Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company, has become the latest major multinational to cancel their palm oil contract with Sinar Mas, one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates and a leading producer of both palm oil and wood pulp for paper and packaging products.

A string of reports have shown that Sinar Mas is actively clear cutting Indonesia’s forests, home to the endangered Orangutan, Sumatran Tiger, and Elephant, in violation of Indonesian law. Not only is Sinar Mas’ palm oil dirty and dangerous, it is also illegal.

Sinar Mas is clearing rainforests in Borneo without proper government approval

With the world’s major buyers of palm oil, including Uniliver, Kraft, Sainsbury and now Nestle cutting  ties with Sinar Mas, Cargill’s support of Sinar Mas’ rainforest destruction and  chain of illegalities has become all the more unacceptable.

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Over the past 12 years, RAN has supported through our Protect-an-Acre small grants both Defense and Ecological Conservation of Intag (DECOIN) and Community Defense Council in the Intag region in the western Andes of Ecuador, a cloud forest ecosystem that is a globally significant biological hot spot. For 2 decades now, communities there have successfully led the struggle to halt all mining in the region, keeping out major Japanese and Canadian corporations.

Copper Mesa, until last year, was the owner of a two mining concessions in the Intag. But the company ran into a strong, organized opposition from communities, local government and, eventually even the national government, which eventually stripped Copper Mesa of its concessions in the country.

Now the Toronto Stock Exchange, which had been sued by 3 Intag activists, has delisted Copper Mesa from the exchange.

DECOIN organizer Carlos Zorrilla wrote in an email to Intag community supporters:

“This is a key victory in Intag’s very long and exhausting battle against mining interests. So big in fact, that I still find it difficult to believe. After all, this has been a dream of ours and something we’ve been working on for almost six years.”

Copper Mesa’s shares lost about 60% of their value in the 48 hours after the TSX delisting.

My alarm went off at 6:15am this morning and the excitement of butterflies in my stomach reminded me that the launch date had finally arrived! After four hours of sleep and months of preparations, I met up with 41 local Twin Cities community members concerned about palm oil’s contribution to tropical deforestation, global climate change, the rights of indigenous communities, and the survival of threatened species like the orangutan. Specifically in question: the corporate ethics of one of the most trusted American food giants based right here in Minneapolis, MN – General Mills.

Why is the maker of such powerful brands as Cheerios, Haagen Dazs, Progresso soups, Betty Crocker and Pillsbury – that cater mostly to parents and kids across the U.S. – stalling on taking action to protect our world’s forests increasingly threatened by big Agribusiness’ industrial palm oil plantations?  What will it take to get them to listen?

I know of one thing that got their attention- a massive, bright yellow 30 x 70 ft. banner getting unfurled in the snowy, wintery morning light at their Headquarters in Golden Valley, MN! At 11:11am 42 people inspired by the prospect of getting General Mills to wake up and be a leader in the food industry held the huge message: “Warning: General Mills Destroys Rainforests” up high in the air for General Mills executives watching from their desks above to see. And that they did!

General Mills: Take Action!

Our campaign launch was an effective way to inform General Mills that we don’t have any time to waste – we need them to take action now as a company with a unique ability to affect the palm oil marketplace, both by changing its own consumption habits and by publicly taking a stand against rainforest destruction from palm oil.

So why General Mills, you may be asking?

General Mills has a very close relationship with Wayzata based Cargill, Inc. and purchases all of their palm oil from them, among other commodities. Cargill is the most powerful agribusiness and commodity trading group in the world, and as the largest privately owned corporation in the U.S., it’s also among the most secretive companies on earth. It owns plantations in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, where it grows oil palm on freshly cleared rainforest land. It is also a major global trader of palm oil and the biggest importer of palm oil into the United States.

Over 100 of General Mills’ products in total contain palm oil. By purchasing from Cargill, General Mills is directly contributing to the destruction of Indonesian rainforests. We’re asking General Mills to stop buying palm oil from Cargill and we need your help – please take action by sending an email to General Mills CEO Ken Powell!

General Mills at a Crossroads

Be part of the solution: Join RAN in pressuring General Mills to become an advocate for change in the palm oil industry!

Check out Mongabay’s article highlighting our action!

For more information, visit theproblemwithpalmoil.org.

Today Unilever, the  consumer goods giant that purchases 4% of the world’s palm oil, has finally lived up to the commitments they made almost two years ago to remove rainforest destruction, human rights violations, and climate change chaos from their palm oil supply chain.

Under intense pressure from Greenpeace and allies, Unilever has canceled their 33 Million dollar a year palm oil contract with the dirty, destructive, and dangerous palm oil producer Sinar Mas. Sinar Mas is Indonesia’s largest palm oil producer and also owns Indonesia’s largest timber company Asia Pulp and Paper.

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RAN believes that indigenous peoples are the best stewards of rainforests.

Supporting this belief, a new study by researchers at U of Illinois and U of Michigan has added to the growing body of evidence that indigenous peoples are better protectors of their forests than governments or industry. In a review of 80 forests in 10 tropical countries, the study showed that when indigenous and local communities own their forests, they effectively conserve their forest resources over the long term.

Reflecting the growing momentum behind viewing rainforests as carbon sinks that can either exacerbate or reduce climate change, the researchers measured the carbon emissions from forests under community and government control. The New Scientist recently ran an interview with the authors of this research, who said “our findings show that we can increase carbon sequestration simply by transferring ownership of forests from governments to communities.” This is a bold assertion, but one that is supported by their research.

However, the idea that indigenous peoples are the best protectors of rainforests is considered controversial by some, who usually argue that forests should be protected by governments, following the National Parks model of conservation pioneered by the USA.

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David Dellatore has faced much criticism for his willingness to work with palm oil companies.  NGO’s on the ground in Indonesia face a very different reality than advocacy groups far from the jungle, who tend to call for boycotts of environmentally damaging palm oil, or demand that palm oil be phased out of all consumer products.  For a small NGO like the Orangutan Information Center, where Dellatore works, securing funding for their activities, such as caring for orphaned orangutans or reforesting small patches of Gunung Leuser National Park, is always a challenge, and oil palm companies have plenty of cash on hand. The general consensus of local NGO’s in Indonesia, which is the world’s largest palm oil producer commanding 40% of the global oil palm market, is that oil palm plantations are a fact of life in Indonesia, and conservation groups must work hand-in-hand with oil palm companies.

So the meeting of conservation groups and palm oil companies this week in the Malaysian province of Sabah was not a surprise.  The oil palm industry is a giant in both Malaysia and Indonesia, and forest conservation groups believe they can make big gains in forest and wildlife protections if they convince the industry as a whole to adapt forest and forest people friendly policies.

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October 12-18 is World Rainforest Week. Every year, we take this opportunity to highlight rainforest destruction around the world – and what we are doing to stop it. And RAN is indeed doing great work to stop rainforest destruction for palm oil in Indonesia (in fact, we just put out a really cool report that talks about the link between agrofuels and rainforest destruction).

But I’d like to use this year’s World Rainforest Week to talk about a little-known threat that tar sands development poses to temperate (i.e. cold, not hot & sweaty) rainforests in British Columbia.

The areas marked in green are existing mature rainforest; the areas marked in red have been deforested.

“Rainforests – in British Columbia??” you might say. (Well, actually, if you’re savvy enough to be reading this blog, then you may well know that rainforests don’t just exist in the tropics.) That’s right: BC is home to the Great Bear Rainforest, an area of spectacular natural beauty and biodiversity, home to many species – like the “spirit” bear – that exist nowhere else in the world.

But this spectacular rainforest is facing an urgent threat: the proposed construction of an oil pipeline that would run from the tar sands of Alberta to Kitimat, a town at the end of a long, narrow sea inlet that passes through some of the most spectacular parts of the Great Bear Rainforest.

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David Gaveau et al. have released an innovate paper that takes a critical look at the widely touted Reduced Emissions through avoided Deforestation and Degredation (REDD) project in the Ulu Masen Ecosystem of Aceh, Sumatra.

Sumatra is ground zero for the oil palm and pulp-and-paper industries, and, like many tropical habitats, suffers from a severe lack of forest cover and deforestation data to inform natural resource use discourse.

The REDD project in Aceh, named ‘Reducing Carbon Emissions from Deforestation in the Ulu Masen Ecosystem’, is to be implemented by Flora and Fauna International, and Merrill Lynch signed on to fund the carbon project back in 2007.

Over the past two years, this project has been mired in political and practical considerations including uncertainty over the involvement of the Indonesian Government in a private and voluntary carbon project, as well as the status of project funding during Merrill Lynch’s financial implosion.

But many observers in Aceh and in the environmental community consider it a shining example of the positives REDD can potentially deliver to the protection of forests, local communities, and the world’s climate; California, along with two other US states, has committed to purchasing carbon offsets generated by the project.

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In a twist of fate, Jakarta’s Tempo is reporting that Arif Mundar, one of Indonesia’s climate negotiators, could not make it to the international climate summit in Bangkok because of heavy smoke in Sumatra.

Too many forest fires to even participate in climate talks? It is not looking promising for those in Bangkok that want to use the current momentum behind climate negotiations to curtail deforestation and deforestation’s associated carbon emmissions.

The dreaded climate fluxuation El Nino has officially descended upon Indonesia this year. Memories of the 1997 El Nino fire season remain fresh in Indonesian’s minds as a disaster for their forests, the global climate, and Indonesia’s national pride. More »

Reuters ran a story this week on illegal palm oil development in Aceh, Indonesia.

The story takes an interesting angle, completely ignoring the massive scale of legal oil palm development in Aceh and focusing in on illegal planting by small farmers or tiny companies.

With oil palm threatening to overwhelm Aceh’s Leuser Ecosystem, NGOs and certain sections of the Acehenese government are doing their best to slow the onslaught, and their efforts to team up with Acehenes police to cut down illegal palm is interesting, but it is not the most important story there for either forests or forest peoples.

Aceh, one of Indonesia’s least developed and isolated provinces, is facing one of the fastest expansions of oil palm in the world; Aceh is just a hundred miles from Malaysia, the world’s most technically advanced nation when it comes to destroying biodiverse rainforests to plant oil palm,  and it is just emerging from a 30 year civil war that kept the province off limits to previous oil palm development.

An Acehnese Palm Plantation – Photo by author

Now, Aceh is faced with a flood of land speculators, signing deals with currupt low level politicians for access to land that has been designated as off limits to oil palm development. As the Reuters story quotes:

The Acehnese Ministry of Agriculture has called for more than a million hectares of oil palm expansion in the province. To give you an idea of the scale of that potential expansion, the Leuser Ecosystem of Aceh is one of the world’s largest remaining intact tropical forests at 2.5 million hectares.

The article seems content to focus on the estimated 40,000 hectares of illegal palm in Aceh, which is a shame considering the massive scale of oil palm development around the province.

But at least the story does end with an acknowledgment of the basic problem with oil palm in Aceh:

A simple statement from an Acehnese forest conservationist that sums it all up.

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights. He can be reached at davidgilbert@ran.org