Oil palm and human rights report14 February 2008
A new report from Friends of the Earth, LifeMosaic and Sawit Watch provides a shocking insight into the human rights impacts of oil palm plantations.
Losing Ground:The human rights impacts of oil palm plantation expansion in Indonesia documents how forest communities in Indonesia are being conned into giving up their land to oil palm plantation, often at horrific costs.
Lipstick to fuel tanks - the thirst for palm oil
Oil palm is grown for palm oil - a vegetable oil already used in 1 in 10 supermarket products.
Demand is rising as countries want to use palm oil as a biofuel to replace fossil fuel-derived petrol and diesel.
Burning forests and draining peat bogs for oil palm plantations releases hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, making Indonesia the third highest contributor of CO2 emissions in the world.
(PT Pelangi Energi Abadi Citra Enviro (PEACE))
(PT Pelangi Energi Abadi Citra Enviro (PEACE))
People and planet
The environmental costs of oil palm plantations are well known, but it's not just Indonesia's forests that are under threat.
An estimated 60-90 million people in Indonesia depend on the forests for their livelihoods, but many are losing their land to the expanding palm oil industry.
Promised Land report
A heavy price
Oil palm plantations transform diverse forests into monoculture, and evidence suggests that communities are paying a heavy price too:
- Conflict and loss of culture
Forced off land, ancestral graves destroyed, traditions, language and rituals lost forever. - Financial hardship
Poor wages and debt combine with the loss of goods and services the forest used to provide. - Water
Floods, droughts and pollution.
Losing Ground reveals growing evidence of human rights violations associated with the Indonesian oil palm industry.
Drawing on interviews with individuals on the ground, new Sawit Watch data, and previous research, Losing Ground provides an insight into the many impacts of oil palm plantations.
© Tom Picken/Friends of the Earth
