RAN Issues Statement in Response to False Palm Oil Claims by Cargill

Last week, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) contacted Cargill employees in over 20 countries to alert them to the company’s ties to rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction. The email urged employees to watch a recent eye-opening prime time NBC news story profiling the imminent extinction of orangutans due to unchecked palm oil expansion in Indonesia and [...]

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How Cargill is Saving Humanity… and the World

If you made $5 billion clearing a community’s forest and community food garden, polluted and drained their rivers, but gave them a tree and a bucket of clean water in return, would you feel justified saying you’re building healthy communities, preserving rivers and reducing deforestation? Would you pat yourself on the back? Maybe not, but [...]

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Scientists or Lobbyists: Who do You Trust to Act in the Best Interests of our World’s Rainforests?

In what has been called the biggest climate decision of the year for the Obama Administration, the Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil industries are flexing their lobbying muscle to overturn a crucial, science-based decision by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In January of this year, the EPA issued an initial finding that biofuels made [...]

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Setting the Record Straight: Cargill and Tripa Forest Controversy

Although there are no major fires still tearing through the Tripa peat forest in Sumatra — the densest remaining Sumatran orangutan habitat in the world — updates from our allies on the ground tell us that Tripa is still gravely at risk. With one or two small fires still breaking out each day, combined with ongoing [...]

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ADM vs. Responsible Palm Oil & Human Rights

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

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Girl Scouts USA Announces Palm Oil Plan for Thin Mints: Greenwash or Game-Changer?

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 [...]

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Cargill Exposed: A Trail Of Human Rights Abuses

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

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World Bank and IFC: The Big Bucks Behind Indonesia’s Rainforest Destruction

With oil gushing in the gulf, activists locking down in boardrooms, the ball of financial reform being thrown from Wall Street to Washington and back again, and Indonesia announcing a two year freeze on the parceling out of its forests to international corporations, the world’s focus seems to be on corporations. But in the struggle [...]

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RSPO Dispatch: Oil palm is not development

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

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