So much palm oil news today, so little to really get all happy about . . .

(c. RAN)

For those of you who follow this blog you know that there isn’t much JMD or I can hear these days about palm oil turning over a new leaf (or frond) that we actually believe to be true.

From the massive deforestation and disregard for land tenure and indigenous rights to the “regulations” regarding “sustainable palm oil” that were crafted by the palm oil companies themselves to the absolute absence of any field-based monitoring of labor conditions and environmental pollution, Big Palm has lumbered along, expanding into the rainforest, destroying pretty much anything in its path, paying fines, bribing officials, and weathering accusations with million-dollar campaigns designed to convince the public that palm oil is healthy, necessary, good for the planet, a wonderful substitute for fossil fuels, and an all-round warm and fuzzy ingredient.

So it is with a fair amount of skepticism and a teeny bit of hope that we hear, simultaneously, of Musim Mas, a large Indonesian palm oil trader who has made the commodities market equivalent of a Kim Kardashian publicity photo by announcing that it will take the Indonesian “Palm Oil Pledge,” which commits the company “to only source palm oil that is free from links to deforestation and peatland destruction.” http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/musim-mas-goes-green-new-palm-oil-pledge/

The IPOP is a relatively new gimmick (please forgive me, you sincere environmentalists out there who think that this is going to work, because I hope it does) that aims to force palm oil producers to adhere to zero-deforestation standards and fair labor practices by promising to purchase only palm oil grown by complying companies.  Greenpeace, who I think is behind this, notes, that “The next step for IPOP signatories like Musim Mas is to take necessary measures to put their ambitious commitments into practice. These companies need to ensure there is no link to forest clearance and peatlands in their supply chains and work closely with suppliers to comply with their commitments.”

Well, that’s where the train of my enthusiasm careens off the rails into the desert of reality. What I mean by this is perhaps best illustrated by a new initiative from those investigative pit bulls over at Mongabay, who have announced a year-long Palm Oil Reporting Project, http://mongabay.org/programs/special-reporting-initiatives/sri-opportunities/mongabay-reporting-network-palm oil/?utm_source=MRN%3A+Indonesian+Fisheries&utm_campaign=MRN+Indo+Fisheries&utm_medium=email

They are asking journalists and NGOs to pitch stories to them from the field on a variety of topics. Including finance and economics, activism, food security, communities and labor, palm oil biofuels, politics, ecosystem services, etc.  They provide over 100 questions that a journalist could tackle.  Here are just a few:

• What is the effectiveness of palm oil campaigns in consumer markets (e.g. is the claim that Norwegians’ palm oil consumption has plunged due to campaigns true? If so, how did that come about?)

• How are plantation developers approaching communities whose land they seek?
• How is implementation of the Indonesian Constitutional Court’s 2013 decision on indigenous land rights progressing with respect to land conflicts involving oil palm plantations?
• Has there been any progress reducing violent responses from police and security forces on behalf of the palm oil industry when a land dispute with a community escalates?
• Is respect for labor rights improving?

• What are the politics behind Indonesia’s proposal to divert part of its diesel subsidy savings to its palm oil biofuel subsidy?

• What is the status of Indonesia’s One Map initiative and its implications for the palm oil industry? What are the prospects of disclosing boundaries and ownership of all concessions?
• Are any companies experiencing resistance from government figures who would rather they clear valuable forest than conserve it? How are these situations playing out?

• How are the realities of oil palm expansion measuring up to rhetoric in frontiers like Africa, Latin America and Papua New Guinea?

• How might ongoing modifications to Indonesia’s banking secrecy laws affect the palm oil industry?
• Is the broader moratorium established by Indonesian President Jokowi being enforced and respected? Have there been prosecutions? What is the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) doing?
• How is Indonesia addressing illegal logging and non-licensed clearing for timber as it pertains to palm oil companies? Is there a meaningful link to the Timber Legality Verification System (SVLK)?

• How are best practices for determining Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) evolving and proliferating?

Good questions, but most point to what I think is a simple flaw in the exercise: there are few if any individuals, groups or government/regulatory agencies who have ever been to, much less lived in, the heart of the plantations, or who plan on doing so any time soon. No independent monitoring group has ever produced a verifiable report on labor conditions.  Many public relations dollars have been spent on creating sincere-sounding “standards” and guidelines for thee companies, while on the ground female laborers are regularly raped, land is stolen and boundaries changed, hired thugs patrol borders, erosion is rampant, protected forest is labeled “production” for those moments it takes a payment to be made . . .

So yay that there are going to be more inquiries into the minutiae of the vast and confusing web that is the palm oil value chain. But the only way Big Palm is going to be cut down to a manageable and sustainable size is if the Indonesian government makes some very hard decisions regarding how it wants to legitimately increase its economic strength, and how it plans to limit the continuing profits of the most powerful and wealthy people in the country--and the world.

So, Mongabay and Palm Oil Pledge, best of luck to both of you!!!

Too Big to Fail

Last week I was invited to Aceh, along with several other colleagues with whom I worked in 2005 in the early days of reconstruction, to a commemorative celebration honoring the 10 year anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. I am not the only one who is too disgusted to go.
 

I know what I will hear.  I know I will be expected to smile, and thank the current Governor for inviting me, and look down demurely when he praises the work the NGOs did to bring the province back from the brink of disaster and make it the vibrant, positive, humane and safe place it is today. . . I am not going because if I have to hear that drivel I fear I will vomit.  My colleagues agree; most are declining the invitation.  It is, so sadly, all a farce.

Shortly after this invitation I received an email from our Australian colleague Michael Bachelard, who met and traveled with JMD this past April when covering the legislative elections.  I’d first gotten in touch with him because of all the international journalists reporting on the ravages and dire global consequences of palm oil’s destruction of the Aceh rainforest, he was by far the most eloquent, thorough, and passionate.  His beat isn’t just palm oil, however, and the Sydney Morning Herald has pulled him in many directions this past year.

I knew he was returning to Aceh this month to do a story on the 10-year anniversary of the tsunami, which happened on Boxing Day (December 26) 2004.  If you’ve been reading this blog you know that I’ve been urging any and all media outlets to take an honest look at Aceh and examine whether, 10 years later, the province is truly “better” than it was before the tsunami, in terms of quality of life, equal access, and economic prosperity for more than just the wealthy and the multi-national corporations.

Michael’s email included an apology for not being able to spend any time in his articles discussing palm oil, or how cocoa was “relevant,” although he was astute enough to cover topics such as “empty housing and personal stories of the wave, misgovernance, sharia law, environmental doom and electoral misbehavior.”

I think that Michael’s email was the final missile in a depressing barrage I’d been receiving all week that has me convinced, sadly, that the entitles responsible for the most horrific things on the planet these days, are, in the final analysis, to big to fail.

Take four seemingly separate events:

There is new focus on the continuing horror story of jade mining in Myanmar and how corporate interests trump the rights of marginalized groups.  I read this (and blogged about it a few days ago) and was struck by the sheer enormity of the problem—not the HIV/AIDS epidemic that will soon spread all over the country, but the seemingly insurmountable issue that is the profitability of the Jade market in China.

Freeport, the world’s largest copper mine in Paupua, Indonesia, is “sponsoring” an exhibit of sculpture and jewelry by the Kamoro, a tribe the company basically wiped out in what is seen as one of the world' worst examples of environmental destruction and genocide.  But a significant number of southeast Asia’s wealthy elites are attending the show, to ooh and ahh over the “exquisitely made” handcrafted pieces available. Those little brown people.  So clever.  Much is made over the “champion” of the Komoro, Mr Kal Muller, a transplant who’s acted not necessarily as humanitarian advocate but as PR marketing firm for those Komoro who are still living.  He’s an employee of Freeport (A US firm), after all.  I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and imagine him as painfully torn between the irreversible damage his company has done to this group’s culture and homeland, and his need to keep his job so that he can at least squeeze a couple of bucks (and permission) from this lumbering behemoth of a company in order to preserve what little space they have left in this now-wasteland.

Searching the database of donors, including USAID, who are  funding large projects in and around Aceh, I notice that international subcontractors are being awarded mega-sums to establish either “sustainable palm oil practices” or assist with “palm oil biofuel projects.” Nowhere is it ever mentioned that any significant funding is to be spent to reduce or control palm oil plantation expansion, or to seriously look at ways to limit the environmental catastrophes that are being caused due to plantations’ current methods of operation.  This would make sense, considering President Jokowi’s interpretation of his own energy policy to mean “capitalize on every natural resource we have and increase production.” (Interestingly, he hasn’t yet noticed the disparity between his “let’s stop deforestation, save the peat bogs, and control palm oil in Aceh” rhetoric and his “economic expansion at any cost” battle cry.  Or else he doesn’t care.)

A recent Bloomberg report on “palm oil futures” criticizing the new Indonesian regulations for mixing palm biodiesel with other fuels wept that this would severely hurt the price of palm oil.

Indonesia plans to increase biodiesel blending to 20 percent in 2016, requiring more than 8 million tons of palm oil, according to the Energy Ministry. . . .  The government is committed to expanding palm biodiesel, Hari Priyono, secretary general at Agriculture Ministry, told reporters yesterday. . . . "If Indonesia ignores its (biodiesel) mandate completely, the palm oil industry will face a crisis in the last half of 2015," Mistry said. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-28/indonesia-s-toothless-mandate-for-biofuel-seen-hurting-palm.html

Most of the articles I read regarding palm oil are, in fact, from the commodities side.  Palm oil is so huge, so important in the international market with respect to making people money, that it is no longer pertinent to even allude to its horrific effects. That just isn’t important to anyone except the “activists.”  And what do they know anyway?  Buncha spoiled little punks.

But all these things: the invitation, the jade mining, the Komoro, Big Palm . . . they got me thinking . . . about what good people do when their backs are against a wall. How do concerned and committed individuals and groups respond to entities that are “too big to fail?”

What would the Komoro do if Kal Muller did not convince Freeport to be interested in their culture and sponsor at least a tiny way for what’s left of them to make money? If we are realists we will see that Freeport is not going away and the Komoro are not coming back.  So is it bad to try and provide some type of compensation to those remaining even if it is “blood money?”

If the world’s large donors are staffed by people who truly understand that carbon emissions and deforestation are vitally important, then they have to develop plans that can address this in pragmatic ways—and that means catering to the interests of the extraordinarily immoral entities that got us into this mess in the first place.  When fighting a war for your freedom, said Marx, use the tools of the oppressor. They will eventually wear him down.

I’m not so sure.

So once there is a mess (Freeport, palm oil, HIV jade) what is the best thing to do about it?  “Go away” is not working.  Can we make it smaller?  Maybe, but how much smaller is smaller enough?  Should we just be addressing the fallout?  Like in the Kachin state, what is needed is a methadone program and street outreach for IV drug users to learn how to clean their needles.  But in a way, that just reinforces the strength of the jade industry that sucked them into this vortex in the first place.

All over the world, what we are doing to the enormous creatures that have harmed us, altered our food, poisoned our water, screwed around with our oxygen, eliminated animal species, and displaced people with no voice, what we are doing is helping them survive.  Because they have created a different physical, social and economic reality from the one we knew before they came, and now much of our survival depends on theirs.  So we become complicit, and talk about “sustainable” palm oil and “area-sensitive expansion” and fair labor standards and artisanal marketing and eco-tourism.  And we sugar-coat the mismanagement of billions of dollars that could have been the salvation of a province but instead plunged it further into poverty and pseudo-religious extremism.

I know it’s a reality but I still want to vomit.  Good thing I won’t be going to Aceh.

Palm Oil Giants and the Snack Food 20 appear to be crumbling under pressure . . . but is it just (diesel) smoke and mirrors?

November saw what appears to be amazing news: multinational corporations that supply and use palm oil are publically announcing new and stringent de-forestation and fair labor policies for their companies and individual plantations.  But this weary erstwhile Aceh forest-dweller wonders: will this really translate into Indonesian and Aceh-based support and implementation of these lofty pronouncements?

Some fabulous eco-warrior-type sites and blogs began reporting this month that as a result of concentrated pressure by campaigns led by Rainforest Action Network, Friends of the Earth, Forest Heroes, and a host of other NGOs who mobilized a groundswell of grassroots support, “the number of multinational companies that say they are committed to supplying and using only deforestation-free palm oil is growing fast. More than 20 global food companies have now made no-deforestation pledges and the big traders Wilmar International and Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) have both made commitments that are far stronger than the standards established by the much-maligned Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).” [which is about time--have I not been saying for years that RSPO is a circuitous crock?]

https://time2transcend.wordpress.com/tag/rhino/

Heavy machinery makes new terraces for oil palm trees in freshly cleared forest inside the Leuser Ecosystem. Local activists say this clearing is illegal. Photo: Michael Bachelard.  See Michel’s video of  Aceh rainforest destruction at http://www.smh.com.au/world/acehs-leuser-ecosystem-pays-a-high-price-for-the-peace-dividend-20140502-zr1qh.html

 

“What a difference a season makes!” commented Forest Heroes, reporting that IOI Loders Croklaan, the world’s largest palm oil trader and recently labeled  “The Worst Company You’ve Never Heard Of” by FH, established a palm oil policy this month requiring zero-deforestation sourcing requirements. http://www.forestheroes.org/

However, like me, the gang at Forest Heroes is not so easily charmed by well-paid rhetoric. “This can’t just be a policy on paper,” said FH Director Deborah Lapidus. “Given IOI’s record, they need to move rapidly to make their supply chain transparent, address serious human rights issues, and secure participation from a credible implementation partner. While we welcome IOI’s commitment to apply the new policy to IOI Group, third party suppliers and subsidiaries, we urge IOI Group to formally adopt the zero-deforestation policy right away.”

Most of the companies leaping onto the we-promise-to-be-good-honest-we-do bandwagon have stated compliance dates for some of their holdings/farms/subsidiaries by the end of 2015. “Wilmar has committed to no development of High Carbon Stock (HCS) forests or High Conservation Value (HCV) areas, no burning, a progressive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions on existing plantations, and no development on peat, regardless of depth.  Its commitment also includes zero tolerance of child, forced and bonded labour and no exploitation of local communities. This includes respecting the rights of indigenous and local communities to give or withhold their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) to operations on lands to which they hold legal, communal or customary rights.”

“A significant initiative was taken in New York in September. Wilmar, Cargill, GAR, and Asian Agri signed the Indonesia Palm Oil Pledge, [see The Forest Trust at http://www.tft-forests.org/news/item/?n=19862] an agreement that includes a commitment to greener palm oil development policies, more social benefits for workers, and further cooperation in establishing a mechanism to implement pledges. The signatories have also called on the Indonesian government to do more to protect forests.”  [I’ll just bet they have.]

In all of these cases, there’s language there that to my mind still keeps the door open for expansion.  And as far as monitoring all of this . . . well that has always been the issue and I cannot find any information on any of these announcements how accurate monitoring (and maintaining) of these policies is to be conducted.

Call me an old pessimist, but . . . no, just go ahead and call me one.  JMD lives right next to these plantations.  I’ll ask the gang how many armed plantation protectors disappear within the next few months—the disgruntled and jobless ex-combatants who are now paid to make sure no one gets too far in to hear the chainsaws or see the women being assaulted. I’ll bet I know the answer.

However, this may (and I stress “may”) signal a tiny new trend.  Palm oil is too lucrative for the very powerful few to go away any time soon.  The Wilmars and Cargills and Dunkin Donuts of the world can (and might) forgo a little profit in order to regain the goodwill of the pastry-eating public.  But the Indonesian government, the Aceh provincial authority, and the local billionaires who cold give a rat’s ass about their own natural resources? Getting transparent, fair and equitable policies and implementation out of them will be damn near impossible, I am sorry to say.

I wish I were wrong.  But I bet we will not see any time soon a headline that reads

“Provincial and National governments abandon plan to re-zone Aceh’s protected forests for commercial use; instead designate all remaining peat and forestland as protected and/or World Heritage Sites”

Go ahead, Forest Heroes, Rainforest Alliance, and all the lobbyists at Wilmar, Cargill and IOI—prove me wrong!!!

Global Exchange’s 2014 Most Wanted List Names HSBC Bank as #8 . . . and so well deserved!!!

CEO: Stuart Gulliver
Chairman: Douglas Flint

[both of whom I would dearly love to meet in a quiet, dark corner of the Aceh rainforest]

USA Headquarters:
452 5th Ave
New York, NY 10018
Phone: (212) 525-5000

Abuses: money laundering; financing conflict palm oil producers; destruction of land

HSBC is a leading global bank primarily involved in investment banking, originating from the United Kingdom and operating in over 85 countries. HSBC finances the production of palm oil as a financial backer and shareholder in companies like Sime Darby and Wilmar International.  [You remember Wilmar, the largest Palm oil company in Indonesia.] 

HSBC’s financial activity allows for land grabs and human rights violations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Liberia, and Uganda; in result these countries are facing severe land and environmental degradation including deforestation.

Production of conflict palm oil (an edible vegetable oil extracted from the pulp of palm fruit) is a world crisis causing extensive human rights violations and environmental degradation. HSBC’s financial assistance to palm oil producers like Wilmar is contributing to destruction of high conservation value land areas in Malaysia and Indonesia without approval of the local communities. People are being deprived of food and livelihood as they are forcibly evicted from the land where they have lived and worked for years.

HSBC is a signatory of the UN Global Compact, in which the bank agreed to principles surrounding human rights and environmental responsibility, yet it continues to violate human rights and degrade the environment. Additionally, HSBC has its own sustainability principles, but does not act on them, despite Willmar’s clear violations. Wilmar owns palm oil plantations and refineries in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Uganda. On Kalangala Island in Uganda, HSBC and Wilmar are responsible for the deforestation for 3,600 hectares, which has displaced farmers and families without compensation. Islanders are robbed of food, medicine, and livelihood. HSBC does not only loan money to Wilmar, but also has shares in the company.

Additionally, in 2012 HSBC was charged with cases of money laundering. In 2002 HSBC bought the Mexican bank Banco Internacional, S.A.; a review conducted before this purchase showed the bank did not have a functioning compliance program, but HSBC did not take preemptive action and tighten its anti-money laundering policies. According to the U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’
2012 Report, HSBC is guilty of “a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing.” Over the past decades, HSBC has funneled billions of dollars to drug lords, rogue nations, and even Saudi banks that are linked to terrorism. The Senate report says that HSBC had significant financial connections with Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank, and evidence indicates that the bank’s founder was “an early financial benefactor of al Qaeda.” Additionally, HSBC’s Mexican affiliate channeled $7 billion into the U.S. between 2007 and 2008 through money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, according to the Senate report.

Despite HSBC’s criminal behavior, the Senate deemed the bank “too big to prosecute.” The bank and the executives involved in the laundering decisions were granted immunity and still remain in leadership at the corporation. The only punishment for its crimes was a $1.9 billion fine, which is equal to about one month of HSBC’s profits. Although the corporation was fined for its criminal behavior, the executives were granted immunity from being individually prosecuted. With immunity granted to the executives, HSBC continues to prevail and put profits before people, even if it means engaging in criminal activity.

http://www.globalexchange.org/corporateHRviolators

Does anyone besides me think that there is something terribly, terribly wrong here?  "Too big to prosecute?"  Immunity?  Have we all gone mad???

The LEAST they can do, as far as Aceh goes, is to sever ties with Wilmar.  Is that too much to ask?