticed the seeds of a national movement against Cargill begin germinating, an unstoppable swarm pursuing Cargill from all angles. This includes rural communities and farmers who are tired of Cargill’s exploitation, the Occupy movement’s growing hunger to Occupy our Food Supply and reclaim our food system from corporate control, human rights organizations demanding an end to slave labor in Cargill’s supply chain, and environmental organizations holding Cargill accountable for driving climate change and orangutans towards extinction.

There is growing national opposition to Cargill's destructive practices

We are excited to forge new alliances with groups like Family Farm Defenders, the National Family Farm Coalition, and the Land Stewardship Project. Paul Sobocinski, a Land Stewardship Project organizer and family farm livestock producer from Wabasso, MN, could not attend our citizens’ arrest of Cargill due to distance but proudly stood in solidarity with our action by offering a quote, which we read aloud to the crowd:

Cargill wants to control the livestock industry, they’d like to turn family farmers into modern day serfs who do their bidding while Cargill walks away with the lion’s share of the profits. Cargill is fully integrated and one of the largest meatpackers and factory farm hog producers in the country. It’s time to hold them accountable. It’s time to take back our food and farming system from corporate agribusiness.

Amen.

Another farmer, Dena Hoff from Montana, is Vice President of NFFC. She expressed a similar sentiment:

It is outrageous that our leaders continue to promote their disastrous trade liberalization policies. The WTO and free trade have led to below-cost dumping by agribusinesses, destroying family farmers and threatening our food security. Countries have surrendered their food sovereignty to the likes of Cargill and Wall Street, who profit from the volatility that hurts farmers and consumers worldwide.

The first step to reclaiming our food system is taking control of our own food chain and eliminating as many of the corporate strings as possible. That means spending more time at your local farmers market and doing away with the packaged, processed, and refined foods that likely contain the nasty and unethical food additive called palm oil.

Palm oil is in every way a symptom of our broken food system. If you want to start tackling your own foodprint, start with palm oil. Trace its steps backwards in the food supply, and there you will find Cargill, the shady, secretive back door dealer.

It’s time to Occupy Cargill as the first step to Occupying our Food Supply!

See RAN’s shocking new Cargill fact sheet here.

Citing multiple corporate crimes ranging from slave labor, driving climate change and monopolizing the food chain to putting profits before food safety, the 99% took moral law into their own hands to perform a “Citizens’ Arrest” of Cargill, Inc. An Occupy Cargill protestor at the rally explained it this way: “Corporations aren’t people, but if they have the same rights as a person, shouldn’t they have the same responsibilities? So, can’t we arrest them for their criminal behavior?”

Cargill, Inc. is the largest privately held corporation in the world. The corporation’s annual revenue of $119 billion is higher than 70% of the world’s countries GDPs and the family that controls it is the richest in America. Cargill, Inc. is plagued with worldwide controversy around many of its commodities, including palm oil, salt, cotton, chocolate and grain as well as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), and carbon trading.  Agricultural free trade policies that benefit Cargill come at a high price for family farmers, food sovereignty, human rights, and the climate.

Departing from the former Occupy Minneapolis encampment site known as People’s Plaza, citizens marched in a “search party” to find this fugitive suspect, Cargill, Inc., to bring this corporate “person” to justice. Multiple speakers at the rally railed against Cargill’s corporate personhood and its extensive lobbying of governments for free trade policies that benefit its profits at the expense of people and planet.

Unable to find this corporate “person,” activists posted the arrest warrant at the last-seen location of Cargill, Inc.: The Minneapolis Grain Exchange. If I were this criminal, I would turn myself in to the 99% and beg for mercy.

Click for larger image

There are some who say that corporations are people. So can you arrest one?

Well, we’re going to find out.

Right now, corporations technically have the same First Amendment rights as real live people (as ruled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC two years ago). So shouldn’t we (real live people) hold corporations to the same level of accountability that we do other people when it comes to trashing the planet and shamefully disregarding human rights?

As global citizens, it is time to intervene.

In Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, join our coalition of citizens who are invoking the true purpose of a citizens’ arrest: to halt a dangerous and harmful criminal in their tracks. We will form search parties and take to the streets to see if anyone has seen this corporate “person,” known as Cargill, Inc. so the 99% can bring “him” to justice.

This “citizens’ arrest” will spotlight Cargill’s abuse of corporate personhood and corporate manipulation of the global food system by highlighting the company’s many crimes against human dignity. Cargill’s pursuit of the “commercialization of photosynthesis”, as touted by CEO Greg Page, has led our world toward a dangerous consolidation of power over our food supply in the hands of the 1%. Are companies with a bottom line of profit to be trusted with the well-being of people and planet? With a corporation that has a particularly bad track-record like Cargill’s, the answer is obviously no.

"Wanted: Cargill, Inc" posters have mysteriously appeared all over the Minneapolis calling for a citizens' arrest of the corporation for 'profiteering off people and planet.'

It is time to Occupy Cargill, to stop these corporate crimes against human dignity, and reclaim control over our food and health in the name of justice and sustainability. What we can create must and will be better. It starts this weekend in Minneapolis.

End Corporate Personhood. Occupy Our Food Supply!

We hope you will be able to join us if you are in the Twin Cities area. RSVP on Facebook today!

Whether or not you can make it to Minneapolis to help us apprehend Cargill, you can follow our live updates via Twitter: @theprobwithpalmoil

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.

Big Food and Big Banks are two peas in a proverbial pod. Cloaked in corporate personhood, they form a 1%-reciprocal relationship to profiteer from deregulation while endangering our health, poisoning our land, and blocking sustainable long-term solutions in the name of short-term profit.

Thank goodness everyday people are reclaiming our food supply from the insanely unsustainable hands of the corporate few. We are putting our own hands into the soil and raising our fists to resist the corporate food regime.

There is much fertile ground in the ‘convergence in diversity’ between the Occupy/Decolonize movement and the Food movement. The systems-level analysis provoked by the Occupy Wall Street movement is getting down to the roots of today’s rampant problems and injustices, and the food movement has some sensible solutions that grow from the roots up.

Millions of people recognize that Big Ag is bad for human health and the health of the planet. It is a dinosaur economy. Local agriculture creates healthy communities and provides meaningful, fair work without the toxins and exploitation enforced by Big Ag’s bottom line.

For example, agirculture giant Cargill’s manipulation of food prices and markets has done a lot to create a food system that the company would love to call “too big to fail.” The problem is that it IS failing, badly, and lives are on the line.

Recently, Cargill CEO Greg Page pulled a PR stunt attempting to launch a “too big to fail” analysis of Cargill’s role in fighting world hunger. But multiple UN and multi-institutional academic studies show that organic agriculture and agroecology have a better chance of creating food security and solving the problems of hunger than corporations that are exploiting ecosystems for monoculture crops, jumping from crisis to crisis, and speculating and profiteering all along the way. Barry Estabrook lists dozens of similarly concluded studies in The Atlantic, including a U.N.-supported study with over 400 expert contributors that calls on governments to support sustainable and small-scale agricultural practices to increase food security.

Shouldn’t that put the onus on the corporate food regime to show they actually can do it better? Big Ag’s dismissal of organic farming’s potential stands comparatively unsubstantiated. But maybe that’s exactly how companies like Cargill want it, because the reality is that Big Ag is a bad way to organize our food system.

This is just one example, and Cargill employs the same free trade business model (profit over everything) for hundreds of commodities!

For example, let’s look at the global mess Cargill has contributed to with palm oil. Increasing demand for a cheap vegetable oil with a decent shelf life has put palm oil and its derivatives on over half of the ingredients labels of packaged foods in grocery stores. But where does palm oil come from? The majority of the time it comes from deforestation of precious rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia. The rate of deforestation in Indonesia is at 3.6 million acres per year, which equals just over 5 football fields of deforestation per minute. Forests are replaced with monoculture oil palm plantations as far as the eye can see.

This is causing many social and environmental problems such as land grabs displacing Indigenous and forest-dependent communities, as well as poor working conditions that include slave-labor conditions on monoculture palm oil plantations. It is also contributing to the looming extinction of species like the Orangutan and decimating high-carbon value peatlands, which has helped catapult Indonesia to the #3 spot on the list of the world’s highest greenhouse gas emitters. The plantation workers and their families often live on palm plantations with little food security as plantations displace community gardens. Already there are cases of bankrupt plantations leaving workers and their families struggling with hunger. This is corporate colonialism, eliminating Indonesia’s vital national heritage for the benefit of the First World 1%. It’s time to Occupy Cargill.

Occupy Minneapolis protest across from the Grain Exchange building where Cargill gambles on world food prices, Oct. 2011

A palm oil policy with commitments around human rights, greenhouse gas emissions, and rainforest protection would be the very minimum to justify Cargill even being allowed to call their business model ethical. But at the end of the day, we know it is a bigger system-change that is needed, a change that goes beyond corporate sustainability lip service. We need to create alternatives that are allowed to out-compete Big Ag’s business as usual.

It’s time to Occupy Our Food Supply and reclaim food sovereignty from the corporate food regime.

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.

Kellogg’s:

Despite officially joining in 2008, Kellogg’s doesn’t appear to have ever completed the five basic questions in its membership application. We were unable to find their required annual progress reports, according to the minutes of last year’s General Assembly they did not vote on the resolutions, and weren’t sighted at last year’s RSPO conference at all. Again this year they were nowhere to be found. Kellogg’s told the public in its recent announcement:

“As a socially responsible company, Kellogg is committed to conducting our business in a way that reduces our environmental impact,” said Celeste A. Clark, Ph.D., Chief Sustainability Officer, Kellogg Company.

Apparently Kellogg’s commitment doesn’t extend to engaging with or verifying the effectiveness of the RSPO. Given that it sources palm oil from Cargill, a company with no safeguards on the palm oil it trades, this seems like a pretty flimsy guarantee to customers that the company takes its sustainability commitment seriously.

Girl Scouts:

Following extensive public concern about the use of palm oil in their iconic Girl Scout cookies, Girl Scouts USA recently made a “sustainable” palm oil commitment to cover its use of palm oil in dozens of popular Girl Scout cookie recipes. Despite having committed to the public the intent to “become affiliate members of the RSPO” and use the RSPO to guarantee that its products are not linked to rainforest destruction, representatives were nowhere to  be found.

In fact, Girl Scouts USA seems to have created a new category of “affiliate membership” that is not one of the 7 official categories of RSPO membership. Hmmm.Perhaps by affiliate membership they mean they are relying on cookie bakers to effectively use their membership in the RSPO to guarantee that palm oil is not connected to rainforest destruction and orangutan habitat loss. Unfortunately we couldn’t confirm RSPO membership for either ABC Bakers or Weston Foods Limited, and the only Girl Scout cookie baker we did find was Kellogg. Pity given the above.

McDonald’s:

The newest RSPO member missing in action joined in October with great fanfare but was nowhere to be found despite having said:

“Participating in multi-stakeholder engagements such as the RSPO is one way for us to put the power and leadership of McDonald’s behind commitments to continue to source sustainable ingredients such as palm oil,” said Francesca DeBiase, McDonald’s vice president, Worldwide Strategic Sourcing, in a statement. “Sustainability issues as they relate to food are often confusing to consumers, and we can help lead the way by educating our customers on how our food is sourced.”

Missing: McDonalds CEO Jim Skinner

Missing: Kellogg CEO John Bryant

Missing: GSUSA CEO Anna Maria Chavez

If we’re expecting these brands to assure that RSPO certified palm oil is truly responsible, perhaps next year we’ll have to put the photos of these missing companies on the back of milk boxes before the annual RSPO meeting.

Update 11/24/11 9:50am Whose Voices are Missing at the RSPO?

In concluding her plenary presentation yesterday, “A Preliminary consideration of workers and communities,” Toh su Mei from the organization Wild Asia, left participants of the 9^th Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil meeting pondering the lack of representation of workers and smallholders at the conference.

“We are the stakeholders of the palm oil economy, but where are the workers in the room?” Her question to the room brought to light a notable emptiness among RSPO members and RSPO board members: palm oil workers.

Workers at Ledo Lestari palm oil plantation in Borneo. Photo: David Gilbert

There are an estimated 2 million Indonesians working in Malaysia for a variety of industries. Indonesia placed a moratorium on sending workers to Malaysia following widely reported abuse of Indonesian workers in the neighboring country where many are undocumented and work in palm oil plantations, construction and as domestic workers. But after two years of tough negotiations, involving the top leaders of both countries, Indonesia and Malaysia eventually overcame the protracted deadlock on the sending of unskilled Indonesian workers to Malaysia.

Migrant workers from Indonesia working on palm oil plantations may have their passports held and may be subject to multi-year contracts that push the workers into debt and prevent escape. As I documented just over a year ago, slave and child labor on palm oil plantations is a severe reality in Indonesia and Malaysia. So sever, in fact, that recently the U.S. Department of Labor added palm oil cultivated in Indonesia to its List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.

Toh su Mei explained that migrant workers often aren’t allowed to organize or join unions or risk getting terminated. She encouraged the RSPO to reach out to local and migrant workers upon which the oil palm industry relies and to engage them in decision making processes that ultimately affect them but currently are run behind closed doors.

According to a 2009 publication on the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants, here is summary of the issues facing migrant workers in Malaysia.

If the RSPO fails to meaningfully involve the workers it relies on to address these issues, another weakness will be added to a system that is already missing key safeguards relating to the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions, one that still fails to adequately implement key elements of the principles and criteria relating to social conflict and the conversion of natural forests.

Orangutans, threatened with extinction by the palm oil industry, are humankinds closest relatives

Original Post: Malaysia Minister Slams NGOs for Using Science that Documents High Risk of Orangutan Extinction

On Tuesday, November 22, the Malaysian Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities, a man named Tan Sri Bernard Giluk Dompok, delivered the Official Address in the Opening Ceremony of the Rountable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) conference. A significant portion of his comments expressed concern and disapproval of the style of campaigning RAN and other NGO’s use to draw attention to the social and environmental problems with palm oil.

But Mr. Dompok did more than simply acknowledge the campaigns of those concerned with deforestation, climate change, and declines in orangutan populations. He decided to snub science in front of 1,000 delegates from 34 countries, claiming that a 2007 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), documenting the high risk of orangutan extinction due to deforestation, was baseless:

The development of the oil palm industry has never been without challenges. Environmental and consumer advocacy groups, particularly in Europe and US have stepped up claims that the oil palm sector is destroying large tracts of forests and encroaching on the natural habitats of endangered species. For example, a report entitled, “The Last Stand of the Orang Utan: State of Emergency,” claims that oil palm plantations are expanding so rapidly in the rainforests of Malaysia that almost no virgin forest will remain by 2022. It has been also claimed that an equivalent of 300 soccer fields are deforested every hour for oil palm plantations. I am of the view all these allegations are baseless and based on the premise of fear on the competitiveness of palm oil.

This statement comes just a week after the Malaysian Government announced its plans to spend $7.7 million (24 million ringgit) in 2011 and 2012 to counter criticism over the social and environmental impact of palm oil.

Directly after Mr. Dompok’s speech, I snuck into the Press Conference and sat in the front row. On camera, I asked Mr. Dompok why the Malaysian Government needed to spend over $7 million if the Malaysian palm oil industry was indeed so “sustainable.” His answer? That Malaysia needs to counter misleading NGO campaigns based on fear.

Indeed, the specter of the extinction of humankind’s closest relative, the orangutan, does elicit a sense of fear in many around the world. A comprehensive new study finds that orangutan populations in Indonesian Borneo are being diminished at unsustainable rates. The results indicate orangutans may be headed toward extinction. The study, published in PLoS One, is based on 18 months of interviews with nearly 7,000 people across 687 villages in areas where orangutans persist in East, Central, and West Kalimantan. The research involved 18 NGOs, including local and international organizations.

In a recent 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.

So you be the judge. Do you trust the comments made by the Malaysian Minister following the government’s $7 million investment in a public relations campaign, or do you trust scientists working to save the endangered orangutan before it is too late? In my experience, when companies or governments spend $7,000,000 on public relations to counter science, it’s usually because they have something to cover up.

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?

ADM: Investing in Human Rights Abuses

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 than 75 countries, held its annual shareholder meeting on Thursday in it’s hometown of Decatur, Illinois. ADM CEO Patricia Woertz proudly announced that the company increased its quarterly cash dividend from 16 cents per share to 17.5 cents per share. Happy news for shareholders, right?

Well, probably not if they knew the dirty truth: they are invested in a company complicit in gross human rights violations in Indonesia.

The most significant part of this year’s meeting was that shareholders presented a powerful resolution on palm oil, resolving that the board of directors adopt and implement a comprehensive sustainable palm oil policy. Not surprisingly, and by way of shedding light on the true nature of this company, the Board of Directors recommended a vote AGAINST this stockholder proposal.

The resolution included:

• A target date for sourcing 100% certified sustainable palm oil and for segregating and tracing certified palm oil throughout the supply chain;

• Plans to verify suppliers’ compliance with the policy; and

• Supporting a moratorium on palm oil expansion in rainforests and peatlands.

It’s too bad ADM didn’t welcome this resolution — it could have been a positive step in the right direction for a laggard of a company. A concerned shareholder attended the meeting and raised a few of her concerns about palm oil, which I’ve summarized below:

- Indonesia is the 3rd largest producer of greenhouse gases behind china and the US thanks to deforestation linked to palm oil plantation expansion, exacerbating climate change.

- ADM sources palm oil from one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, the last remaining habitat for the critically endangered orangutan, meaning they will likely become extinct.

- Indigenous people are also losing their homes and livelihoods to plantations; when they resist, they are arrested, and their homes bulldozed. This violates the standards of the RSPO, of which ADM is a member.

These comments led to an important question. The shareholder asked Woertz what ADM was doing to address the fact that Wilmar, a massive palm oil plantation company with operations in Indonesia and Malaysia of which ADM is a major shareholder, violated the RSPO code of conduct by bulldozing an Indigenous community when it got in the way of the company’s operations. Ms. Woertz responded by saying that most of the charges by the community were found to be “without merit” but that there were some issues found to have validity regarding the land, and that those investigations are still ongoing.

The CEO also said that, “as far as committing to 100% sustainable palm oil, we believe this can be done most effectively through a group effort, not by acting alone.” I beg to disagree. As the three top importers of palm oil into the US, I believe ADM, Cargill and IOI all have a responsibility to commit to 100% RSPO certified palm oil as the bare minimum standard for their US customers.

Hopefully shareholders continue to challenge ADM on its misleading claims. Any claims by ADM that it is taking the environment into consideration are completely toothless without a palm oil policy in place to make even the most basic level of assurances to its customers by adopting supply chain safeguards. With these safeguards in place, palm oil produced by companies that think bulldozing a community is a viable dispute resolution mechanism will never end up in our homes.

Katie Burgess, Executive Director of Minneapolis-based Trans Youth Support Network, calls out Cargill's absuvie labor and environmental history. Photo Credit: Taylor Foster

Katie Burgess, executive director of the Trans Youth Support Network, was asked to address the 18th Annual Coming Out Day Luncheon last week. But when she learned that Cargill was a corporate sponsor of the event, she decided to address an issue that was far more important than keeping everyone comfortable.

Instead of kissing up to the corporate sponsor, Katie eloquently revealed to an astonished but well-heeled audience of 300 the ugly truth about Cargill: No charitable sponsorship will ever be able to hide the devastation that it has caused to forests and communities around the world as Cargill abuses people and planet in a rush for unethical profit.

Read Katie’s strong, eloquent speech exposing Cargill’s despicable record on everything from palm oil to child labor to weakened food safety standards.

I had a chance to speak with Katie last week in a coffee shop on Lake Street in Minneapolis and was so inspired by her wise, compassionate description of movement intersectionality: where LGBTQ communities and organizations struggling for rights, recognition, and support meet the stark realities of international solidarity. Katie recognizes that even an event promoting LGBTQ equality in the workplace can be dwarfed if the corporate sponsor’s work is actively oppressing and endangering LGBTQ and other communities. There are literally billions of people around the world that are suffering under the free trade and corporatized agricultural systems advocated for and ruled by Cargill, and it is this larger, deeper, and serious concern to which Katie drew the attention of the luncheon attendees at the Minneapolis Hilton last week.

We support Katie’s bold choice to go against the grain in solidarity with people around the world who suffer and even die because of Cargill’s profit motive. Her words to Cargill say it all:

You have left a sea of bodies in your hurried wake. Bodies who are continuously policed by this system for existing outside of gender norms, for not being white, for being disabled, for being born in foreign countries, or for desiring and expressing their own femininity.

Let me share with you some examples:

In 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed suit against Cargill, Nestlé and Archer Daniels Midland in federal court on behalf of children who were trafficked from Mali into the Ivory Coast and forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day with no pay, little food and sleep, and frequent physical abuse on cocoa bean plantations.

Cargill is the leading importer of palm oil into the United States. Palm oil expansion is a leading cause of forest loss in Indonesia and has a devastating impact on biodiversity, forest-dependent peoples, and the climate.

In 1970, Cargill sold 63,000 tons of seed grain to Basra, Iraq treated with methylmercury, a practice banned in most Western countries. Though intended for agricultural use, and not for human or animal consumption, some recipients used it as food, as the only printed warnings about the poison were written in English and Spanish, intended as warnings for American dock workers. This led to the deaths of 93 people.

How many of them were LGBTQ? Were their deaths and mistreatment factored into Cargill’s 100% rating in HRC’s 2010 Corporate Equality Index? Our struggles are bound together. When they came for your children in Mali, I did not speak up because I am from the United States. When they came for my workplace equality, there was no one left to speak up. Our community spans more than these strung together letters of LGBTQ. Our liberation is bound with all whom struggle against these machine works of oppression.

Members and allies of the Trans Youth Support Network at a rally to end violence against Trans Women of Color in Minneapolis, July 2010.

Following Katie’s speech, Cargill employees came up to her to ask for sources, saying they had never heard about these issues and want to talk about it at work. Go employees, talk! Complain! Demand change. Cargill executives can’t hide the truth from us all.

More and more people are seeing and hearing the truth. More and more people are rejecting the status quo. It’s up to all of us. It is my hope that Katie’s choice to address Cargill’s pinkwashing will create a much-needed dialogue in the GLTB organizational community (and within any advocacy or issue-based community) about who we choose to partner with to advocate for a better world. Organizations must be scrupulous in making sure sponsors walk their ethical talk.

Katie Burgess, thank you for boldly speaking truth to power.

Environmental and human rights groups in the Netherlands are welcoming the Dutch government’s rejection of the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS) for failure to meet minimal accepted sustainability principles.

The ruling from the Ministry of Environment found that the MTCS fails to recognize or uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples and certifies timber from the wholesale conversion of natural rainforests into plantations. The importance of this ruling cannot be overstated. The Netherlands is a major market for the unsustainable Malaysian tropical timber trade. The ruling closes a significant portion of the Dutch market to MTCS-labeled products and sends a clear message to other markets to avoid the scheme.

The Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme is an example of the Malaysian government’s preferred approach to “sustainability” — create a bogus certification scheme, wage an expensive PR campaign in Western markets to promote it, and continue with business as usual at home. Brilliant.

The newest Malaysian example: a recently announced “sustainable” certification scheme for the Malaysian palm oil sector, Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil. Like its tropical timber cousin, the palm oil certification scheme is designed to rubber stamp widespread deforestation and Indigenous rights violations by Malaysian palm oil producers. As our Malaysian ally, Andrew Ng, pointed out in an earlier blog post, given Malaysia’s track record with its national timber certification scheme, its new “sustainable” palm oil certification scheme deserves to be rejected by international markets as well.

These two intrepid Girl Scouts leaders are paving the way to ensure that Girl Scout cookies are palm oil-free, and not compromising some of our most endangered forests and animals.

Check out just how inspiring they truly are in this Rikshaw Films video:

Girl Scouts Rhiannon and Madi on the CBS Early Show

It’s been a tumultuous few months for cheerleaders of Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil-certified “sustainable” palm oil, and now the ground just became even more unstable. In an interesting turn of events — what some alarmists are calling “the beginning of the end” for the RSPO —  Indonesia’s Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) has walked out on the RSPO.

Although I’m not exactly sure what this means, it raises interesting questions for the further evolution of the RSPO certification standard. Industry associations typically defend the lowest common denominator of their memberships, making them unlikely allies when pushing for changes to business as usual. I witnessed firsthand GAPKI’s aggressive obstructionist tactics at the last RSPO annual meeting in 2010.

GAPKI has jumped ship in the hopes that the Indonesian government-sponsored palm oil certification scheme, Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO), will rubberstamp existing practices as “sustainable.” Malaysia is also setting up its own palm oil industry controlled certification scheme as an alternative to the RSPO.

Does this mark the beginning of the end for the RSPO? Or the beginning of a new era of credible RSPO certification standards that actually embody strong zero deforestation criteria without GAPKI blocking progress at every step of the way?

In my mind, the most important question here is how big consumer facing brands are going to make meaningful commitments to their customers. Both Malaysia’s Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) scheme and Indonesia’s ISPO are deep greenwash, essentially government-led, industry-controlled schemes to enable larger exports of falsely labelled “sustainable” palm oil to countries around the world without addressing the huge negative environmental and social impacts of its production.

More and more large companies around the world are adopting zero deforestation policies for their palm oil supply chains, creating markets for growers willing to meet the higher standards of high value markets. The Consumer Goods Forum, with over 600 hundred large companies in 70 countries and $2.9 trillion in annual revenues, has passed a resolution to eliminate tropical deforestation from their collective supply chains by 2020. With GAPKI gone, they will be looking to the RSPO to embrace this opportunity.

The weaker governance and standards of the ISPO and MSPO and the clumsy attempt by provincial palm oil grower interests to ice out their customers from decision-making means they will never be trusted in the marketplace for any sort of quality assurance around environmental or social safeguards.

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?

Daisy Troop #42, Seacliff, NY. Photo: Diana Lenkler

After four years of savvy campaigning by Girl Scout activists Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) has finally acknowledged its role in rainforest destruction by releasing a commitment regarding its use of palm oil in its iconic cookies.

Unfortunately, the statement on palm oil just released is a small step in the right direction at a time when we need leaps forward to prevent the imminent extinction of orangutans and the wholesale destruction of some of the world’s most biologically diverse and carbon rich forests.

The bottom line remains: Girl Scouts USA cannot guarantee that the box of Thin Mints you buy doesn’t contain palm oil from rainforest destruction.

Rainforest Action Network, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Madi and Rhiannon remain concerned and have issued a joint press statement explaining why the announcement by GSUSA, while a good start, is insufficient to sever the unacceptable connection between beloved Girl Scout cookies and tropical deforestation.

Rainforest Action Network asks Girl Scouts USA to instruct their suppliers, especially agribusiness giant Cargill, to adopt basic safeguards around greenhouse gas emissions, human rights and biodiversity loss, and not outsource their values by relying on the inadequate standards of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

Troop #9045 in Central Texas. Photo: Troop Leader Jennifer McNichols

We believe Girl Scouts USA must do more than simply “work with its bakers.” In its statement, GSUSA acknowledges that while the quantity of palm oil they use is relatively small, “their voice is big.” We believe the organization has a responsibility to use that voice to help convince Cargill and other suppliers to offer guarantees to American consumers that abuses such as slave labor will no longer end up in Girl Scout cookies, or any other product. Cargill is buying its oil from the likes of Wilmar, KLK and IOI, companies connected to some of the very worst examples of corporate environmental destruction and human rights abuses. And this means Girl Scout cookies are implicated too.

Girl Scouts USA’s palm oil announcement states:

Beginning with the 2012-13 cookie season, each cookie box will include a GreenPalm logo as a symbol of Girl Scouts’ commitment to address concerns about the deforestation of sensitive lands currently caused by the production of palm oil.

Green Palm Certificates are sold to companies by the plantation that grew the palm oil. The company then goes and buys palm oil from anyone at the cheapest price. For this reason, Green Palm Certificates are a step in the right direction because they reward growers for following basic safeguards, but they do not ensure that the palm oil used in products is not linked to controversy or is driving up demand for palm oil connected to rainforest destruction and human rights violations.

As great as it is that Girl Scouts USA will be addressing the issue of palm oil in the coming cookie season, we strongly urge GSUSA to refrain from simply using its purchase of Green Palm Certificates to greenwash its image, and instead to consider implementing a plan of action to ensure its cookies are truly free of ingredients sourced from rainforest destruction. It would be very misleading for young girls across the country selling Girl Scout cookies to make claims of “sustainable palm oil” in Thin Mints when in actuality the cookies are continuing to drive deforestation and orangutan extinction.

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.

Indigenous community protest during President SBY's visit Photo: Rivani Noor/Cappa

Do you remember in 2009 when the World Bank’s lending arm, the International Finance Corp. (IFC), came under fire from human rights and environmental organizations lobbying to halt its funding of destructive palm oil development in Indonesia and Malaysia? The 18-month global moratorium on lending for new palm oil investments that followed was a direct result of the IFC violating its own standards on palm oil financing by providing loans to Wilmar International, the world’s largest palm oil producer.

Wilmar quickly became the poster child for irresponsible palm oil operations in Indonesia – failing to comply with national laws in Indonesia, illegally using fire to clear land, seizing land from Indigenous peoples without due process, lacking publicly available social and environment impact assessments, etc.

Unfortunately, this pattern is eerily similar to the problems of another global giant in the palm oil industry – Cargill, Inc.

Cargill and one of Wilmar’s majority stakeholders, ADM, are both US agribusiness giants responsible for a large portion of the controversial palm oil imported into North America. Another wholly owned Wilmar subsidiary, PGEO Edible Oils, has been a frequent supplier of palm oil to Cargill. Both Cargill and ADM continue to operate without basic supply chain safeguards, and neither take precautions against selling palm oil connected to major human rights violations like slave labor to their US customers.

Photo: Rivani Noor, Cappa

The recent outbreak of community violence in Indonesia is exactly the sort of problem Cargill and ADM could avoid by adopting social and environmental safeguards on their suppliers.

Below is a letter of concern we sent to ADM this week in solidarity with the Indigenous community in the Dusun Sungai Beruang area on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, where Wilmar was complicit in bulldozing the homes of community members earlier this month. Through multiple protests and visits to Jakarta, the community is demanding justice.

Patricia Woertz, CEO
Archer Daniels Midland Company
4666 Faries Parkway
Decatur, IL 62526

September 22, 2011

Dear Ms. Woertz,

I am writing to bring an issue of grave concern to your attention and ask that ADM take immediate action to address the problem. We have received information from partners and community representatives that PT Asiatik Persada, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Wilmar Group, is involved in a long standing conflict that recently escalated into violence and human rights violations in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. As one of two majority shareholders in Wilmar, the world’s largest palm oil producer, we are calling on ADM to use its influence to convince Wilmar to remedy this problem and address the company’s ongoing pattern of social conflict, rights violations and harmful environmental impacts.

Due to Wilmar’s irresponsible palm oil operations in the past, the World Bank body froze all funding for palm oil expansion globally in 2009 and 2010. This latest case is yet another example of Wilmar’s poor track record.

Though some details of the incident remain unconfirmed, we believe it is unacceptable to destroy homes and forcibly evict community members to resolve outstanding conflicts. We were alarmed to learn about the recent escalation of the conflict and the violence with the Indigenous community in the Dusun Sungai Beruang area that included the forced eviction of families and destruction of their settlement. Bulldozing a community is not a viable dispute resolution process; it is a violation of human rights that requires urgent remedy.

Throughout the month of September, community members and NGOs have joined together to call for transparency and justice. There is an urgent need for action to address the current crisis as well as a long term need to promote reforms in Wilmar so that this situation does not arise again. As a major shareholder, ADM has a responsibility and is in a position of influence to call for reforms. 

RAN joins these stakeholders in asking ADM to secure the following immediate actions to help remedy the grave situation in Jambi:

• Conduct a thorough investigation of the case by a mutually agreed independent third party
• Recognize the customary land rights and tenure of the Indigenous community (Suku Anak Dalam Batin Sembilan)
• Participate in and support a mutually agreed upon dispute resolution process to address the long standing conflicts with Wilmar
• If requested, provide humanitarian support for the affected victims in the community who have been impacted by this conflict

As part owner of the world’s single largest palm oil producer, ADM carries a large responsibility. We call on you to ensure that Wilmar adopt supply chain safeguards and addresses the systemic problems in its company operations that have resulted in ongoing social conflict as well as clearing of natural forests and exacerbation of climate change. We look forward to learning what you’ve done to address these grave concerns in the near future.

Sincerely,

Lindsey Allen
Forest Program Director, Rainforest Action Network
Lindsey@ran.org
(415) 659-0532