palm oil

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PVT SEC HU RTS

Prosegur, the security company hired by the USPS, has a history of alleged human rights abuses, including incidents involving indigenous communities in Brazil. Concerns have been raised about their presence at USPS facilities during the 2026 election, as they operate without federal oversight, potentially impacting the election's integrity.

Yahoo Raw Story

Prosegur's Background and Allegations

Prosegur, a multinational private security company, has been hired by the United States Postal Service (USPS) to provide armed security at various facilities. This company has a documented history of alleged human rights abuses, particularly concerning indigenous communities in Brazil. Notably, incidents have included:

Preventing access to food and medical care for indigenous people.

Accusations of serious and systematic human rights violations while guarding land owned by palm oil companies.

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https://apnews.com/article/palm-oil-forests-indonesia-scouts-83b01f2789e9489569960da63b2741c4

They are two young girls from two very different worlds, linked by a global industry that exploits an army of children.

Olivia Chaffin, a Girl Scout in rural Tennessee, was a top cookie seller in her troop when she first heard rainforests were being destroyed to make way for ever-expanding palm oil plantations. On one of those plantations a continent away, 10-year-old Ima helped harvest the fruit that makes its way into a dizzying array of products sold by leading Western food and cosmetics brands.

Ima is among the estimated tens of thousands of children working alongside their parents in Indonesia and Malaysia, which supply 85% of the world’s most consumed vegetable oil. An Associated Press investigation found most earn little or no pay and are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals and other dangerous conditions. Some never go to school or learn to read and write. Others are smuggled across borders and left vulnerable to trafficking or sexual abuse. Many live in limbo with no citizenship and fear being swept up in police raids and thrown into detention.

The AP used U.S. Customs records and the most recently published data from producers, traders and buyers to trace the fruits of their labor from the processing mills where palm kernels were crushed to the supply chains of many popular kids’ cereals, candies and ice creams sold by Nestle, Unilever, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo and many other leading food companies, including Ferrero – one of the two makers of Girl Scout cookies...

...For 100 years, families have been stuck in a cycle of poverty and they knownothing else than work on a palm oil plantation,” said Kartika Manurung, who has published reports detailing labor issues on Indonesian plantations. “When I … ask the kids what they want to be when they grow up, some of the girls say, ‘I want to be the wife of a palm oil worker.’”

The AP’s investigation into child labor is part of a broader in-depth look at the industry that also exposed rape, forced labor, trafficking and slavery. Reporters crisscrossed Malaysia and Indonesia, speaking to more than 130 current and former workers – some two dozen of them child laborers – at nearly 25 companies. Their locations are not being disclosed and only partial names or nicknames are being used due to fears of retribution.

The AP found children working on plantations and corroborated accounts of abuse, whenever possible, by reviewing police reports and legal documents. Reporters also interviewed more than 100 activists, teachers, union leaders, government officials, researchers, lawyers and clergy, including some who helped victims of trafficking or sexual assault.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil

Palm oilis an ediblevegetable oilderived from themesocarp(reddish pulp) of the fruit of theoil palms.[1]The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and asbiofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced from oil crops in 2014.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil#cite_note-:2-2)

The use of palm oil has attracted the concern of environmental groups due to deforestation in the tropics where palms are grown, and has been cited as a factor in social problems due to allegations of human rights violations among growers. An industry group formed in 2004 to create more sustainable and ethical palm oil, through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. However, very little palm oil is certified through the organization, and some groups have criticized it as greenwashing.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosulfan

Endosulfan is an off-patent organochlorine insecticide and acaricide that is being phased out globally. The two isomers, endo and exo, are known popularly as I and II. Endosulfan sulfate is a product of oxidation containing one extra O atom attached to the S atom. Endosulfan became a highly controversial agrichemical[2] due to its acute toxicity, potential for bioaccumulation, and role as an endocrine disruptor. Because of its threats to human health and the environment, a global ban on the manufacture and use of endosulfan was negotiated under the Stockholm Convention in April 2011. The ban has taken effect in mid-2012, with certain uses exempted for five additional years.[3] More than 80 countries,[4] including the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, several West African nations,[5] the United States,[6][7] Brazil,[8] and Canada[9] had already banned it or announced phase-outs by the time the Stockholm Convention ban was agreed upon. It is still used extensively in India, China despite laws banning it, and few other countries. It is produced by Makhteshim Agan and several manufacturers in India and China. Although, the Supreme Court had, by an order dated 13.05.2011, put a ban on the production and sale of endosulfan in India till further orders.[10]

Uses

Endosulfan has been used in agriculture around the world to control insect pests including whiteflies, aphids, leafhoppers, Colorado potato beetles and cabbage worms.[11] Due to its unique mode of action, it is useful in resistance management; however, as it is not specific, it can negatively impact populations of beneficial insects.[12] It is, however, considered to be moderately toxic to honey bees,[13] and it is less toxic to bees than organophosphate insecticides.[14]

Production

The World Health Organization estimated worldwide annual production to be about 9,000 metric tonnes (t) in the early 1980s.[15] From 1980 to 1989, worldwide consumption averaged 10,500 tonnes per year, and for the 1990s use increased to 12,800 tonnes per year.

Endosulfan is a derivative of hexachlorocyclopentadiene, and is chemically similar to aldrin, chlordane, and heptachlor. Specifically, it is produced by the Diels-Alder reaction of hexachlorocyclopentadiene with *cis*-butene-1,4-diol and subsequent reaction of the adduct with thionyl chloride. Technical endosulfan is a 7:3 mixture of stereoisomers, designated α and β. α- and β-Endosulfan are configurational isomers arising from the pyramidal stereochemistry of the teravalent sulfur. α-Endosulfan is the more thermodynamically stable of the two, thus β-endosulfan irreversibly converts to the α form, although the conversion is slow.[16][17]

History of commercialization and regulation

Early 1950s: Endosulfan was developed.
1954: Hoechst AG (now Sanofi) won USDA approval for the use of endosulfan in the United States.[18]
2000: Home and garden use in the United States was terminated by agreement with the EPA.[14]
2002: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that endosulfan registration should be cancelled,[19] and the EPA determined that endosulfan residues on food and in water pose unacceptable risks. The agency allowed endosulfan to stay on the US market, but imposed restrictions on its agricultural uses.[14]
2007: International steps were taken to restrict the use and trade of endosulfan. It is recommended for inclusion in the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent,[20] and the European Union proposed inclusion in the list of chemicals banned under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Such inclusion would ban all use and manufacture of endosulfan globally.[21] Meanwhile, the Canadian government announced that endosulfan was under consideration for phase-out,[22] and Bayer CropScience voluntarily pulled its endosulfan products from the U.S. market[23] but continues to sell the products elsewhere.[24]
2008: In February, environmental, consumer, and farm labor groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council,[25] Organic Consumers Association, and the United Farm Workers [26] called on the U.S. EPA to ban endosulfan. In May, coalitions of scientists,[27] environmental groups, and arctic tribes asked the EPA to cancel endosulfan,[28] and in July a coalition of environmental and workers groups filed a lawsuit against the EPA challenging its 2002 decision to not ban it.[29] In October, the Review Committee of the Stockholm Convention moved endosulfan along in the procedure for listing under the treaty,[30] while India blocked its addition to the Rotterdam Convention.[31]
2009: The Stockholm Convention's Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee (POPRC) agreed that endosulfan is a persistent organic pollutant and that "global action is warranted", setting the stage of a global ban.[32] New Zealand banned endosulfan.[33]
2010: The POPRC nominated endosulfan to be added to the Stockholm Convention at the Conference of Parties (COP) in April 2011, which would result in a global ban.[34] The EPA announced that the registration of endosulfan in the U.S. will be cancelled**[**7][35] Australia banned the use of the chemical.[36]
2011: The Supreme Court of India banned manufacture, sale, and use of toxic pesticide endosulfan in India. The apex court said the ban would remain effective for eight weeks during which an expert committee headed by DG, ICMR, will give an interim report to the court about the harmful effect of the widely used pesticide.[37]
2011: the Argentinian Service for Sanity and Agroalimentary Quality (SENASA) decided on August 8 that the import of endosulfan into the South American country will be banned from July 1, 2012 and its commercialization and use from July 1, 2013. In the meantime, a reduced quantity can be imported and sold.[38]

Health effects

Endosulfan is alleged to be responsible for many fatal pesticide poisoning incidents around the world by NGOs opposing pesticide usage.[39] Endosulfan is also a xenoestrogen—a synthetic substance that imitates or enhances the effect of estrogens—and it can act as an endocrine disruptor, causing reproductive and developmental damage in both animals and humans.[40]It has also been found to act as anaromatase inhibitor.[40]Whether endosulfan can**cause cancer**is debated. With regard to consumers' intake of endosulfan from residues on food, theFood and Agriculture Organization of United Nationshas concluded that long-term exposure from food is unlikely to present a public health concern, but short-term exposure can exceed acutereference doses.[41]

Toxicity

Endosulfan is acutely neurotoxic to both insects and mammals, including humans.The US EPA classifies it as Category I: "Highly Acutely Toxic" based on aLD~50~value of 30 mg/kg for femalerats,[14]while the World Health Organization classifies it as Class II "Moderately Hazardous" based on a rat LD₅₀of 80 mg/kg.[42]It is aGABA-gated chloride channel antagonist, and a Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺ATPase inhibitor. Both of theseenzymesare involved in the transfer of nerve impulses. Symptoms of acute poisoning include hyperactivity, tremors, convulsions, lack of coordination, staggering, difficulty breathing, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and in severe cases, unconsciousness.[18]Doses as low as 35 mg/kg have been documented to cause death in humans,[43]and many cases of sublethal poisoning have resulted in permanent brain damage.[18]Farm workers withchronicendosulfan exposure are at risk of rashes and skin irritation.[14]

EPA's acute reference dose for dietary exposure to endosulfan is 0.015 mg/kg for adults and 0.0015 mg/kg for children. For chronic dietary expsoure, the EPA references doses are 0.006 mg/(kg·day) and 0.0006 mg/(kg·day) for adults and children, respectively.[14]

Endocrine disruption

Theo Colborn, an expert on endocrine disruption, lists endosulfan as a known endocrine disruptor,[44]and both the EPA and theAgency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registryconsider endosulfan to be a potential endocrine disruptor. Numerousin vitrostudies have documented its potential to disrupt hormones and animal studies have demonstrated its reproductive and developmental toxicity, especially among males.[14][18]A number of studies have documented that it acts as anantiandrogenin animals.[40][45]Endosulfan has shown to affect crustacean molt cycles, which are important biological and endocrine-controlled physiological processes essential for the crustacean growth and reproduction.[46]Environmentally relevant doses of endosulfan equal to the EPA's safe dose of 0.006 mg/kg/day have been found to affectgene expressionin female rats similarly to the effects of estrogen.[47]It is not known whether endosulfan is a humanteratogen(an agent that causes birth defects), though it has significant teratogenic effects inlaboratory rats.[48]A 2009 assessment concluded the endocrine disruption in rats occurs only at endosulfan doses that cause neurotoxicity.[49]

Reproductive and developmental effects

Some studies have documented that endosulfan can also affect human development. Researchers studying children from many villages in Kasargod District, Kerala, India, have linked endosulfan exposure to delays in sexual maturity among boys. Endosulfan was the only pesticide applied to cashew plantations in the villages for 20 years, and had contaminated the village environment. The researchers compared the villagers to a control group of boys from a demographically similar village that lacked a history of endosulfan pollution. Relative to the control group, the exposed boys had high levels of endosulfan in their bodies, lower levels of testosterone, and delays in reaching sexual maturity. Birth defects of the male reproductive system, including cryptorchidism, were also more prevalent in the study group. The researchers concluded, "our study results suggest that endosulfan exposure in male children may delay sexual maturity and interfere with sex hormone synthesis."[50] Increased incidences of cryptorchidism have been observed in other studies of endosulfan exposed populations.[51][52]

A 2007 study by the California Department of Public Health found that women who lived near farm fields sprayed with endosulfan and the related organochloride pesticide dicofol during the first eight weeks of pregnancy are several times more likely to give birth to children with autism.[53]However a 2009 assessment concluded that epidemiology androdent studiesthat suggest male reproductive and autism effects are open to other interpretations, and that developmental or reproductive toxicity in rats occurs only at endosulfan doses that cause neurotoxicity.[49]

Cancer

Endosulfan is not listed as known, probable, or possible carcinogen by the EPA, IARC, or other agencies. No epidemiological studies link exposure to endosulfan specifically to cancer in humans, but in vitro assays have shown that endosulfan can promote proliferation of human breast cancer cells.[54] Evidence of carcinogenicity in animals is mixed.[18]

In a 2016 study[55] by the Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore published in Carcinogenesis, endosulfan was found to induce reactive oxygen species (ROS) in a concentration and time-dependent manner leading to double-stranded breaks in the DNA and also found to favour subsequent erroneous DNA repair.

Environmental fate

Endosulfan is a ubiquitous environmental contaminant. The chemical is semivolatile and persistent to degradation processes in the environment. Endosulfan is subject to long-range atmospheric transport, i.e. it can travel long distances from where it is used. Thus, it occurs in many environmental compartments. For example, a 2008 report by the National Park Service found that endosulfan commonly contaminates air, water, plants, and fish of national parks in the US. Most of these parks are far from areas where endosulfan is used.[56] Endosulfan has been found in remote locations such as the Arctic Ocean, as well as in the Antarctic atmosphere.[57] The pesticide has also been detected in dust from the Sahara Desert collected in the Caribbean after being blown across the Atlantic Ocean.[58] The compound has been shown to be one of the most abundant organochlorine pesticides in the global atmosphere.[57]

The compound breaks down into endosulfan sulfate, endosulfan diol, and endosulfan furan, all of which have structures similar to the parent compound and, according to the EPA, "are also of toxicological concern…The estimated half-lives for the combined toxic residues (endosulfan plus endosulfan sulfate) [range] from roughly 9 months to 6 years." The EPA concluded, "[b]ased on environmental fate laboratory studies, terrestrial field dissipation studies, available models, monitoring studies, and published literature, it can be concluded that endosulfan is a very persistent chemical which may stay in the environment for lengthy periods of time, particularly in acid media." The EPA also concluded, "[e]ndosulfan has relatively high potential to bioaccumulate in fish."[14] It is also toxic to amphibians; low levels have been found to kill tadpoles.[59]

In 2009, the committee of scientific experts of the Stockholm Convention concluded, "endosulfan is likely, as a result of long range environmental transport, to lead to significant adverse human health and environmental effects such that global action is warranted."[60] In May 2011, the Stockholm Convention committee approved the recommendation for elimination of production and use of endosulfan and its isomers worldwide. This is, however, subject to certain exemptions. Overall, this will lead to its elimination from the global markets.[61]

Status by region

...

In the United States, endosulfan is only registered for agricultural use, and these uses are being phased out.[7] It has been used extensively on cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, and apples according to the EPA.[88] The EPA estimates that 626 thousand kg of endosulfan were used annually from 1987 to 1997.[14] The US exported more than 140,000 lb of endosulfan from 2001 to 2003, mostly to Latin America,[89] but production and export has since stopped.

In California, endosulfan contamination from the San Joaquin Valley has been implicated in the extirpation of the mountain yellow-legged frog from parts of the nearby Sierra Nevada.[90] In Florida, levels of contamination the Everglades and Biscayne Bay are high enough to pose a threat to some aquatic organisms.[91][92][93]

In 2007, the EPA announced it was rereviewing the safety of endosulfan.[94]The following year, Pesticide Action Network andNRDCpetitioned the EPA to ban endosulfan,[95]and acoalition of environmental and labor groups sued the EPA seeking to overturn its 2002 decision to not ban endosulfan.[29]In June 2010, the EPA announced it was negotiating a phaseout of all uses with the sole US manufacturer, Makhteshim Agan, and a complete ban on the compound.[7]

An official statement by Makhteshim Agan of North America (MANA) states, "From a scientific standpoint, MANA continues to disagree fundamentally with EPA's conclusions regarding endosulfan and believes that key uses are still eligible for re-registration." The statement adds, "However, given the fact that the endosulfan market is quite small and the cost of developing and submitting additional data high, we have decided to voluntarily negotiate an agreement with EPA that provides growers with an adequate time frame to find alternatives for the damaging insect pests currently controlled by endosulfan."[96][97]

...

Brazil decreed total ban of the substance from July 31, 2013, being forbidden imports of the product from July 31, 2011, date in which national production and utilization begins to be phased out gradually.[103]

720

The undersigned: international — members of the Pacific Defense Academics and Intellectuals Group (GAIDEPAC), Processes of Black Communities, The Great Awá Family, Roots & Routes IC, the Collective of Critical Geography of Ecuador, Agroecological Collective of Ecuador, Other organizations here, and other academics, professionals, researchers, and individuals — who prioritize the well-being and rights of the Ecuadorian population, as well as the environmental sustainability of Ecuador, express to you our deep concern at the situation of the "Law for the strengthening and development of the production, marketing, extraction, export and industrialization of oil palm and its derivatives. "

On June 2, 2020, the National Assembly approved the aforementioned bill and was sent to the Presidency of the Republic for its analysis and decision of partial veto, total veto or approval. We respectfully write this letter to you asking you to carefully consider the important implications of the decision that you have before you, and that could have serious effects for all the people of Ecuador, and especially for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, ancestral, and peasant women and the Nature of Ecuador. Mr. President, the concern about the impacts that this law may have leads us to present the scientific information and the arguments that we detail below, so that you consider the total veto of the Oil Palm Law....

520

We’re one step closer to saving the last orangutans from palm oil destruction, and that’s thanks to you.After more than 5 years of campaigning, PepsiCo has changed its palm oil sourcing policy, and agreed to use its influence with other companies to end rainforest destruction and human rights abuses.

This is a MASSIVE VICTORY. And Pat, it’s thanks to SumOfUs members like you.PepsiCo is the world’s second-largest food and beverage company. By moving this snack food giant, you moved an entire sector!

Last year, during the company’s shareholder meeting, we presented more than a million signatures gathered over 5 years asking PepsiCo to cut ties with conflict palm oil. In response to your efforts and continued pressure, this year PepsiCo announced an industry-leading policy and a series of actions to tackle rainforest destruction, worker abuse, and exploitation of communities for cheap palm oil.

https://www.ecowatch.com/worlds-largest-palm-oil-plantation-2645576807.html

3.20

A new company has begun clearing rainforest in an area of Indonesia's easternmost Papua province earmarked to become the world's largest oil palm plantation, in a vast project that has been mired in allegations of lawbreaking.

If seen through to completion, the Tanah Merah project will generate an estimated $6 billion in timber and create a plantation almost twice the size of London, at the heart of the largest tract of intact rainforest left in Asia. It will also release an immense amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, at a time when Indonesia has committed to reducinnce March of last year, the Digoel Agri Group, founded by a politically connected Jakarta family and now backed by an investor from New Zealand, has bulldozed 170 hectares (420 acres) of rainforest in a section of the project previously spared from land clearing, satellite imagery shows.

The clearance amounts to a fraction of the 280,000 hectares (692,000 acres) allocated for the project, now controlled by several different conglomerates. But it signals that deforestation could quickly accelerate after a decade of false starts by other investors.

Since it was first conceived in 2007, the rights to the project have changed hands several times, involving a string of investors who have deployed crude and complex corporate secrecy techniques to hide their identities.

The licensing process for the project has been plagued by irregularities. A cross-border investigation by The Gecko Project, Mongabay, Malaysiakini and Tempo, published in November 2018, revealed that key permits were signed by an elected official who was simultaneously serving a prison sentence for embezzling state funds.

A subsequent report found that officials believe other essential permits — for both the plantation and a giant sawmill to process the timber — were falsified.

Two companies, majority-owned by anonymous firms registered in the United Arab Emirates,began operating on the basis of these permits, to the north of the land now held byDigoel Agri.In response to written questions from The Gecko Project and Mongabay they have denied the allegation that the permits were falsified.

On paper, Digoel Agri's involvement in the project represents a clean break from those allegations. The firm arrived on the scene after the suspect permits held by earlier investors were revoked and reassigned to it.

Jackson Iqbal de Hesselle, 32, a member of the Rumangkang family, which is behind Digoel Agri, said its operations were clean. "We're obeying the rules," he said in a recent interview at the firm's office in Jayapura, the capital of Papua province.

However, while there are no apparent links between Digoel Agri and the previous investors, its ability to operate is partly predicated on the allegedly compromised licensing process that went before.

The legal basis of Digoel Agri's activities rests partly on decrees rezoning the land to allow development, issued by the Ministry of Forestry in 2012, following requests from earlier investors. The applications were based on the plantation permits that were allegedly falsified.

...Enter the Rumangkangs

Digoel Agri was set up by members of the Rumangkang family, according to the Indonesian government's corporate registry. The late family patriarch, Ventje Rumangkang, who died in February at the age of 74, was a founder of Indonesia's Democratic Party, the vehicle for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's successful presidential run in 2004.

At their office in Jayapura, Jackson and his brother Jones Rumangkang, 44, said they had decided to invest in the Tanah Merah project after being encouraged to do so by bureaucrats in Boven Digoel, the district in which the project is located. They then formed several companies under the Digoel Agri brand and set about acquiring the permits.

The brothers said they were helped along by Fabianus Senfahagi, the head of a local indigenous people's association. He had played a role shepherding through the project in its early stages,

His letters to the district government in 2014 claimed the local Auyu people were anxiously waiting for the project to begin. By this time, the land concessions that would be transferred to the Rumangkangs were majority-owned by Tadmax Resources, a Malaysian logging and property conglomerate. Minority stakes were retained by the Menara Group, an enigmatic Jakarta firm that brought the project to life in 2010.

Over the next three years, the permits held by Tadmax and Menara were revoked by the district and provincial governments. The stated rationale for cancelling them was the companies' failure to begin operating. However, bureaucrats at the Papua investment agency had also raised concerns that some of the permits had been falsified.

Tadmax and Menara have not responded to repeated requests to comment on these allegations.

By 2017, the concessions previously held by Tadmax and Menara had been reallocated to the Digoel Agri Group.

In early 2019, Tadmax and Menara challenged this decision. A letter to the central government from Dr. Sadino & Partners, a law firm representing the joint investors, accused officials of illegally revoking the permits. They also argued that anyone using the same land on the basis of new permits — like the ones underlying Digoel Agri's operations — was committing a crime.

Jones and Jackson insisted that Digoel Agri was in compliance with the law and had obtained the permits it needed to begin operating, from the district and provincial governments.

Ordinarily, to convert rainforest to a plantation, Digoel Agri would also have needed to apply to the forestry ministry in Jakarta to rezone the land for development. But by the time the Rumangkangs arrived in Papua, this process had already taken place.

The Menara Group and its co-investors had obtained decrees rezoning the land from the then-minister in 2011. These decrees were issued on the basis of permits that provincial government officials have repeatedly reported were falsified.

In an interview last year, Sigit Hardwinarto, the ministry's director-general of forest planning, said the rezoning could be reviewed if the allegation that the permits had been falsified was reported to his department.

The rezoning of the land is a legacy of the administration of President Yudhoyono and then-Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan. During his tenure, Zulkifli reportedly rezoned 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres) of land for conversion to oil palm plantations.

Yudhoyono's successor, President Joko Widodo, and the new forestry minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, have sought to strike a different path. In 2018, Widodo signed a three-year moratorium on the issuance of new licenses for oil palm plantations.

The policy had been announced in the wake of Indonesia's 2015 fire and haze crisis, in which Indonesia's vast peat swamps burned as a result of agricultural fires from the oil palm and timber plantation industries. Toxic smoke from the fires drifted into neighboring countries, creating a public health crisis.

The moratorium explicitly barred the forestry ministry from rezoning land for oil palm development. It also instructed the cabinet to review all existing oil palm permits with an eye toward possibly revoking them. Several weeks after the president first declared he would sign the moratorium, in 2016, Siti singled out the Tanah Merah project as one that merited scrutiny.

In comments posted on her personal website, Siti referred disparagingly to the fact that the project appeared to have been established so the licenses could be "traded" to Malaysian investors, and said the president had instructed her to prioritize implementing the moratorium in Papua.

"We really have to safeguard [the forests of Papua] and must formulate and implement a development concept in Papua to the best of our ability," she quoted Widodo as telling her.

However, neither these policies nor the allegations around the Tanah Merah project have stymied its progress under the direction of new investors. NGOs monitoring the implementation of the moratorium have noted limited progress in Papua.

"There has been no significant progress in how this policy is implemented," said Arie, the Greenpeace campaigner. "The Tanah Merah project should be a strong case to see how this [policy] can be carried out seriously and effectively."

Competing Interests

The Rumangkangs insist that the project will benefit the Auyu people. Jones said the ones he met were overjoyed about the prospect of a plantation on their land.

"They didn't just ask, they cried," he said. "The Auyu tribe is the poorest in Boven Digoel, even though they're so rich [in natural resources]."

The Rumangkangs have enlisted foreign investors to help them develop the plantation. Their chief partner is a New Zealand property developer named Neville Mahon. In 2018, Mahon became the majority shareholder of the Digoel Agri subsidiaries with land concessions in the project. He could not be reached for comment.

Mahon associate Thirunavukarasu Selva Nithan, an Australian national, is the sole director of the three companies, corporate records show. Contacted by email, he said he had resigned his position and directed questions to Jackson.

The involvement of these investors adds to a growing list of actors from across the world with a stake in what could become the world's largest stretch of oil palm. Malaysian logging giant Shin Yang has constructed a sawmill to process timber from the project.

North of the Digoel Agri concessions, investors whose identities are hidden behind anonymously owned companies in the United Arab Emirates have also begun clearing land, with the Menara Group and the sister of a prominent politician from Indonesia's National Mandate Party as their minor partners. So far, they've bulldozed 8,300 hectares (20,500 acres) of forest, nearly 3% of the project's total area.

Yet another firm holds the rights to the northernmost block of the project. Corporate records show it is majority owned by two holding companies registered to a letterbox address in Malaysia. The minor shareholder in that venture is the Malaysian logging giant Rimbunan Hijau.

Many Auyu remain steadfastly opposed to the Tanah Merah project, according to Franky Samperante, the director of Pusaka, an Indonesian nonprofit that advocates for indigenous peoples' rightOn a recent trip to the area, he found that members of the Kemon clan, whose land has been targeted by Digoel Agri, did not want the plantation to go ahead on the grounds that it would destroy their food and water supplies.

He questioned the government's decision to allow the plantation to move ahead, without investigating the allegation that permits held by the earlier investors had been falsified.

"In light of the irregularities that have arisen, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry must review the decrees rezoning the land," he said. "The government must impose sanctions on the perpetrators."

Reposted with permission from Mongabay. emissions deforestation palm oil rainforests indonesia

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6820316/

...

Methods:

A search was carried out in June 2018 in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Ovid. Relevant publications were identified by a systematic search of four databases and relevant journals. Publications were included if they examinedoccupational hazards in oil palm plantation workers.

Results:

941 publications were identified; of these, 25 studies were found eligible to be included in the final review. Of the 25 studies examined, 19 were conducted in Malaysia, 2 in Costa Rica, and one each in Ghana, Indonesia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and Cameroon.Oil palm plantation workers were found to be at risk of musculoskeletal conditions, injuries,psychosocial disorders, and infectious diseases such as malaria and leptospirosis. In addition, they havepotential exposure to paraquat and other pesticides.

...

Pesticide and Herbicide Exposure

Four studies investigated paraquat exposure among farmers, including palm oil workers.36-39Among 119 paraquat handlers and 54 non-handlers on a range of farms inCosta Rica,including oil palm plantations, exposure to paraquat was only detected among paraquat handlers on spray day; levels varied by crop and not among workers.38This study and another one found no association with lung disease.37Exposure to a range of pesticides among farmers, including plantation workers in Sabah, Malaysia, was reported to increase the risk of having abnormalities in three out offive semen quality parameters (sperm count, motility and teratospermia), although differences were not found by type of pesticide (paraquat or malathion) and the study sample sizes were small (62 exposed).39

In addition to exposure to paraquat, palm oil workers are known to be exposed to other pesticides, however, the literature on this subject is limited. For example, studies in both Cameroon and Malaysia found that the main herbicides used by the oil palm growers areparaquat and glyphosate while metalaxyl, maneb, and captan are used as fungicides and cypermethrin and carbaryl are the most common insecticides.40,41

Go to:

Discussion

We found that many of the common tasks undertaken by workers on oil palm plantations during harvesting were associated with increased risks of MSD, and that the prevalence of MSDs reported in most studies was high. Additionally, palm oil workers were at risk of infectious diseases and stress and mental disorders because of their working and living environments and were also exposed to a range of pesticides, in particular, paraquat. In general, work on oil palm plantations remains largely unmechanized, and reliant on low-paid workers. This lack of automation increases the risk of work-related injury and disease for these workers.

down to Earth No 66 August 2005

Pesticides, including herbicides, are commonly used in oil palm plantations, despite their adverse impacts on human beings and the environment.

In his keynote speech to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil,October 2004, the then Indonesian agriculture minister, Bungaran Saragih, admitted the dangers of herbicides use in oil palm plantations(1). Around 25 different pesticidesare used in oil palm plantations, but monitoring is difficult due to lack of control and documentation(2).

Paraquat

Used for more than 40 years in both small and large plantations, paraquat dichloride, known simply as 'paraquat', has become one of the most widely used herbicides the world over. In Indonesia, it is often sold as Gramoxone. This highly toxic weed-killer is commonly used in oil palm plantations in South East Asia. It may be fatal if inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin. No antidote for paraquat poisoning exists yet.

The main concern about paraquat is its risks to plantation workers. Although incidents also occur in the North, lack of proper conditions of use in many developing countries, where label instructions and recommendations for use may not be well observed, is a particular concern. Plantation workers are often employed for long periods, working up to 10 months in a year, six days a week and therefore subjected to regular exposure to toxins.

In March 2002, Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific and Tenaganita, a Malaysia-based workers' rights organisation, launched their study on pesticides poisoning in Malaysia's plantations(3). This highlighted the suffering of women plantation workers, who work daily as pesticide sprayers. The acute paraquat poisoning symptoms include nosebleeds, eye irritation, contact dermatitis, skin irritation and sores, nail discoloration, nail loss and abdominal ulceration.

Paraquat is banned or restricted in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Hungary and Slovenia. Among developing countries, Indonesia, in addition to North Korea and Togo, has applied severe restrictions upon its use(4). Malaysia, the biggest producer of palm oil, is reconsidering its ban on paraquat as it approaches the end of a 2-year phase-out period. This represents a clear case of backtracking on a decision - for which it was applauded - taken in August 2002. It is thought to have been the result of strong opposition to the ban by the Malaysian Palm Oil Association and the agro-chemical industry. Under Indonesia's regulation, only people who have been trained and certified are allowed to use paraquat. However, in reality, training is often minimal and protective clothing - where provided - is impractical. It is also difficult to prove that untrained and uncertified workers are not using the chemical.

Glyphosate

As paraquat is becoming more restricted or banned, glyphosate is reported to be taking its place as the 'queen of herbicides'(5). Monsanto, one manufacturer of glyphosate(6), claims it is a highly effective weed-killer, safe to users and harmless to the environment. However, anti-pesticide campaigners reveal that there is evidence of toxic effects on humans as well as on the environment, indirect environmental damage and resistance in some target weed species(7).

Furthermore, although glyphosate is much less toxic than paraquat, some of the surfactants included in preparations for spraying it are highly toxic. Roundup, produced by Monsanto, is a glyphosate-based herbicide used worldwide, including on genetically modified plants in which it can be tolerated. Some agricultural workers using glyphosate have had pregnancy problems. Recent research shows that glyphosate is toxic to human placental cells in concentrations lower than those in agricultural use(8). This is of particular concern since farmers may become more dependent on Roundup. In March 2005, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe Cummins, leading scientists at the London-based Institute of Science in Society, called for an urgent regulatory review on glyphosate. They pointed to effects of exposure to glyphosate including an increased risk of late spontaneous abortions(9). Monsanto has rejected the findings.

In addition to concerns about the health and safety of plantation workers, there are issues about water pollution associated with paraquat and glyphosate. Manufacturers claim that both chemicals are harmless to people and wildlife after spraying as they are rapidly absorbed by plants and inactivated by contact with the soil. However, in parts of Indonesia where the rainfall is often very high, herbicides can be washed into streams and rivers which provide the only source of water for all household needs - including drinking - for villages around the plantations. Furthermore, the herbicides do not bind to sandy soils.

Ratification of PIC treaty

On 24th February 2004, the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (known as the PIC treaty) became legally binding. The Convention provides a warning procedure in the international trade of hazardous pesticides and other chemicals. At present, it has 73 signatories and 59 parties. Indonesia is among the signatories.PAN Indonesia is urging the government and parliament to ratify the PIC Convention so that it becomes national law(10). Malaysia has ratified the convention and is being urged to include paraquat in the PIC list.

https://www.intechopen.com/books/biomass-now-sustainable-growth-and-use/the-oil-palm-wastes-in-malaysia

Introduction

Oil palm is the most important product from Malaysia that has helped to change the scenario of it’s agriculture and economy. Lignocellulosic biomass which is produced from the oil palm industries include oil palm trunks (OPT), oil palm fronds (OPF), empty fruit bunches (EFB) and palm pressed fibres (PPF), palm shells and palm oil mill effluent palm (POME). However, the presence of these oil palm wastes has created a major disposal problem. The fundamental principles of waste management are to minimise and recycle the waste, recover the energy and finally dispose the waste. These principals apply to agro-industrial wastes such as palm oil residues as they do to municipal waste. We can simply no longer afford to dispose the residues when there is an economically useful alternative. We must first consider the current uses and disposal of mill residues in order to address the potential for recovery of energy in the palm oil industry. One of the unique aspects of Malaysian renewable energy sources is that the palm oil mill is self-sufficient in energy, using PPF, EFB and shell as fuel to generate steam in waste-fuel boilers for processing, and power-generation with steam turbines as described in Section 2.2.

World palm oil production in 1990 doubled to 11.0 million tonnes from 5.0 million tonnes in 1980, and by the year 2000, the production doubled to 21.8 million tonnes. Malaysia produced about half of the world palm oil production (10.8 million tonnes), thus, making Malaysia as world’s largest producer and exporter of palm oil during this period [1]. In 2008, even though Malaysia had produced 17.7 million tonnes of palm oil based on 4,500,000 hectares of land used for its plantation, Indonesia became the world's largest producer and exporter of palm oil, replacing Malaysia as a chief producer [2,3] Palm oil has made impressive and sustained growth in the global market over the past four decades, and it is projected in the period 2016 – 2020, the average annual production of palm oil in Malaysia will reach 15.4 million tonnes [4]. In 1999, the land area under oil palm plantation is about 3.31 million hectares, and it has been projected that Sarawak will have about one million tonnes hectares of oil palm by the year 2010 [5].

The oil palm industry has always been linked to the environment because it is a land intensive industry. Any unplanned development will lead to the degradation of the forest systems, loss of habitats including plants and animals, extreme land degradation and pollution (water and airborne) due to the use of large quantities of pesticides and herbicides required to maintain the plantation. The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was established in recent years with the support from the government and Malaysia Palm Oil Council (MPOC). RSPO consists of palm oil producers, processors, traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and they will develop the principles and criteria of a sustainable palm oil industry, and facilitate the development of sustainable palm oil production. The proposed guidelines include commitment to transparency, compliance with all applicable local, national and ratified international regulations, adoption of sustainable cultivation practices (including water management, pesticide control and soil erosion), conservation of resources and biodiversity and community development [6]. The oil palm industry has long avoided the openings of virgin forest land, which thus minimize environment degradation and enhance the sustainability of oil palm growing. As initiatives, the Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities (MPIC) had announced in 2006, the RM20 million Malaysian Palm Oil Conservation Fund (MPOCF) with aims to help protect affected wildlife (including orang utan and other protected species) and to sustain biodiversity conservation programmes that are expected to be beneficial to both the industry and society.

Oil palm is the most important product of Malaysia that has helped to change the scenario of its agriculture and economy. Despite the obvious benefits, oil palm mill also significantly contributes to environmental degradation, both at the input and the output sides of its activities. On the input side, crude palm oil mills use large quantities of water and energy in the production processes, and on the output side, manufacturing processes generate large quantities of solid waste, wastewater and air pollution. The solid wastes may consist of empty fruit bunches (EFB), mesocarp fruit fibers (MF) and palm kernel shells (PKS).

The liquid waste is generated from an extraction of palm oil of a wet process in a decanter. This liquid waste combined with the wastes from cooling water and sterilizer is called palm oil mill effluent (POME). During POME digestion, odor released into surrounding air, thus, reduces air quality in the surrounding lagoons area. Disposal of EFB into oil palm plantation without recovering remnant oil in the EFB contributes to oil spills. Incineration of EFB means wasting renewable energy source and heat which actually could be provided for boiler in palm oil mill. At present, PKS and MF wastes are used extensively as fuel for steam production in palm-oil mills. EFB is a resource which has huge potential to be used for power generation, currently not being utilized. The application of shells for road hardening has no impact to the environment, however, current practice is actually wasting potential renewable energy source. Methane gas is one among other green house gases which can cause ozone depletion. However, at present, methane in biogas generates during POME digestion is not being utilized or captured and it just escapes into the atmosphere. Palm oil mill residues are currently underutilised; therefore, maximizing energy recovery from the wastes is desirable for both economic and environmental reasons.

...

3. Utilization of oil palm wastes

Another route to obtain more energy from oil palm plantations is the more efficient use of oil palm biomass other than the palm oil. There are no detailed statistics for oil palm dry matter production. Such statistics are only compiled for palm oil, palm kernel and fresh fruit bunches (FFB). Rough extrapolations, however, can be made based on estimates of the ratio of palm oil to other dry matter. For each kg of palm oil roughly another 4 kg of dry biomass are produced; approximately a third of which is found in FFB derived wastes and the other two thirds is represented by trunk and frond material [27,30,44]. On an energy basis, the palm oil represents roughly a third of the biomass yield, as it has roughly twice the heating value of the other oil palm dry matter, which therefore amounts to approximately 2 kg on a palm oil equivalent basis. Based on 2005 production, around 30 million metric tonnes of oil equivalent of non palm oil dry biomass matter were available for energy production from Malaysian palm oil plantations, or in other words approximately half of 2004 total primary energy demand. Only a small fraction of this potential was used, and that vary inefficiently. Open burning is still too common and responsible for substantial air pollution problems in South East Asia, indicating that other solutions urgently need to be found. Some of the biomass is used for mulching and as fertiliser, though this use is limited by labour and logistical limitations and concerns about encouraging oil palm pests [45].

Generally, oil palm mills generate a numbers of oil palm wastes. The oil palm wastes contribute about RM6379 million of energy annually [46]. However, there is much to be done to optimise the utilization of oil palm wastes for cogeneration in Malaysia. Various studies conducted in Malaysia have indicated that the used of biomass as a source of energy is one of the most promising ways of effectively using the residues. Some of the commercial projects and research activities are include treatment of palm oil mill effluent [47,48], pyrolysis of oil palm shell [49], chars from oil palm waste [50], solid biofuels from biowastes [51], briquetting of palm fibre and shell [36], palm oil effluent as a source of bioenergy [52] ethanol fermentation from oil palm trunk [53] and converting oil palm trunks and cocoa wood to liquid fuels [37]. In the following sections, potential uses of oil palm wastes are presented.

3.1. Potential uses of Pome

POME is the effluent from the final stages of palm oil production in the mill. It is a colloidal suspension containing 95-96% water, 0.6-0.7% oil and 4-5% total solids including 2-4% suspended solids [54]. Most palm oil mills and refineries have their own treatment systems for POME, which due to its high organic content is easily amenable to biodegradation. The treatment system usually consists of anaerobic and aerobic ponds. However, because of silting and short circuiting many do not reach discharge standards to water courses.

This situation can be significantly improved by introducing enclosed anaerobic digestion systems which reduce the biological oxygen demand (BOD) of the effluent and capture methane, one of the more potent greenhouse gases. The energy in the methane can then be recovered, either as a supplementary boiler fuel, or in a biogas engine generator. For each tonne of crude palm oil (CPO) produced, about an average of 0.9-1.5m³ POME is generated. The biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand, oil and grease, total solids and suspended solids of POME ranges from 25000 to 35000 mg/L, 53630 mg/L, 8370 mg/L, 43635 mg/L and 19020 mg/L respectively [55]. Therefore, this had created environmental problem because the palm oil mill industry in Malaysia produces the largest pollution load into the rivers throughout the country [56]. However, POME contains high concentrations of protein, nitrogenous compounds, carbohydrate, lipids and minerals that could be converted into useful material using microbial process [57,58]. As example, bio-gas can be produced by processing POME through anaerobic treating system. Anaerobic digestion is a series of processes in which microorganism break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. About 400m³ of bio-gas produced from 100 tonnes of POME, of which this amount of POME had been released during processing of 20 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches [59-61].

Currently, fertilizers is also derived from POME and used in the farms and vegetation areas [62]. It is also found that the gas composition contained hydrogen (66-68%) and carbon dioxide (32-34%) that can be produced from POME using anaerobic micro flora and this generated gas is free from methane [63]. At present, a renewable energy power plant developer in Malaysia, known as Bumibiopower is in the progress of setting up a plant from methane extraction and power generation using POME near Pantai Remis at the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. A closed anaerobic system is installed to produce and collect consistently high quality of methane-rich biogas from POME. The installation of a generator of size between 1 and 1.5 MW is also included in this project [64].

3.2. Potential uses of bio oil derived from oil palm wastes...

see bak

https://www.ecowatch.com/ecuador-residents-palm-oil-2644430752.html

1/20

mongaby

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/magazine/palm-oil-borneo-climate-catastrophe.html

no lnx

The remains of an Indonesian rain forest that was cleared to make way for oil palms. pix]

FEATURE

Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe.

A decade ago, the U.S. mandated the use of vegetable oil in biofuels, leading to industrial-scale deforestation — and a huge spike in carbon emissions.

By Abrahm Lustgarten

Nov. 20, 2018

This article is a partnership betweenProPublica, where Abrahm Lustgarten is a senior reporter, and The New York Times Magazine.

The fields outside Kotawaringin village in Central Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, looked as if they had just been cleared by armies. None of the old growth remained — only charred stumps poking up from murky, dark pools of water. In places, smoke still curled from land that days ago had been covered with lush jungle. Villagers had burned it all down, clearing the way for a lucrative crop whose cultivation now dominates the entire island: the oil-palm tree.

The dirt road was ruler straight, but deep holes and errant boulders tossed our tiny Toyota back and forth. Trucks coughed out black smoke, their beds brimming over with seven-ton loads of palm fruit rocking back and forth on tires as tall as people. Clear-cut expanses soon gave way to a uniform crop of oil-palm groves: orderly trees, a sign that we had crossed into an industrial palm plantation. Oil-palm trees look like the coconut-palm trees you see on postcards from Florida — they grow to more than 60 feet tall and flourish on the peaty wetland soil common in lowland tropics. But they are significantly more valuable. Every two weeks or so, each tree produces a 50-pound bunch of walnut-size fruit, bursting with a red, viscous oil that is more versatile than almost any other plant-based oil of its kind. Indonesia is rich in timber and coal, but palm oil is its biggest export. Around the world, the oil from its meat and seeds has long been an indispensable ingredient in everything from soap to ice cream. But it has now become a key ingredient of something else: biodiesel, fuel for diesel engines that has been wholly or partly made from vegetable oil.

Finally we emerged, and as we crested a hill, the plantations fell into an endless repetition of tidy bunches stretching for miles, looking almost like the rag of a Berber carpet. Occasionally, a shard of an old ironwood tree shot into the air, a remnant of the primordial canopy of dense rain forest that dominated the land until very recently.

Our driver, a 44-year-old island native and whistle-blower named Gusti Gelambong, had brought us here to show us the incredible destruction wrought by the growing demand for palm oil. The oldest male among nine siblings, he was modestly built but exuded a wiry strength. His father, he told us, was a king of one of Borneo’s dozens of Dayak tribes, the sixth descendant of the sultan of Old Kotawaringin, and his mother came from a line of warriors who served in the Indonesian special forces. In 2001, he said, he took part in a brutal ethnic cleansing of Indonesians who had moved in from the nearby island of Madura. He macheted his way through the nearby town of Pangkalan Bun, slaughtering dozens of people. He felt no remorse about the violence. But the palm-oil companies, Gelambong said, were much stronger than the Madurese. As we approached an intersection, we could see two plantation guards lying back in a shack, rifles propped against their knees. He sped past the guards, averting his eyes.

Most of the plantations around us were new, their rise a direct consequence of policy decisions made half a world away. In the mid-2000s, Western nations, led by the United States, began drafting environmental laws that encouraged the use of vegetable oil in fuels — an ambitious move to reduce carbon dioxide and curb global warming. But these laws were drawn up based on an incomplete accounting of the true environmental costs. Despite warnings that the policies could have the opposite of their intended effect, they were implemented anyway, producing what now appears to be a calamity with global consequences.

The tropical rain forests of Indonesia, and in particular the peatland regions of Borneo, have large amounts of carbon trapped within their trees and soil. Slashing and burning the existing forests to make way for oil-palm cultivation had a perverse effect: It released more carbon. A lot more carbon. NASA researchers say the accelerated destruction of Borneo’s forests contributed to the largest single-year global increase in carbon emissions in two millenniums, an explosion that transformed Indonesia into the world’s fourth-largest source of such emissions.Instead of creating a clever technocratic fix to reduce American’s carbon footprint, lawmakers had lit the fuse on a powerful carbon bomb that, as the forests were cleared and burned, produced more carbon than the entire continent of Europe. The unprecedented palm-oil boom, meanwhile, has enriched and emboldened many of the region’s largest corporations, which have begun using their newfound power and wealth to suppress critics, abuse workers and acquire more land to produce oil.

ImageA worker on an oil-palm plantation on Borneo.]

We arrived at another plantation and stopped near where a stream coursed through the bog. People still lived here: A mother bathed two children beneath a culvert, and a shirtless young boy ran through row after row of identical young palms in the distance, surrounded by dragonflies and sparrows. The uniformity of the world he was growing up in was striking, like the endless plains of drilling rigs in an East Texas oil field. It was, in a way, an astounding achievement, the ruthless culmination of mankind’s long effort to extract every last remaining bit of the earth’s seemingly boundless natural wealth. But it was also frightening. This was what an American effort to save the planet looked like. It was startlingly efficient, extremely profitable and utterly disastrous.

‘Oh, My God, What the Hell Is Happening Here?’

The last thing anyone expected from President George W. Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address was a proposal for the largest-ever cut in the nation’s use of gasoline. The president was no climate champion — he had backed out of the Kyoto Protocol shortly after taking office in 2001 — but he did favor what he called “energy independence.” He had declared the United States “addicted” to foreign oil, yet dependence on Middle Eastern fuel continued. Hurricane Katrina, and the lingering damage it did to oil pipelines and refineries, had pushed up gas prices, renewed fears of global warming and kept a firm thumb on the economy.

Now, Bush proposed, homegrown energy could be drawn from the rural places most in need of an economic boost. Clean-coal initiatives would generate the electricity of the future, but it wasbiofuels — in particular ethanol, which is largely distilled from corn, and biodiesel, made with vegetable oil — that would power the vehicles of the future. Within 10 years, the country would replace 35 billion gallons of petroleum, or one-fifth of all the gas and diesel burned, with fuel made from plants. The measure, as he put it, would confront “the serious challenge of global climate change.” Unsaid, but clear to anyone paying attention, was that it would also please America’s agriculture industry, which had been lobbying for ethanol and advanced biofuel research for years. The House chamber erupted in applause.

On the night of the president’s address, Timothy Searchinger sat on his couch in Takoma Park, Md., just a few miles from the Capitol, and watched on television, struck by what seemed to him a glaring lapse in logic. “Oh, my God, what the hell is happening here?” he recalls wondering aloud.

Searchinger wasn’t a scientist; he was a lawyer, working with the Environmental Defense Fund. But he saw a serious flaw in the claim that the president’s proposal would ameliorate climate change.Searchinger knew that cropland had already consumed virtually every arable acre across the Midwest.Quintupling biofuel production would require a huge amount of additional arable land, far more than existed in the United States. Unless Americans planned to eat less, that meant displacing food production to some other country with unused land — and he knew that when forests are cut, or new land is opened for farming, substantial new amounts of carbon can be released into the atmosphere. Forests hold as much as 45 percent of the planet’s carbon stored on land, and old-growth trees in particular hold a great deal of that carbon, typically far more than any of the crops that replace them. When the trees are cut down, most of that carbon is released.

Scientists and lawyers who study environmental impact often deploy “carbon-life-cycle analysis” to determine just how much carbon a given product is removing from, or introducing to, the environment over the course of its production and consumption. When a truck burns biodiesel, the carbon emissions that come from its tailpipe aren’t much different from those of a truck burning petroleum. But a part of the biodiesel emissions aren’t counted, because — in theory — they have been balanced out: Plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere when they grow, and fuel experts subtract that sequestered carbon from the tailpipe emission, completing a transaction that they say balances at zero.

In ideal circumstances — unvegetated land planted for the first time — this balancing out really happens. When corn grows, it soaks up carbon, and when it is consumed (whether as food or fuel), it releases that carbon back into the air. But the analysis breaks down when faced with the reality of land use. Almost everywhere in the world, planting more corn or soy for biofuel would involve creating more farmland, which in turn would involve cutting down whatever was already growing on that land. And that would mean releasing a huge amount of carbon into the air, with nothing to balance the books. As Searchinger watched Bush’s call for an unprecedented increase in biofuel production, his hunch was that the biofuel balance sheet would turn out to be tragically shortsighted.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, at the time a powerful 16-term Democrat from California who had presided over several failed efforts to pass climate legislation, was also skeptical about Bush’s plan. But he knew that one of the most vexing aspects of global emissions reduction was the question of how to replace transportation fuels. It was hard enough to upgrade several thousand electrical power plants to draw on wind or solar or even nuclear power. That would take years. But transforming the more than 100 million cars and trucks on America’s roads would take far longer, decades even, and in the meantime those vehicles were producing 28 percent of carbon emissions in the United States. Waxman thought a biofuel requirement could be a turning point in climate legislation, a moment when Washington stopped pretending.

Within months of Bush’s speech, the House and the Senate were reconciling a draft of a sprawling omnibus bill that would eventually be called the Energy Independence and Security Act, or EISA. In addition to requiring carmakers to improve fuel standards, a longtime priority for Democrats, the bill updated and expanded renewable-fuel standards, requiring fuel producers to mix in soy, palm and other kinds of vegetable oil with diesel fueland to use ethanol from corn and sugar in gasoline. The bill also set tough standards for how much cleaner, in terms of carbon, each of those categories of fuel had to become — 50 percent for diesel, 20 percent for gas — and empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to judge what qualified.

The expected gains were enormous. The switch to biofuels, the E.P.A. would later calculate, promised to stop the release of 4.5 billion tons of carbon over three decades, the equivalent of parking every single American automobile for more than seven years. Before the bill passed in December 2007, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it “the shot heard round the world for energy independence.”

The law had a profound effect. Biodiesel production in the United States would jump from 250 million gallons in 2006 to more than 1.5 billion gallons in 2016. Imports of biodiesel to the United States surged from near zero to more than 100 million gallons a month. As fuel markets snatched up every ounce of domestic soy oil to meet the American fuel mandate, the food industry also replaced the soy it had used with something cheaper and just as good: palm oil, largely from Malaysia and Indonesia, which are the sources of nearly 90 percent of the global supply.Lawmakers never anticipated that their well-intentioned plan — to help the climate by helping American farmers — might instead transform Indonesia and present one of the greatest threats to the planet’s tropical rain forests. But as Indonesian palm oil began to flood Western markets, that is exactly what began to happen.

“We saw great promise,” Waxman told me recently, sitting in a glass conference room at Waxman Strategies, the Washington lobbying firm of which he is chairman. But he is no longer so hopeful. He is now also the chairman of the environmental organization Mighty Earth, which lobbies food and agriculture companies to deploy more climate-friendly production methods. In 2007, he and other lawmakers were focused on the benefits of biofuels and the bridge they promised to even greener technologies. Now the soft-spokenWaxman is far more concerned about the other side of the equation. “We didn’t think we were going to pay such a heavy price,” he said.

‘No One Fights for Their Rights’

Palm-oil producers had been lobbying American lawmakers to introduce biofuel incentives for years, and they were well prepared for the moment when the incentives became law. Wilmar — the colossal Singaporean conglomerate that controls nearly half of the global palm-oil trade — announced in 2007 that it would quadruple its biodiesel production.In Indonesia, officials directed state-owned and regional banks to make loans on more than $8 billion worth of palm-oil-related development projects and pledged to produce 5.9 billion gallons of biofuel within five years. They also announced that Indonesia would convert more than 13 million acres of additional forest to industrialized palm production. It was as if in response to a law in China, the United States undertook a plan to convert every single acre of New Jersey to soybean crops, and then threw in all of Connecticut and New Hampshire....

loe pri npr

https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-01-01/saving-planet-depends-saving-its-tropical-forests-can-we-do-it

Saving the world’s tropical forests was a central element of the climate change agreement that emerged from COP21 in Paris. Delegates from all nations seem to have finally reached consensus on one point: Saving the planet from climate catastrophe is not achievable without also saving the Earth’s tropical forests.

One way of accomplishing this that has been around for a decade is the UN-REDD program.

As a tool for mitigating climate change, REDD has been called “the ultimate way to have our cake and eat it, too.” Saving tropical forests has the potential to remove or reduce about one-third of the world’s carbon emissions — buying time for the world to transfer away from fossil-fuel based economies, maintaining much of the world’s biodiversity and empowering local indigenous cultures.

Up to now, unfortunately, REDD’s implementation has fallen far short of its goals.

REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The UN describes the program this way:

“It is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. REDD+ goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.”

New research shows that the tropics could theoretically save a whopping four to six gigatons of carbon a year if deforestation is halted and the trees are allowed to grow back, according to Richard Houghton of the Woods Hole Research Center.

“[That] is enough to stabilize the concentration of carbon dioxide now and keep it stable as we come off of fossil fuels,” Houghton says.

But to make such sharp carbon cuts, the world would need to end its current business-as-usual practices almost immediately — that is, stop cutting and burning virgin forests, begin to restore them and drastically reduce the logging of plantation trees that are used for pulp and paper, Houghton says.

The main challenge to making REDD work is finding a way to reduce deforestation while at the same time promoting social and economic development, says Mariano Cenamo of the Institute for Conservation and Sustainable Development of the Amazon.

“As we know, the main driver of deforestation in most of these regions comes from the need for economic development — from agriculture, cattle ranching, mining and illegal logging,” Cenamo said. “To substitute another land use for these activities that generate revenue, we need investments, we need funds and we need financial support.”

About 20 percent of the world’s tropical forests are in indigenous territories, and many of these lands have changed little in hundreds if not thousands of years. The local communities are now developing and farming, but courts seldom grant indigenous people title to their lands. The REDD discussion has brought some clarity to this issue.

In 2013, the constitutional court of Indonesia ruled that customary land rights must be ceded back to local indigenous communities. “That is a mind-boggling decision,” says Dan Nepstad, a tropical biologist and REDD expert who heads the Earth Innovation Institute in San Francisco. “It has to be implemented, and that’s a big step — but the context for that was the REDD debate.”

But, as is so often the case, the human drive for short-term gain — in Indonesia, mostly in the form of rapidly growing palm oil forests that destroy millions of acres of tropical forest — continues to trump the planet’s need for long-term planning.

“I think there is nothing wrong with REDD, if the implementation puts indigenous peoples' rights as a precondition,” says Abdon Nababan of Indonesia, secretary general of Indigenous Peoples' Alliance of the Archipelago. “We have the same goals with REDD+ — to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. But if they put REDD into the hands of corporations, it will colonize our territory.”

Even after the constitutional court’s ruling,ownership of most of Indonesia’s forests is held by corporations that want to dry the nation’s rainforestsandpeatlands to create plantations forpalm oil—and these industries are fiercely opposed to any change in support of indigenous peoples' rights, Nabadan says.

The agreement at COP 21 showed a new determination to use nature’s own best method of saving the Earth from the worst effects of climate change. But now, as the time for implementation is at hand, it’s still uncertain whether this time around humanity can make the difficult changes needed to do it.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/12/palm-oil-products-borneo-africa-environment-impact/

no lnx pix

Palm oil is unavoidable. Can it be sustainable?

Our appetite for the oil hurts the environment and wildlife. But Gabon hopes to show how to build an industry while protecting its forests.

MALAYSIA

Bunches of oil palm fruit harvested by hand are trucked to a mill for processing in mainland Malaysia. Oil palms yield more oil per acre than do other crops. But soaring demand for the… Read More

PHOTOGRAPH BY PASCAL MAITRE

BY HILLARY ROSNER

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER AND PASCAL MAITRE

This story appears in the December 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Picture of workers at a mill in the Democratic Republic of the Congo move palm fruit from a steamer

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Workers at a mill in the Democratic Republic of the Congo move palm fruit from a steamer that has softened it up for pressing. The oil palm tree, Elaeis guineensis, is native to West and central Africa, and commercial plantations are now expanding in the region. If a full-scale boom developed, it could encroach on crucial habitat for great apes, forest elephants, and other threatened species.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PASCAL MAITRE

Picture of part of the forest growing on peatland burned to clear the land for oil palms

INDONESIA

In 2015 this forest growing on peatland on the island of Borneo was burned to clear the land for oil palms. Air pollution from fires in Indonesia that year—some natural, some not—contributed to at least 12,000 premature deaths. Nearly half of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from cutting or burning forests, including those on carbon-rich peatlands.

PHOTOGRAPH BY KEMAL JUFRI

In southwestern Gabon, the old-growth forest stretches hundreds of miles. One January morning I disembark from a narrow boat on the shore of the Ngounié River with a few employees of Olam, a Singapore-based agribusiness company. Following elephant tracks, we plunge into the forest. We pass towering, ancient trees, chimpanzee nests, piles of day-old gorilla dung. Monkeys scamper overhead. A young Olam ranger yanks off his boots and climbs barefoot up a trunk, returning with handfuls of pink, plumlike fruits.

Wandering farther we find wild mangoes, kola nuts, bark that smells of garlic. At a sun-dappled clearing, fish splash in a watering hole. The trees around it have been scratched by elephant tusks.

To stand here in the slanting sunlight and imagine all this being razed is heart-stopping.

The place is not a park or a preserve but part of the Mouila oil palm plantation, operated by Olam. If it were in Indonesia or Malaysia—the world’s two largest suppliers of palm oil—loggers and bulldozers might be closing in to clear the jungle for uniform rows of oil palm trees.

Picture of hands separating the fruit fibers from yellow oily mix

BENIN

Palm oil is an ancient staple in West Africa, and its origins are artisanal rather than industrial. In Benin most palm oil is still produced by women for domestic use. The fruit is boiled and pounded to extract oil from the pulp. Here a woman separates the fruit fibers and shells from the oily mix, which will be boiled again to clarify the oil.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PASCAL MAITRE

Oil palms, with giant bunches of red fruit growing beneath unruly fronds, are an ancient staple crop. For millennia humans have boiled and pounded their fruit to extract cooking oil, burned their seed-kernel shells for heat, and woven their leaves into everything from roofs to baskets. Over the past few decades, however, palm oil use has exploded—in part because of the versatility and creamy texture of the oil (think Oreo filling) and in part because of the productivity of the trees. They require only half as much land as other crops, such as soybeans, to generate a given amount of oil.

Palm oil is now the world’s most popular vegetable oil, accounting for one-third of global consumption. It’s a common cooking oil in India and some other countries. As an ingredient, it has become difficult to avoid almost everywhere. It’s in all manner of supermarket items: cookies, pizza dough, bread, lipstick, lotion, soap. It’s even in supposedly eco-friendly biodiesel: In 2017, 51 percent of the European Union’s palm oil consumption was to power cars and trucks.

TREE OF PLENTY

The abundant oil from the fruit of oil palms can be found under different ingredient names in everything from cookies to soap to lipstick. A natural alternative to trans fats, it has many other advantages: It’s cheap to produce, stable in processing, and slow to smoke—plus it has a long shelf life.

The palm fruit

The African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is native to Africa but has been introduced all over the world. The tree is an oil-producing machine with some 20 fruit bunches, found at the top of its trunk, each containing up to 3,000 palm fruits.

GLYCEROLYSIS – Chemical bonds broken with glycerol to keep oil from separating from water

INTERESTERIFICATION (IE) – Fatty acids rearranged to change melting point

DISTILLATION – Oil heated and cooled to extract fatty acids

FRACTIONATION – Oil separated into liquids (oleins) and solids (stearins)

Processing palm

The flesh of the palm fruit and the kernel (once crushed) both produce oil. After refining, the different oils are modified into varying products.

REFINING – Impurities removed from oil

CRUSHING – Kernel cracked to remove shell and then crushed and pressed

MILLING – Palm fruit steamed and pressed to separate oil from kernel and fibers

JASON TREAT AND RYAN T. WILLIAMS, NGM STAFF

ART: GABY D’ALESSANDRO. SOURCE: MALAYSIAN PALM OIL BOARD

*RBD REFERS TO REFINED, BLEACHED, AND DEODORIZED OIL.

Quiz: How much do you depend on palm oil?

Worldwide, demand for palm oil continues to rise. India uses the most, 17 percent of the global total, followed by Indonesia, the EU, and China. The United States currently ranks eighth. In 2018 global consumption is expected to reach 72 million tons, or roughly 20 pounds of palm oil per person.

Supplying that demand has taken a huge toll. Since 1973, nearly 16,000 square miles of rain forest on Borneo, the island shared by Malaysia and Indonesia, have been logged, burned, and bulldozed to make way for oil palm. It accounts for a fifth of the total deforestation on Borneo since 1973—and for 47 percent since 2000.

Picture of recent clearance of primary forest and new plantation of oil palm

INDONESIA

Indonesia’s palm oil frontier is on the island of New Guinea; forests and peatlands on Borneo and Sumatra already have been logged extensively and burned to make way for oil palm plantations. According to Greenpeace, some of this new plantation in Papua Province violates an Indonesian moratorium on clearing peatland.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ULET IFANSASTI, GREENPEACE

Picture of man walking orangutan by hand to release it onto protected island

INDONESIA

Workers from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation release an orangutan onto a protected island. Raised at the Nyaru Menteng sanctuary after losing its jungle home, the ape is being rehabilitated so it can be returned to the rain forest—if a large enough patch can be found. Deforestation and hunting killed nearly 150,000 Bornean orangutans from 1999 to 2015.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ULET IFANSASTI]

All that deforestation has been devastating for wildlife. Nearly 150,000 critically endangered Bornean orangutans perished from 1999 to 2015, and although the main culprits were logging and hunting, palm oil was a major factor. It also exacerbates climate change—nearly half of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and other land-use changes—as well as acute air pollution. The haze from Indonesian forest fires, many deliberately set to clear land for oil palms, caused at least 12,000 premature deaths in 2015 alone.

People in the path of plantations have suffered in other ways. Human rights abuses such as child labor and forced evictions have been well documented. On the Indonesian island of Sumatra, palm oil companies have sometimes bulldozed entire indigenous villages, leaving their residents homeless and reliant on government handouts.

That kind of shortsighted ecological rampaging is precisely what Gabon is trying to avoid. The Eden I visited will not be razed: Olam has protected it as part of an agreement with the government that allows the company to grow oil palms elsewhere on its concession.

“What we’re trying to do in Gabon is find a new development path where we don’t cut all our forest down but keep a balance between oil palm, agriculture, and forest preservation,” says Lee White, the conservation biologist who runs Gabon’s parks agency. As the nation of fewer than two million people embarks on industrial-scale agriculture, the government is using scientific assessments to decide which parts of its expansive forests have high conservation value and which can be opened to oil palms.

In Africa as in Southeast Asia, the crop is here to stay. Producing countries depend on the income. Boycotting palm oil is unwise: Alternative oil crops would swallow even more land. It’s also futile, because palm oil is so pervasive and so often processed into ingredients, such as sodium lauryl sulfate and stearic acid, whose origins are opaque to consumers. We’re not likely to cut palm oil consumption radically. The only way forward is to make its production less bad.

Picture of worker harvesting palm fruit from very tall trees at an old plantation

MALAYSIA

A worker harvests palm fruit on a plantation in Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. These mature trees are about 25 years old, which means they will soon be cut down and replaced. Oil palm trees produce less fruit as they age, and taller trees are more difficult to harvest.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PASCAL MAITRE

Indonesia and Malaysia are now the epicenter of palm oil, but the oil palm tree,Elaeis guineensis, is not native to Asia. It comes from West and central Africa, where archaeologists have found 3,000-year-old palm nuts buried in streambeds deep in the forest. Throughout the 1800s, British traders imported African palm oil, using it for a growing number of products, from soap to margarine to candles. Once scientists discovered how to isolate glycerin from the oil, its applications multiplied: pharmaceuticals, photographic film, perfume, even dynamite.

By the turn of the 20th century, oil palms had been shipped to Indonesia, and commercial plantations had taken hold. In the late 1930s they covered just 250,000 acres. Over the next half century or so, agricultural breakthroughs—breeding trees resistant to a common pathogen, introducing an African weevil for pollination—led to greater yields and a flourishing investment in oil palms.

Still, as recently as the 1970s, three-quarters of Borneo was covered in lush rain forests. But as global demand for palm oil grew, companies racing to supply it burned and bulldozed some of those forests. Health concerns over trans fats fueled the boom—palm oil replaced trans fats in many products—as did rising demand for biodiesel. By the early 2000s, the boom was in full swing, and thousands of square miles of lowland forests and peatlands across Borneo were planted with oil palms.

Hot Commodity

Oil palms grow best in the steamy tropics, where rainfall and sunshine are abundant. Most of the world’s palm oil comes from Southeast Asia, but production is rapidly expanding in Africa, the trees’ original home.

ASIA

85% of palm oil is produced in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Palm oil production by country

in millions of

metric tons

MALAYSIA

Indonesia

AFRICA

INDONESIA

Borneo

GABON

Malaysia

Rest of world

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2017

Gabon’s future

Little of Gabon’s land is planted with oil palms. But as it looks to diversify its economy beyond petroleum, Gabon is exploring how to embrace the cash crop sustainably.

Borneo today

Industrial oil palm plantations have caused 47 percent

of the deforestation on the island since 2000. Some

877,000 acres are currently lost each year.

Over 32,000 square miles, an area about the size of South Carolina, have been planted

with oil palms.

Oil palm suitability

Libreville

BRUNEI

High

Libreville

Awala oil mill

and plantation

Low

BORNEO

Unsuitable

Mouila oil mill and plantation

Industrial oil palm plantations

MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK AND RYAN T. WILLIAMS, NGM STAFF

SOURCES: USDA; DAVID L.A. GAVEAU AND OTHERS, BORNEO ATLAS, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY RESEARCH; JOHANNES PIRKER AND OTHERS, INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS

Deforestation in Borneo

Forest

Industrial plantation

Reservoir created by hydroelectric dam

NGM STAFF

SOURCE: DAVID L.A. GAVEAU AND OTHERS, BORNEO ATLAS, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY RESEARCH

By then, pressure from international conservation groups over deforestation was growing, and WWF teamed with some of the biggest palm oil producers and buyers to begin creating standards for producing palm oil more responsibly. Plantations certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) can’t clear “primary forests or areas which contain significant concentrations of biodiversity (e.g. endangered species) or fragile ecosystems.” They must minimize erosion and protect water sources. They must pay a minimum wage and get “free, prior, and informed consent” from local communities.

Today the RSPO certifies roughly one-fifth of the global supply.Many consumer goods manufacturers that rely on palm oil—Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble—have pledged to switch their supply chains exclusively to certified palm oil over the next few years. That’s a big step forward. But it’s not enough.

What’s essential and still mostly lacking is government intervention in producing countries. “We in the conservation community were vastly overoptimistic in thinking that market-based solutions alone could solve this,” says John Buchanan, who runs the sustainable food and agriculture markets program at Conservation International. “If the government isn’t on board or doesn’t have the capacity or doesn’t know what it’s doing,” he says, the rain forest still takes a hit.

Picture of aerial view of Oil Mill at Suai SPO

MALAYSIA

A fifth of Malaysia’s crude palm oil is now produced in the state of Sarawak, where this mill is located. Malaysia recently mandated that all mills, plantations, and small growers must have their palm oil operations certified as sustainable by the end of 2019.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PASCAL MAITRE

On a sticky afternoon near the northeastern tip of Borneo, small groups of elephants graze by a murky river. As the sun drops toward the treetops, the groups converge at a muddy riverbank. Soon more than 50 elephants are swimming in an orderly line across the wide, fast-moving Kinabatangan River, bobbing their giant heads and spraying water out their trunks.

The Kinabatangan is among the easiest places to see wildlife in Sabah, the Malaysian state that occupies northern Borneo. From boats on the river, tourists can view rare and iconic species—Borneo pygmy elephants, proboscis monkeys, rhinoceros hornbills, even orangutans—without getting their boots dirty.

It’s a thrill to watch these animals in the open. But the reason they’re so visible is that they have nowhere else to go. For endless, sprawling miles around the river, the forest has been obliterated and replaced by oil palms. You can drive for hours, passing a parade of tanker trucks carrying palm oil, and barely see another species of tree.

In Sabah in the 1970s, the government turned to agriculture to address its decades-long overdependence on timber. It earmarked large swaths of fertile flatland in lowland forests, including the Kinabatangan region, for growing crops. “The assumption was that all the best soil should be allocated for agriculture,” says John Payne, a conservation biologist who has lived in Sabah since 1979.

Picture of excavator grabing palm-fruit bunches to load onto a conveyor belt

MALAYSIA

An excavator grabs palm-fruit bunches to load onto a conveyor belt, which will take them to a steamer. Palm oil production is far more mechanized in Asia than in Africa. This Malaysian mill, in Perak state, can process 44 tons of fruit an hour, which will yield 2.2 tons of crude palm oil. It runs 24 hours a day.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PASCAL MAITRE

Through the 1980s, Sabah’s agricultural land was largely devoted to cocoa. But when falling world prices and a pest called the cocoa-pod borer made the crop less profitable, most plantations switched to oil palms. Land was cheap, so companies from the Malaysian mainland began snapping it up, building mills and other infrastructure. That made it easier for growers to get their fruit to market—and large-scale forest clearing began in earnest. Today one-fifth of the state is covered in oil palms. Sabah produces more than 7 percent of the world’s palm oil.

The ecological cost has been astonishing. Many remaining forest fragments are disconnected from one another—islands of jungle that look intact but are largely empty of animal life. “What used to house the highest density of orangutans is now oil palm,” Payne says.

Amid all the loss, it can be hard to find hope. But in Sabah, a group of scientists, activists, RSPO members, and government officials is trying to right past wrongs. Payne now runs the Palm Oil & NGO (PONGO) Alliance, an industry-NGO coalition that aims to convert 5 percent of the biggest plantations on Borneo back to forest for orangutans. (Pongo is the ape’s genus name.) Hutan, the conservation organization that took me up the Kinabatangan, has over the past decade planted more than 100,000 trees of 38 species, trying to preserve a corridor for wildlife along the river.

And at the helm of the state’s forestry department until recently was Sam Mannan, the chief conservator of forests. Under his leadership Sabah expanded its protected lands over the past decade from 12 to 26 percent of the state—more than 7,000 square miles. Mannan’s goal was to increase that to 30 percent by 2025, linking up parks, wildlife reserves, and other blocks of state-owned forest with replanted corridors for animals to move through.

A gregarious man with a devilish streak—he once joked at a press conference that rhinos were going extinct because “they’re stupid”—Mannan believed in collaborating with palm oil producers. “Without oil palm, conservation in Sabah would be in trouble,” Mannan told me in his office in the seaside city of Sandakan, once the island’s timber capital. Only petroleum contributes more revenue to Sabah’s government than the oil palm industry. “The money is going back to conservation,” Mannan said.

You could argue, I pointed out, that without oil palms you wouldn’t need as much money for conservation.

“You could argue that way,” Mannan said, “but you would be poor.”

The palm oil boom has helped bring clear economic benefits to Sabah: paved roads, better schools, satellite television. In Kota Kinabalu, the state’s capital, gleaming new shopping malls feature Western and Asian luxury brands.

This past August, Mannan was terminated by Sabah’s new government, which had launched an investigation into possibly illegal logging deals made by the previous administration. Mannan had managed to annoy those on both sides of the palm oil debate in Malaysia during his nearly two-decade tenure. But many environmentalists had considered him a restraint on the industry—a “visionary, bold, and effective” government leader, Payne says.

GABON

Singapore-based agribusiness giant Olam has opened two new oil palm plantations, each with its own mill, in this west-central African country. Three-quarters of Gabon is covered in forest, and commercial agriculture is close to nonexistent. The government wants to develop that sector with crops such as oil palms— but without doing the kind of environmental damage that was done in Southeast Asia.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER

Ultimately, says RSPO CEO Darrel Webber, a Sabah native, the culture of the palm oil industry must change. With Mannan’s backing, Webber and a Malaysian activist, Cynthia Ong, launched an ambitious effort to do that in Sabah. Their goal is to teach everyone from smallholders with just a few acres to high-flying CEOs how and why to do palm oil better—and then to certify the state’s entire supply as sustainable.

“As demand increases and Sabah wants to supply that, we have to put some lines in the sand,” Ong says.

The state hopes to be certified as a whole by 2025, though exactly how is still a question. “We’re building the plane while flying it,” Ong says. Wild Asia, a Malaysian nonprofit, is organizing hundreds of smallholders in the Kinabatangan and other regions into groups that can be certified together and sell palm fruit to a certified mill. Nestlé, a large palm oil consumer that doesn’t own plantations itself, is helping to fund the project. Farmers get a better price; RSPO members such as Nestlé get a way to trace their oil. “We want to link this to the supply chain,” says Kertijah Abdul Kadir of Nestlé.

Since 2011 she also has overseen the planting of some 700,000 trees along the Kinabatangan River, covering more than 6,000 acres. Elsewhere in Sabah, Wilmar, the world’s largest palm oil supplier and another RSPO member, is replanting forests to protect watersheds and create wildlife corridors. Reforestation is labor-intensive, expensive, and slow—several lifetimes of waiting won’t produce anything resembling an old-growth rain forest. But it’s a start.

Critics of the RSPO complain that working with companies that caused the loss of forests renders the effort suspect. They say one of the main requirements for certification—no new deforestation—sets the bar far too low.

The RSPO’s Webber, who once worked for WWF, responds by comparing the palm oil industry to St. Paul on the road to Damascus. “Do you forgive a huge sinner because that person could be your greatest missionary?” Webber asks. “Or do we keep all the sinners out, and then what change would we have? We have to find a way to bring on board the whole group.”

During the past decade, Webber says, a growing number of palm oil companies have accepted the need for change. “We’ve got quite a few in acceptance but also quite a few in denial. Our job is to push this long tail of producers into acceptance. It will take a while.”

GABON

More than half of Olam’s Mouila plantation, where these workers are planting palm saplings, occupies savanna—a site chosen to avoid more deforestation. Gabon has developed a national land-use plan that attempts to “keep a balance between oil palm, agriculture, and forest preservation,” says parks agency director Lee White.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER

In Gabon, one of Africa’s most forested countries, palm oil is coming home, and a boom may be on the horizon. Situated on the Equator and on the continent’s west coast, Gabon is roughly the size of Colorado with a third of the people. More than 76 percent of the country is covered in forest, with 11 percent of its land area protected in national parks. It’s a wildlife wonderland.

“It’s exactly the kind of large, intact forest you want to protect from any kind of development,” says Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of Mighty Earth, a Washington D.C.-based environmental organization that has criticized Olam’s palm oil operations in Gabon. “There’s so much degraded land [across the tropics]. Why would you send your palm oil plantations to countries that have so much existing forest?”

One answer is that Gabon wants them. The former French colony has the fourth highest GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa, but much of the revenue comes from petroleum. It needs to diversify. Hurowitz argues that Gabon should be developing ecotourism instead. A relatively safe country with spectacular parks and wildlife, it has few airstrips, barely passable roads, and scant lodging. There’s a huge opportunity for more tourism—one that Gabon’s parks agency, the Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (ANPN), is pursuing.

Tourism is only part of what the country needs. Gabon imports much of its food: Wheat and milk come from France; beef is flown in from India and Brazil. The government of President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who won a controversial election in 2016 to a second seven-year term, wants to add commercial agriculture—including palm oil—to Gabon’s economy. That requires cutting down trees.

Recognizing the conflicting demands on its land, the government has embarked on a project few other nations have tried: a national land-use plan.

Left: Workers at Mouila, Olam’s largest oil palm plantation in Gabon, board trucks to be driven to their work stations for a 7 a.m. start. Olam employs nearly 6,000 workers here and pays them Gabon’s minimum wage of about $260 a month.… Read More

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER

Lee White, ANPN director and one of the president’s closest advisers—British born, he has lived in Gabon since 1989 and has dual citizenship—oversaw the process of mapping the country’s land and wildlife and determining which areas should be developed for agriculture. The government granted two new oil palm concessions to Olam and later sold the company an existing plantation. Olam now operates on 500 square miles, or 0.5 percent of Gabon’s land area. Some 215 square miles are planted in oil palms.

On a bright January morning, Christopher Stewart, Olam’s chief sustainability manager, maneuvers a Mitsubishi SUV along the potholed highway southeast from Libreville, the capital. Trucks whiz past carrying giant okoume logs—Gabon’s chief timber export, bound in large part for China and Europe. Beyond Libreville’s sprawl, tiny villages dot the countryside. Nearly every cluster of houses has a roadside stand, consisting typically of an overturned rusty metal drum and a wooden rack. The drums are covered with bananas or plantains, bowls of brightly colored jungle fruits, plastic water bottles filled with bathtub palm wine. Hanging from the racks, all along the highway, are furry and spiny carcasses: porcupines, blue duikers, the occasional monkey, a civet, a crocodile, the haunches of a gazelle.

Much of that bush meat is illegal—and also perhaps understandable, in a country without much domestic meat production. Illegal bush meat is offered at many restaurants in Libreville. Poaching is a big issue for Olam; locals and workers use the plantations as access points to the forest, where they have been known to hunt at-risk species. So Olam rangers patrol the protected forests. At the plantation gates, guards search exiting cars.

Two and a half hours from Libreville, we pull onto a red dirt road toward the Awala plantation. This area is secondary forest, one of the places where logging first began in Gabon. The government gave Olam roughly 50,000 acres here—of which the company has planted oil palms on about a third. Another third is conserved as one block of forest, and the rest remains standing in smaller parcels, some of it on steep hillsides.

GABON

At an oil palm nursery in Gabon, Olam gardeners tend to seedlings. Gabon’s economy is largely petroleum based; it imports much of its food. The government sees industrial agriculture as an important part of the nation’s future.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER

Inside the plantation, it’s easy to lose your sense of direction amid row upon row of palm trees, punctuated by indistinguishable dirt roads. At the end of each row, workers have piled fresh palm-fruit bunches and loose fruit. In the afternoon other workers will toss the fruit into dump trucks, which will deliver it to an on-site mill that processes 50 tons of oil an hour.

At Olam’s Mouila plantation, farther south, an even bigger mill is producing twice as much oil. More than half the planted area at Mouila was open savanna. Research here has revealed the presence of a rare antelope, the southern reedbuck. Photographed by a camera trap in 2017, the animal is helping White justify a new national park in the savanna.

Stewart, who has a Ph.D. in ecology, helped set up the RSPO program in Southeast Asia before joining Olam. On our boat trip back from the old-growth forest at Mouila, we talk about the devastation in Indonesia. He visited areas with biologists who had worked only a few years earlier in intact rain forest—and were returning to find it all destroyed. Stewart chokes up as he recalls this. He’s immensely proud of Olam’s conservation efforts in Gabon.

Atop a small hill within the plantation, we climb to the roof of Stewart’s truck. For 180 degrees, the rows of oil palms stretch nearly to the horizon. In the scorching sun, the monochrome view is dizzying. The map Stewart holds is even more sobering. This section of plantation covers nearly 40,000 acres; what we’re seeing is less than 7 percent of that.

As an ecologist, Stewart hates the idea of trees being cut. But, he says, “I know that this is actually in Gabon’s long-term interest for these projects to be in the right place and managed well and to show what well-planned, well-managed agriculture can do.” White agrees. Olam isn’t undermining protected areas, he says: “Olam is helping me create more national parks.”

Seven hours from Libreville, at the end of three hours of bone-jarring dirt roads, lies Lopé National Park—one of 13 national parks White helped create. He lived here for 15 years and still visits often to do wildlife research. One evening, sitting in the open-air living room of the research station, White sips whiskey as lightning makes purple streaks across the starry sky. In the forest around us, families of gorillas and mandrills are bedding down for the night. Leopards and caracals are waking up to hunt.

Once you start clearing forests for agriculture, it becomes easier to clear ever more. Does White worry about that? He smiles. “I’m not really a worrier,” he says, before reframing the risk: “If in 50 years’ time we can’t feed the number of human beings we have on the planet, then highly productive, humid, tropical places where you can grow vast amounts of food are going to come under threat.”

On hilltops near Lopé’s western boundary, French archaeologist Richard Oslisly has uncovered evidence of Stone Age and Iron Age communities—chips from the making of quartz arrowheads, iron tools and furnaces. Three thousand years ago, Bantu peoples began to migrate along the Atlantic coast to Gabon from Cameroon. They brought oil palms with them. Wading in a stream in Lopé’s forest, Oslisly scratches at the bank and pulls out domesticated palm nuts dating back two millennia.

By around 1,500 years ago, those early farmers had covered large parts of Gabon and northern Congo in palm groves. “Central Africa,” White says, “probably looked like Indonesia does today.” A drastic population crash—perhaps caused by an epidemic—wiped out those Iron Age people. The rain forest came roaring back.

“Now we are starting the cycle again,” White says. “Our management actions will tell whether once again we destroy the forests or if we can maintain an equilibrium.” For humans, balance is often an elusive goal.

Hillary Rosner’s last article for the magazine was about the pine beetle epidemic in western U.S. forests. David Guttenfelder and Pascal Maitre have both worked extensively in Asia and Africa.

CLIMATE 101: DEFORESTATION

Forests cover about 30% of the planet, but deforestation is clearing these essential habitats on a massive scale. What is deforestation? Find out the causes, effects, and solutions to deforestation.

AFRICAN PALM OIL: IMPACTS IN EQUADOR'S AMAZON

June 1987

Author

Ashley

John M.

The development of large African palm oil plantations in Ecuador's Amazonian province of Napo has become a sensitive issue for this small South American country. Over the past couple of years the Cofán, Siona-Secoya and Quichua peoples have felt threatened by the existence of palm plantations and are concerned because of palm plantations and are concerned because of plans to greatly expand this agro-industry in their region. Such an expansion for them means extensive destruction to the rainforest and a decline in the quality of the river waters, both of which are vital to their physical and cultural survival. The government supports the plantations as a vital part of development in the Oriente and, for the most part, has been insensitive to the Indian's needs.

Ecuador's Amazonia commonly called the Oriente, includes the upper Amazon basin and a portion of the westernmost lower Amazon basin as the river systems flatten out. The entire Oriente is rainforest, in which year-round moist conditions along with a stable warm temperature have created incredible biological richness. In addition to a diversity of plant species, the rainforest is also the home to a wide variety of forest animals, and a complex set of interdependent relationships between these multitudinous animals and plants, which are well known to the region's indigenous people. Western scientists, on the other hand, readily admit that they are just beginning to comprehend the complexity of the rainforest.

Presently approximately 20,000 ha of African palms are under cultivation in the Oriente.

Although 20,000 ha does not seem extreme, substantial environmental and social damage has already resulted. Given this significant destruction, it is particularly alarming that the palm oil industry now plans to increase the area for palm oil cultivation up to as much as 250,000 ha. If these plans are realized, it means the deforestation of almost four percent of the Oriente, which in turn, accounts for almost half of Ecuador's total land base. The oil-palm industry is particularly interested in expansion within the provinces of Napo where, unlike most of the Amazon basin and other parts of the world's tropics, the soils are quite rich due to the breakdown of volcanic material that has washed down from the Andes.

Oil Industry - "Pure Business"

The palm oil industry is not new to Ecuador. The first African palm seedlings were plated in 1953. Until recently all oil palm plantations were located on the coastal side of the Andes, primarily in the area of Santo Domingo de los Colorados. To grow well and produce an abundant crop of oil nuts, African palms require strong sunlight, regular rainfall and a consistent temperature between 25o - 28o. They also need fertilizer, pesticides and, most of all, extensive amounts of manual labor to prevent Kudzu vines from choking the palm trees. Because Ecuador is endowed with excellent growing conditions and an abundant supply of cheap labor, it is considered an ideal location by the palm oil industry.

Palm oil trees grow rapidly; five to six years after planting, they start to produce clusters of reddish-orange nuts and, if managed well, will continue to do so for 20 years. Once the nuts are harvested they are put through an extraction process which produces two kinds of oil. The first one, reddish in color, is extracted from the fleshly pulp of the nut's outer coverings. The "red oil". as it is commonly called, is sold primarily within the country to companies that produce cosmetics, industrial grease and cheap cooking oil. The other oil clearish-white, is extracted from the seed kernel of the nut. Used for cooking, this higher-grade white oil is exported abroad and is common in a wide variety of prepackaged foods in the US. According to Bruce Kernon, a USDA (US Dept. of Agriculture) forester in Ecuador, Ecuador now imports approximately 30 percent of its cooking oil. This figure is a major justification for the palm oil industry's expansion plans to make the country less dependent on imports. However, it really comes down to pure business, because cooking oil is already being exported from the country. Yet, in spite of its growing popularity abroad, palm oil is far more saturated and more damaging to blood vessels than they any animal fat known, including pork and beef fat.

Companies Receive Title to Indian Land

Fifteen years ago, the areas where the palm oil plantations are now located were trackless virgin rainforest. The discovery of high-grade petroleum in the 1960s and the subsequent development of the industry in the northern Oriente has radically altered the forest ecosystem. New roads for oil exploration and a network of oil pipelines have opened the way to a continuous invasion of landless colonists and land speculators from the Sierra and coastal regions of the country. With little or no knowledge of how to subsist in a rainforest, the oil industry and the colonists have caused massive deforestation. This imported labor supply and a new infrastructure of roads have made it feasible for the palm oil industry to develop plantations in the Oriente.

In 1978 two palm oil companies, Palmoriente and Palmeras del Ecuador, received titles from IERAC (the Ecuadorian Institute of agrarian Reform and Colonization) for 10,000 ha each of "undeveloped" rainforest in Napo province. In the process of clearing these tracts of forests to plant the African palm seedlings, little of the timber resources was used. According to Jorge Uquillos, a sociologist working for INIAP (National Institute of Agricultural Research), Palmeras del Ecuador simply bulldozed trees and left them in large piles to rot. This same 10,000 hectares had previously been one of the primary hunting grounds for the Siona-Secoya Indians, who still live adjacent to the plantation along the Shushufindi and other nearby rivers.

The Palmoriente plantation is located approximately 40 km to the southwest of Palmeras del Ecuador near the river town of Puerto Francisco de Orellana, more commonly called Coca. Palmoriente lies along the Huashito River, a fast-moving tributary of the Napo River. The largest river in the region, the Napo, is the main "highway" for the Indians. All along the river and its tributaries, the Quichua and Siona-Secoya peoples have numerous settlements and homesteads.

Toxic Pesticides Endanger Indians and Environment

When forests are cleared for these plantations wild-life populations decline because of a loss of habitat. Although not documented, there is strong reason to suspect the extinction of some species because of the high degree of plant and animal endemism in the area. Further deterioration of the environment continues once the palm oil seedlings have been planted. To protect the palms, a variety of highly toxic pesticides must be applied to the crop at regular intervals which later find their way into the local rivers and destroy essential sources of riverine protein upon which the native peoples depend. Fish kills have been reported downstream from Palmeras in both the Shushufindi and Aquarico rivers. The Huashito, Punino and Payamino rivers are now contaminated with toxins from Palmoriente. In recent years sickness among the Indian communities, who use the rive water for cooking and drinking, has increased significantly due to deterioration of the water quality.

The use of toxic pesticides is a common practice and essential for protecting a large monoculture crop in the tropics from a wide variety of insects and other pests that abound in the surrounding forests. There are 15 separate pesticides being used on the oil-palm plantations in Ecuador. These particular pesticides are extremely toxic and easily enter nearby streams and rivers via runoff from a vast network of ditches throughout these plantations. The most dangerous include endrin, aldrin, dieldrin. Both aldrin and dieldrin were banned for crop use in the US in 1974. Endrin is so dangerous that it is now considered the most toxic of the commercial cyclodienes. It is both persistent in the environment and highly toxic to fish. Eating game contaminated by endrin has caused brain damage and birth defects. Parathion is also extremely persistent in the environment and has an estimated lethal dose one-sixteenth that of DDT.

Once the oil extractors are installed within the next year or two at these two plantations the quality of the nearby river water will deteriorate further. For example, the Cucaracha River just west of Santo Domingo de los Colorados is now constantly covered with a greasy film and unfit for human consumption because of the waste dumped from palm oil extractors. Some rivers in Malaysia are compared to open sewers due to the waste from palm oil extractors in that country.

Such contamination threatens Indian peoples who live near plantations. Their physical survival depends on the well-being of the rainforest and the rivers; disturbances in this complex ecosystem will more than likely affect them adversely as well. The forests provide building materials for their homes, wood for canoes, palm leaves and vines for baskets, and a place together wild foods and medicines and to hunt small game. The rivers supply them with water and protein from fish, caimen and turtles.

The Indians also depend on extensive areas of rainforest to support their swidden form of agriculture, which is ideally suited to the tropical rainforest. Their small forest gardens, called chakras, use only one to two hectares of land and require no pesticides or fertilizer. A wide variety of crops are planted together rather than in rows. By intercropping these plants, plant-specific pests are controlled and the different root systems avoid competition for nutrients. Finally, this multilayered garden canopy, which mimics the structure of the surrounding rainforest, helps to break up the impact of the rainfall and minimize erosion. After a couple of years a new garden site is cleared and the old garden is left fallow, allowing the forest to regenerate.

Indians Accuse Industry of Ethnocide

For the indigenous peoples of the Oriente, a whole culture is interrelated with the rainforest. It has been their home for millenia; the history of their people and the bones of their ancestors lie within these forests. The forests give their lives meaning and purpose and are a continuous source of spiritual sustenance. Their traditional religion could be called a type of ecological animism because of the respect it inspires for all the plants and creatures of the rain-forest. Quite complex, this spiritual relationship with the forest is based on the careful observations and experiments of many generations of native shamans. New knowledge about the forests is constantly being acquired as apprentices to shamans must prove not only their knowledge of known plants but also demonstrate potential uses of new plants.

Because of this long-term association with the rain-forest, the indigenous people, supported by various Indian organizations, accuse the expanding palm oil industry of ethnocide. The connection for them is obvious. The destruction of the rainforest threatens their traditional way of life and with it their identity as a forest-dwelling people. Several reports published in 1984 that include plans for expanding the plantations confirm the worst of their fears about the intentions of the national government and the palm oil industry.

In the spring of 1984 the Central Bank of Ecuador published a report (Informe 84-012 SEI) elaborating plans to expand development of palm oil in the province of Napo up to 245,000 ha. Most of this land lies within areas the Quichua and Siona-Secoya communities already inhabit.

A second report four months later, from the Ministry of Agriculture (MAG), known as Ministerial Agreement 0431, created two conservation reserves of 11,000 and 45,000 ha. Although the reserves were supposedly designed for conservation purposes, this agreement stipulated that certain forms of development would be acceptable within its boundaries. The cultivation of palm oil was specifically listed as an acceptable form of development (to Uquillos, personal communication). Even worse, MAG declared the areas within these reserves "empty of all human settlement," although 40 Indian communities, some with formal land title documents, lie within the proposed boundaries of these reserves.

Finally, in April 1984, the national newspaper Hoy quoted the director of the French Oil Institute (Institute de Recherches pour les Huilles et Oliagineux) as saying"...that the best land he has ever seen for growing African palms exists in the Oriente". Not only does the Oriente have the prerequisite growing conditions of sunlight, rainfall and constant temperatures, it also has unusually rich soils for a tropical rainforest region.

These three reports represent an attitude toward the land totally different from that of the native peoples. For the bureaucrats of MAG and agro-business entrepreneurs, the rainforests in their natural state are useless with no inherent value and therefore must be "improved". IERAC policies reinforce this attitude by encouraging colonists to clear the land and raise cattle, cash crops, or both. In fact upon receiving title to new forest lands, some "improvement" is required within five years or the title may be revoked. A large sign in the local MAG office in Coca eloquently sums up the government's attitude toward the rainforest: "El Bosque es Trabojo y Dinero" (The Forest is Work and Money).

The government lack of understanding, much less appreciation of the forest Indians' land-use patterns, exacerbates the ongoing problems of awarding titles to all Indian land claims. According to Uquillos, a sociologist working for INIAP, the government's notion of tierras baldias (empty, unoccupied land) is a complete myth because indigenous peoples inhabit or make use of almost all areas of the Oriente. To the government any forest lands that are not yet surveyed and registered with IERAC qualify as tierras baldias (Uquillos: personal communication). As recently as July 1985, Rafael Perez, the executive director of IERAC, stated that Ecuador's Oriente contains 13.8 million ha of unoccupied land. Such a statement from IERAC is consistent with its poor record of awarding titles to Indians as compared to non-Indian families. Moreover, IERAC is particularly reluctant to recognize communal lands and prefers to award titles to the heads of individual families, according to Cristobal Tapuy, president of the Confederation of Indian Nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Such a policy, which Indian organizations strongly criticize, undermines tribal solidarity and cultural values.

Indians Fight Government Discrimination

Another essential component to this cultural interface is the deep racist attitudes held toward the Indians in Ecuador and forest Indians in particular. Although they are admired as picturesque in tourist posters, for the most part forest Indians are considered backward and a hindrance to national progress. According to anthropologist Norman Whitten, who has spent years in the Oriente: even the kindliest of the whites tend to look upon the Indian as a child held perpetually at the development stage. For the mestizo caught up in the national process of blanquemiento (White-mindedness), the thought of living in the jungle is repugnant, since only animals and Indians live there.

The Indian people of the Oriente are well aware of the severity of the problem and have made great efforts to organize. They have established several regional organizations and most of them work together through the umbrella organization CONFENIAE, which was founded in 1980 and has a modern office in Quito. Under the leadership of Cristobal Tapuy, CONFENIAE has worked to formalize Indian grievances with the national government. Committed to protecting the Indians' cultural heritage and land rights throughout Amazonia, CONFENIAE is trying to do what the government has yet to do - establish a consistent policy for dealing with Indian peoples. It was only because of strong local and written protests from CONFENIAE, for example, that MAG retracted Agreement 0431 for creating two conservation zones.

Deeply concerned about the negative effects of the palm oil industry, CONFENIAE last year published a booklet, Palma African y Etnocidio (African Palm and Ethnocide), to educate the local public and people abroad. Two well-known international Indian rights organizations, Cultural Survival and Survival International, along with the Inter-American Foundation and the national environmental group within Ecuador, Fundación Natura, support CONFENIAE's work.

Adán Grefa, president of FCUNAE (Federation of Napo Communities - Union of Ecuadorian Amazonian Natives), a regional affiliate of CONFENIAE, in a recent interview indicated that violence has erupted in the Oriente because of the colonists' intrusion. In one confrontation this past year a colonist was killed. Grefa expressed regret over this death, but was adamant about the Indians' willingness to fight if necessary. He also believes colonist invasions may be organized with the help of the palm oil companies because their efforts are coordinated, not the usual spontaneous activities of colonists.

Industry Provides Few Local Benefits

The very existence of palm oil plantations would not be possible without foreign capital and technology. Both Palmoriente and Palmeras del Ecuador operate with 40 percent foreign participation. The three principal foreign investors include British Commonwealth Development Corporation, German Development Company (DEG) and SOCFINO, a Belgian firm.

Although foreign investors, Ecuador's Central Bank and the government all point to the growing palm oil industry as a sign of development in the Oriente, local living conditions do not support this position. Even during the heyday of high petroleum prices, little if any money was put into the local communities. The existing roads are used primarily to transport heavy equipment to and from oil fields. Neither Coca nor Lago Agrio have any paved roads and Coca still lacks a running water system. Few Indians or local people are hired to work the plantations. The majority of the workers are brought in from the coast and paid by contratistas (contractors) (Uquillos, personal communication). Usually the laborers work on a rotation system, which saves the companies from providing social services and health insurance benefits, as well as overtime and vacation pay. Entry into the Palmoriente plantation is difficult because of guards and a high metal fence. In order to gain entry, a visitor must submit a letter of intent to the head office in Quito where it is reviewed for approval at meetings once every two months.

More than likely Palmoriente's attitude is a response to formal protests and public criticism from Indian rights organizations, CONFENIAE and Fundación Natura. There has been an obvious decline in government praise for the economic and social benefits of the "golden crop", as the palm oil was once hailed.

Government Remains Indifferent to Indians As Industry Expands

Nevertheless, the palm oil industry continues to expand in the Oriente and rumors repeatedly surface about United Brands and a Japanese firm starting a plantation in the near future. The ACEIPA Corporation, which already has a palm oil plantation near Santo Domingo de los Colorados, is presently clearing 5,000 ha of rainforest that adjoins the eastern boundary of Palmeras del Ecuador.

The development of this new plantation by ACEIPA is another example of the government's indifference to the rights of indigenous peoples. The land that ACEIPA is now clearing has already been recognized by the government as part of the Indians' traditional lands. Although not legally titled to them now, it adjoins the boundaries of their present comuna called San Pablo. In 1980 an inter-institutional commission set up by MAG, which included IERAC, agreed that these lands would be included with the San Pablo Comuna. By 1983 all the paper work had been completed and the land had been surveyed and marked with the participation and money of the Siona-Secoya. The Indians were simply waiting for IERAC to finish processing "their" land title. However, IERAC continued to delay awarding them the title and then, inexplicably, lost all the paperwork related to the Siona-Secoya land. Several people, including some employees at MAG, believe that this action was intentional on the part of IERAC because they knew a change in the administration from Hurtado to Febres-Cordero was coming. Consequently, 5,000 ha of this land now "belongs" to ACEIPA and is being cleared with the use of heavy military equipment. According to anonymous sources, a retired military general named Azanza, who is a stockholder of ACEIPA, is reportedly responsible for acquiring the use of this machinery. Left in a desperate situation, the Siona-Secoya are willing to compromise the loss of this land if it will prevent any further delays in acquiring the remaining lands that have been marked off for them.

In an interview, the director for MAG's African Palm Oil Program, Carlos Adolfo González, acknowledged that ACEIPA was in the Oriente but said that he knew of no problems with the Indians there. When asked about river pollution from pesticides González contradicted information published by INIAP, saying that it was minimal because the companies prefer to use organic pesticides. The INIAP documents list clearly the chemicals used in managing palm oil with warnings about those considered most toxic.

As long as the palm oil industry continues to expand, conflicts with the Indian people will continue, Right now the major economic spin-off of the palm oil industry in the Oriente is land speculation for its further expansion. Unless the government commits itself to securing all Indian land claims, the Indians' struggle to defend their will continue and perhaps result in other violent confrontations.

The present administration does not appear to be particularly favorable to the Indians' plight. Although difficult to confirm, it is widely believed that President Febres-Cordero is a stockholder in the ACEIPA Corporation. It is common knowledge, however, that Ecuador's Ambassador to the United States, Ribadeneyra, is a major shareholder of the Palmoriente plantation. In addition, Vice-President Blanco Peñaherrera Padilla is pressuring officials to bring back to the Oriente the infamous Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), a missionary organization with a notorious reputation for insensitivity to indigenous cultures. The SIL was officially expelled from Ecuador in 1982 after numerous complaints from various Indian communities. CONFENIAE is adamantly opposed to its return and feels that it would drive a wedge in the Indian community and open the door for further development, particularly African palm oil (Tapuy, personal communication).

Contrary to government propaganda, Indian peoples of the Oriente do not see themselves as antidevelopment. Fully aware of a larger world, they welcome innovations when incorporated into their lifestyles without unnecessary disruption to their environment and cultural values. To date, the palm oil industry has added nothing of positive value to their lives. Considering that Western science knows little about the rainforest and that Indians have a deep intimate knowledge of the complex ecosystem, to destroy these forests and disrupt the lives of these people in order to plan a monoculture crop of palm oil trees is not only highly inappropriate but tragically foolish.

Article copyright Cultural Survival, Inc.

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Ecuador takes steps towards sustainable palm oil

https://www.un-redd.org › single-post › 2018/05/25 › A-step-towards-sust...

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Ecuador Takes Giant Step Towards Certified Sustainable ...

https://rspo.org › news-and-events › news › ecuador-takes-giant-step-towar...

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Palm Oil News - Ecuador - IndexMundi

https://www.indexmundi.com › commodities › news › palm-oil › ecuador

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https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:StBqjclpoE8J:https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/news/palm-oil/ecuador+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

From Big Oil to Palm Oil - Amazon Frontlines

https://www.amazonfrontlines.org › chronicles › from-big-oil-to-palm-oil

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https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sRGC16iP1cgJ:https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/from-big-oil-to-palm-oil/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sRGC16iP1cgJ:https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/from-big-oil-to-palm-oil/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sRGC16iP1cgJ:https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/from-big-oil-to-palm-oil/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sRGC16iP1cgJ:https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/from-big-oil-to-palm-oil/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sRGC16iP1cgJ:https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/from-big-oil-to-palm-oil/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sRGC16iP1cgJ:https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/from-big-oil-to-palm-oil/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us:{For decades, the :{Ecuadorian:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Amazon has been the epicenter of one of the most polluting :{oil:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: operations of all times. The :{oil:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: boom initiated by Texaco in the ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sRGC16iP1cgJ:https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/from-big-oil-to-palm-oil/+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

The Chain: Ecuador's Palm Oil Exports May Expose ...

https://chainreactionresearch.com › the-chain-international-firms-exposed-t...

:{:(style="text-align:left;border-color:rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:1. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WLtDgLUiTpcJ:https://chainreactionresearch.com/the-chain-international-firms-exposed-to-ecuadors-palm-oil-related-deforestation-risks/+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WLtDgLUiTpcJ:https://chainreactionresearch.com/the-chain-international-firms-exposed-to-ecuadors-palm-oil-related-deforestation-risks/+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WLtDgLUiTpcJ:https://chainreactionresearch.com/the-chain-international-firms-exposed-to-ecuadors-palm-oil-related-deforestation-risks/+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WLtDgLUiTpcJ:https://chainreactionresearch.com/the-chain-international-firms-exposed-to-ecuadors-palm-oil-related-deforestation-risks/+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WLtDgLUiTpcJ:https://chainreactionresearch.com/the-chain-international-firms-exposed-to-ecuadors-palm-oil-related-deforestation-risks/+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WLtDgLUiTpcJ:https://chainreactionresearch.com/the-chain-international-firms-exposed-to-ecuadors-palm-oil-related-deforestation-risks/+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WLtDgLUiTpcJ:https://chainreactionresearch.com/the-chain-international-firms-exposed-to-ecuadors-palm-oil-related-deforestation-risks/+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us:{Aug 20, 2019 -The main drivers of deforestation in :{Ecuador:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: are similar to those in other countries in the region: The cattle industry; logging (both for fuel and ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

orangutan

ew 919

Palm Oil Is in Everything, and It’s Hurting More Than the Orangutans

US Customs has a legal obligation to block imports linked to forced labor.So today, alongside our partners International Labor Rights Forum and Rainforest Action Network,we've launched a demand that US Customs seize conflict palm oil from Procter & Gamble’s business partner, ‘FGV’, at US ports!

Fuel to the Fire How a U.S. law intended to reduce dependence on fossil fuels has unleashed an environmental disaster in Indonesia. by Abrahm Lustgarten View Story
Photos: An Indonesian Village That’s Fighting for Its Life In Bea Nehas, the small plots that homes are built on are in constant jeopardy of being burned to the ground and bulldozed. A sprawling plantation that surrounds the village produces huge volumes of palm oil. by Ashley Gilbertsonspecial to ProPublica View Story

Fuel to the Fire

How a U.S. law intended to reduce dependence on fossil fuels has unleashed an environmental disaster in Indonesia.

by Abrahm Lustgarten

View Story

Photos: An Indonesian Village That’s Fighting for Its Life

In Bea Nehas, the small plots that homes are built on are in constant jeopardy of being burned to the ground and bulldozed. A sprawling plantation that surrounds the village produces huge volumes of palm oil.

by Ashley Gilbertsonspecial to ProPublica

View Story

Palm Oil Sourcing Should Be Disclosed to Consumers, Sustainability Study Recommends

By Alex Kirby

Companies selling products which contain palm oil need to be upfront about where it comes from, so as to relieve consumers of the burden of making sustainable choices, a UK study says.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge say companies should not rely simply on purchasers' own awareness of the need to make environmentally responsible decisions, but should publicly disclose the identities of their palm oil suppliers.

Keep reading...

honduras, backed by world bank?

Norwegian parliament voted this week to make Norway the world's first country to bar its biofuel industry from importing deforestation-linked palm oil starting in 2020, The Independent reported.

Environmentalists celebrated the move as a victory for rainforests, the climate and endangered species such as orangutans that have lost their habitats due to palm oil production in Indonesia and Malaysia. It also sets a major precedent for other nations. ... The new report highlights a range of policies that can help keep emissions in check.

...

palm oil

https://www.ecowatch.com/who-trans-fat-2568793389.html

we’ve just released a report that ties the snack food giant to massive-scale deforestation in Indonesia.

PepsiCo has knowingly persisted in conducting business with the Salim Group,a company tied to reckless palm oil producers responsible for the destruction of nearly 10,000 hectares of Borneo’s pristine peat forests––an area bigger than Manhattan!

Meanwhile, PepsiCo kept on promising that it’s working towards a truly sustainable palm oil policy, making commitments to human rights and zero deforestation. But this new report leaves no doubt: this whole time,PepsiCo’s palm oil promises have been nothing but smoke and mirrors.

As PepsiCo rolls out its “Pepsi Generation” campaign to celebrate 120 years of doing business, we need your help to put an end to generations of deforestation at the hands of PepsiCo’s irresponsible palm oil sourcing and partnerships.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-pepsico-mcdonalds-nestle-unilever-kelloggs-mars-and-procter-gamble-are-pushing

Leuser Ecosystem on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia thrums with life. It is an ancient, 6.5 million acres of lush rainforest and steamy peat swamps, and because of its rich biodiversity, is one of the most important rainforests still standing today.

Its clear rivers provide drinking water for millions of people and its lowland and mountainous rainforests are literally the last place on earth where Sumatran elephants, orangutans, tigers, rhinos and sunbears still coexist in the wild. Globally, we all depend on it for the climate regulating effects such a large carbon-sink can have.

And yet, the Leuser Ecosystem is being actively destroyed for palm oil and other industries.

One of Sumatra’s remaining and critically endangered baby elephants peers out from behind its mother’s trunk in the Leuser Ecosystem. (image: Paul Hilton/RAN)

A new field investigation released by Rainforest Action Network exposes how one company is pumping conflict palm oil—palm oil connected to the clearance of tropical rainforests and the destruction of carbon-rich peatlands—into the global marketplace. The conflict palm oil coming out of the Leuser Ecosystem is shipped to the major brands whose products line store shelves the world over.

Palm oil has quickly become the most widely used vegetable oil in the world. It can be found in every room of the house, in products ranging from potato chips to laundry detergent, ice cream to cosmetics, and cookies to cooking oil. The boom in palm oil has been driven, in part, by a demand in Western countries for shelf-stable vegetable oils, used to replace the hydrogenated oils now despised for their transfats.

However, the palm oil industry is rife with issues, and conflict palm oil still dominates the market. Child labor, human trafficking, land grabbing, rainforest deforestation, endangered species habitat destruction and massive forest fires are all connected to the production of conflict palm oil....

http://www.alternet.org/environment/cables-reveal-us-govt-role-herakles-farms-land-grab-cameroon

Cables obtained by the non-profit Oakland Institute through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that U.S. government officials pushed the Central African nation of Cameroon to approve a deeply controversial oil palm development owned by Herakles Farms despite full knowledge of the project’s negative impacts on the environment and local communities.

Sithe Global Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SG-SOC), a subsidiary of U.S. agribusiness firm Herakles Farms, signed a convention with a Cameroonian government minister in 2009 to develop a large-scale palm oil plantation that included a 99-year lease for 73,086 hectares (about 180,600 acres) of land in the Ndian and Kupe-Manenguba Divisions in southwest Cameroon. The development was contentious from the start, as the convention was likely illegal, given that land in excess of 50 hectares can only be granted by presidential decree under Cameroonian law.

Nonetheless, the company began clearing forest and developing nurseries in 2010, converting pristine tropical rainforest into monoculture oil palm plantations despite massive local opposition, according to a report released today by the Oakland Institute. The area where SG-SOC began operating is considered a biodiversity hotspot, and its operations allegedly put the livelihoods of 45,000 people at risk.

Herakles Farms ignored local court orders to cease these operations, “one of which specifically ordered the company to cease work until a proper environmental impact assessment was conducted, compensation was made to those directly affected by the project, and a Memorandum of Understanding was negotiated with local indigenous peoples,” the report states.

Then, four years later, SG-SOC got the decree it needed. President Paul Biya signed three decrees in November 2013 green-lighting the project, though it had been scaled back significantly, from a 99-year lease to a three-year probationary lease for just 19,843 hectares.

“It was shocking that President Biya signed the decrees despite the mountain of evidence exposing the vast social, economic, and environmental consequences of the project,” Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director at the Oakland Institute, said in a statement. “We now know that behind the scenes, US government officials were applying serious pressure to the Cameroonian government to grant Herakles Farms the land.”

...

Leonardo DiCaprio Faces Deportation Threat After Criticizing Indonesia’s Palm Oil Industry

Leonardo DiCaprio has been threatened with deportation by officials from the Indonesian government after...

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/14/palm-oil-scorecard/

...

ince the release of the scorecard, we’ve heard from a few of the

companies, evidence of the impact of our research. For example, Johnson & Johnson

has posted a blog—their first public communication since adopting their

policy in May 2014—saying that finding out who their suppliers is like a game of telephone.

But we know this is not a child’s game and we will keep on these

companies until they step up their efforts to source responsible palm

oil.

TAKE ACTION:

Tell brands like Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo and Colgate-Palmolive

to take urgent action to stop forest destruction for palm oil.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/big-win-rainforest-activists-against-pepsi

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has divested from a major

snack food company due to its failure to implement ethical palm oil

policies. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), which is

valued at around $880 billion, divested from First Pacific Group Ltd

(HK: 0142), the parent company of Indonesia-based Indofood, which has

controlling interests in one of the biggest plantation companies in

Indonesia tied to conflict palm oil.

Conflict palm oil is

connected to human rights abuses, forced and child labor, loss of local

sustainable food and farming practices, species extinction, habitat

destruction, forest and peatland destruction and climate pollution. The

move sends a powerful message across the globe, not just to companies

that are sourcing conflict palm oil, but to fund managers and other

investors concerned about the risks associated with investing in such

unethical and irresponsible companies.

A globally traded agricultural commodity, palm oil is ubiquitous in

the marketplace: It can be found in about half of all consumer goods,

from packaged foods like pizza dough and instant noodles to cooking oil,

biofuels and personal care products like shampoo, soap and even

lipstick.

Rainforest

Action Network, an environmental group that has been campaigning for an

ethical global palm oil market, has identified 20 major food companies

that have failed to adopt sustainable and ethical policies in regard to

sourcing palm oil: Toyo Suisan Kaisha, Kraft Foods Group, Nissin Foods,

Hillshire Brands Company, Grupo Bimbo, :{H.J. Heinz Company, Campbell Soup

Company, Hormel, Unilever and PepsiCo. The group asserts that the}:

so-called Snack Food 20 laggards “are almost certainly using conflict

palm oil.”

As the Indonesian joint partner of snack food giant

PepsiCo, Indofood produces Pepsi-branded snack foods that are sold

across Indonesia. The risks in Indofood's global operations were exposed

by an investigative report

released by RAN and Rainforest Foundation Norway in September 2015 that

documents the company's role in social conflicts and the destruction of

the nation’s rainforests.

According to the report:

In

2013 and 2014, Indofood cleared 1,000 hectares of previously untouched

tropical rainforest in East Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. The

forest cleared was previously protected as part of a lowland swamp

forest known as the Metau forest. The Metau forest is located in one of

the largest wetlands in Kalimantan and is a critical breeding and

nesting habitat for endangered birds, including the Lesser Adjutant, a

large-winged bird in the stork family which is listed as vulnerable on

the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The

Metau forest is a forest that has been used by local Dayak communities

for generations. The Muara Ohong village is home to 800 people and is

now seriously affected by Indofood’s palm oil plantation operations. For

the past two years, the villagers have been unable to drink from their

water source, and the fish in community fish ponds have died due to

run-off pollution linked to the plantations. Increased incidence of

floods, droughts and extreme water levels in nearby Lake Jempang have

impacted the villagers ability to grow crops, and villagers, left with

no other option, are leaving their homes. Indofood has continued to

develop the Metau swampland for palm oil plantations, despite efforts by

the Governor of East Kalimantan to protect the region as a water

conservation area.

Indonesia is the world's eight biggest

greenhouse gas polluter. One of the sources of this pollution is

deforestation, driven in large part by the nation’s palm oil industry.

In addition to its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions,

deforestation in Indonesia has put some 20 million of the nation's

indigenous and forest-dependent people at risk. It has also led to the

widespread habitat destruction of many species, including critically

endangered orangutans, Sumatran tigers and elephants.

RAN

is calling on all global investors in First Pacific Group or in its

majority held companies — Indofood CBP Sukses Makmur, Indofood Sukses

Makmur, Indofood Agri Resources Ltd. — as well as investors in Indofood

snack food joint-partner PepsiCo, to demand commitments from each

company to make verifiable changes to their current unsustainable

policies and practices connected with the production and use of conflict

palm oil.

While the move to divest by Norway’s Government Pension

Fund Global is a major step, it only impacts one of the many companies

involved in destructive and unethical palm oil production.

“We

need to convince each of these [Snack Food 20] laggards to adopt a

time-bound and truly responsible global palm oil procurement policy,

which requires fully traceable, legally produced palm oil, and

eliminates sourcing from companies which are destroying rainforests or

carbon-rich peatlands, stealing community lands or violating human and

workers’ rights,” RAN said in a petition statement.