Life near the rainforest isn’t getting any easier this season

 Junaidi wrote me that Robert called the Camat’s office (the subdistrict administration) in Simpang Jernih got an update from one of the sub-district officers about the extensive (and unusual) flooding in Simpang Jernih and Pante Kera villages (Aceh Timur):

“Jalan menuju Kecamatan Simpang jernih semakin parah, masyarakat harus mencangkul badan jalan untuk  dapat di lewati oleh kenderaan roda 2 dan roda 4 ( Mobil)

The main road to SPJ is more worse now, communities started repairing the road by themselves to make motorbike or car would pass (Photos courtesy of Robert, who's stuck right along with everyone else):

Curah hujan yang sangat tinggi  di SPJ untuk bulan Januari ini

Rainfall level is getting higher in this January.

Debit Air sungai semakin  tinggi  dan arus yang sangat kencang

The water level in the river is getting higher again and it flow very strong.

Rakit penyeberangan antara Desa Batu sumbang dan Desa pante kera putus di bawa arus sungai,

The raft is broken and it wire rope broken (disconnected) because of strong water flow in the river.

Rakit penyeberangan antara Desa Batu sumbang dan Desa pante kera putus di bawa arus sungai,

Again, the cocoa farm that in Pante Kera village that located close to the river was sat by flood water.

Saat ini masyarakat desa Pantekera tidak dapat melakukan akses ke simpang jernih, untuk penghubung antara Desa pante kera dan Simpang jernih masyarakat harus menumpang boat.

Currently, people in Pante Kera village could not cross to SPJ and they have to take boat.”

This last means: in order to leave the village to get supplies or medical needs met, the river crossing is the only way out—and there is no boat because the cable has broken and the water is too high.

 The floods extend all the way down to the border of Aceh Tamiang.  That is supposed to be a road.

Will this community ever get a break??

Aceh Province: Where “Conflict Palm Oil” really IS a product of conflict

Last summer, Rainforest Action Network, a tireless campaigner against palm oil and its myriad evils, launched a “Power is in Your Palm” campaign that singled out the top 20 companies who use palm oil.  RAN coined the term “conflict palm oil,” which has caught on quite well this past year, since when I was doing some side research the phrase appeared everywhere. I knew what “conflict palm oil” is in Aceh—but were there that many other places in the world where a 30-year armed insurgency has in effect protected the rainforest that now a peace accord and government complicity will destroy?

 

Not quite.

 

According to our friends at Mongabay, who always seem to get the scoop ahead of me, these 20 food giants (The “Snack Food 20”) are “failing to ensure the palm oil they source does not drive deforestation or worsen social conflict.”  http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0912-conflict-palm-oil.html#fBCQHSvVivUA7CXr.02

And FINALLY, as we suspected and reported here at length, “While many of these companies have pledged to source only palm oil certified under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) — the leading eco-standard — by 2015, the report argues that the RSPO doesn't do enough to protect forests or ensure "conflict-free" palm oil.”  That’s being kind—RPSO does NOTHING--as its members and policy-makers are—guess who?  the companies themselves.

 Charred tree stumps against the smoldering background in an area of recently deforested peatland near Tanjung Baru village, Pangkalan Kerinci subdistrict in Pelalawan regency, Riau province, Indonesia. The village lies beside PT. Pusaka Megah Bumi Nusantara (PMBN) – a palm oil company belonging to the Asian Agri group, a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Mongabay reports that “neither RAN, nor Greenpeace, which just published a report called Certifying Destruction: Why consumer companies need to go beyond the RSPO to stop forest destruction, are calling for companies to abandon the RSPO, which offers stronger environmental safeguards than the proposed Malaysian standard. [I can’t believe that’s possible.]  The groups instead are asking companies to establish policies that go beyond RSPO standards. And they are trying to rally consumers to do the same.”  http://www.greenpeace.org/international/certifying-destruction/

"The RSPO wants its members to be industry leaders in sustainability, but its current standards leave them free to destroy forests and drain peatland," said Bustar Maitar, head of Greenpeace International’s Indonesia forest campaign, in a statement. "Year after year, Indonesia’s forest fires and haze wreak havoc on the region, and the palm oil sector is a main culprit." 

Okay, so for RAN, “conflict palm oil” puts a nice, nasty, negative connotation on the product, which brings it into the public imagination like all good branding campaigns do. The “conflict” in palm oil is that this ubiquitous substance is found in roughly half the packaged products sold in US grocery stores, including favorite snack foods like ice cream, cookies, crackers, chocolate products, cereals, doughnuts and potato chips. “In fact, palm oil is likely present in some form in nearly every room of your home. It is being used as a replacement for controversial trans fats. And now Palm Oil production is one of the world’s leading causes of rainforest destruction. The clearing of rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands for new plantations is releasing globally significant carbon pollution, making Palm Oil a major driver of human induced climate change.Palm oil production is also responsible for human rights violations as corporations often forcefully remove Indigenous Peoples and rural communities from their lands. Tragically, child labor and modern day slavery still occur on plantations in both Indonesia and Malaysia.”

http://www.ran.org/join_the_palm_oil_action_team_now 

The removal of palm from 99% of all products would not harm anyone’s health, or negatively alter the product.  

However, it is one of the world’s largest commodities and makes a small number of people wildly wealthy and extremely powerful politically.

So there’s your conflict.

Now move to Aceh province, where a 30-year war that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths also decimated the fertile area on the buffer of the rainforest where generations of cocoa farmers had lived and worked.  The 2004 tsunami, which brought about the peace accord in 2005, meant two things:

--local communities could once again pick up where they left off—with assistance and training—and reclaim their plantations-turned-battlefields . . .

--the lack of armed GAM insurgents and Indonesian military brought out the jackals.  This area, which had been too dangerous to exploit previously, was now fair game to outside investors with bulldozes and government payoffs, and the only conflict these guys had was how many locals had to be thrown off a cliff or shot before the corporations were left alone to rip out the forest.

Now, that’s what I think of when I think of a conflict.

But I won’t begrudge RAN their campaign—if it works, I’m all for it.

The Snack Food 20 — Your Cookie, Indonesia’s Misfortune

Together these companies gross more than $432 billion in annual revenue. RAN believes they have the financial and brand clout to chain how palm oil is obtained, erase human rights violations and stop deforestation in Indonesian and Malaysia — if their consumers demand it.

1. Campbell Soup Company
2. ConAgra Foods, Inc.
3. Dunkin’ Brands Group, Inc. (You know them as Dunkin Donuts)
4. General Mills, Inc.
5. Grupo Bimbo
6. Hillshire Brands Company
7. H.J. Heinz Company
8. Hormel Foods Corporation
9. Kellogg Company (think breakfast bars)
10. Kraft Food Group, Inc.
11. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Corp. (more donuts)
12. Mars Inc.
13. Mondelez International, Inc.
14. Nestlé S.A.
15. Nissin Foods Holdings Co., Ltd.
16. PepsiCo, Inc. (snack subsidiary, Frito-Lays)
17. The Hershey Company (this makes two child labor problems for them, given their cocao sourcing issues)
18. The J.M. Smucker Company
19. Toyo Suisan Kaisha, Ltd.
20. Unilever

So what’s a consumer to do? Read labels and if you see palm oil, skip buying the product. (It’s not that healthful anyway).

RAN would also like the public to send a message to these food companies to cut out the palm oil, and quit cutting down tropical forests.

Next: Global Exchange’s 2014 Most Wanted List Names HBSC as #8 . . . and so well deserved!!!

Avoided deforestation or avoiding the issue? The “geography of evasion”

I have to admit I took that title from the REDD Monitor’s January 14^th article regarding USAID’s forest carbon project in West Bali National Park in Indonesia. (REDD = reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation)

The whole thing caught my eye because since the March 2013 realization that new Governor Zaini Abdullah was planning on re-zoning protected forest to make it “productive” (ie, a palm oil pipeline) there haven’t been many recent articles on deforestation in Aceh.  Also because JMD has been trying to get USAID Jakarta’s attention since 2008 and with the exception of the radar blip of the Deputy Mission Director and “Strategy Implementation Advisor” being nice to me when I visited their offices to beg for funds in December 2012, JMD has received bupkus in terms of assistance, returned emails/phone calls, or even requests to keep us up to date on projects in the country.

Now, I don’t want to get USAID mad.  JMD needs their support.  But this latest brainstorm of theirs is just so shockingly naïve (or politically motivated with respect to extraction interests) that I am hard pressed to think they would even consider funding a project that actually addressed true and rampant deforestation, no matter how sweet we are to them.  Even the commenters were astounded. The highlighted text is mine. And a lot of the technical references have been cut—not to bolster my point because it doesn’t need it, but just so that you will read to the end, even with some of the jargon in there.  It is really important to know how these programs work, and the fact that they are in their infancy and yet billions are being thrown at them is something we all should be concerned about.  The REDD Monitor is.  That’s enough for me.

January 21, 2014

Last week, a small announcement appeared on the website of the US Embassy in Jakarta: “The United States government and the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry today launched a new rainforest standard for carbon credits in West Bali National Park.”

It’s an extraordinary project. In a country faced with very high rates of deforestation, this is a forest carbon trading project in a national park.

The project will be carried out by the University of Columbia, the University of Indonesia and the Sustainable Management Group with funding from USAID.

Jatna Supriatna, head of the University of Indonesia’s Research Center for Climate Change, told the Bali Daily that, “We have set a target that within the next one year or two, we will have discovered the appropriate and standardized mechanism to develop carbon credits using the RFS [Rainforest Standard] system.”

Supriatna explained that the aim was to sell carbon credits on the voluntary market. Part of the profits are to be used for conservation of the West Bali National Park.

. . .  Tedy Sutedi, head of the park, welcomed the initiative to designate the park as the pilot project for research, saying that it would support the park’s management plan to reduce deforestation rates. He said that based on continuous monitoring, no deforestation occurred in the park, however, there were some cases of ornamental fish and wood thefts by locals.

So the National Park already has a management plan aimed at reducing deforestation rates. And according to Sutedi, it’s very successful, as there is no deforestation in the Park.

. . .The project developers have to prove that the project is additional before carbon credits can be sold. They have to prove that deforestation would have continued or increased in the absence of the project. That’s going to be tricky under the rules of the “Rainforest Standard” that the US Embassy mentions in its press release.

 . . . In his comment for the Bali Daily, Zulkifli Hasan, Indonesia’s Foresty Minister, read from Columbia University’s website:  “The Rainforest Standard is based on the fundamental understanding that the environment, economy, and society are ‘in it together’.”

At the launch of the project, Andrew Sisson, USAID mission director in Indonesia, said that,

“Through this initiative, Indonesia is at the leading edge of preserving biodiversity and setting conservation standards. We believe that scientific collaboration between the US and Indonesia can help to address the challenge of global climate change.”

This claim is ludicrous, based as it is on a project that has yet to start and which is aimed at protecting forest in a National Park in Bali. The project will do nothing to address the drivers of deforestation in Indonesia and less to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel.

Robin Biddulph, a researcher at the Department of Human Geography at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, describes such projects as “Geographies of Evasion”. He explains the concept as “implementing interventions in places where they do not make a difference”.

Comments [I have edited these comments to only include the most basic language about the common sense (or lack thereof) of conducting a deforestation measurement project in a national park with little deforestation.  Both commenters are well-versed in the carbon-credit/biomass removal language, but it is pretty mind-bending so I eliminated it.]

Comment 1  We applaud the author’s concerns that any REDD or REDD-like project demonstrate real and verifiable reductions in carbon emissions. . . . .
Unfortunately, the author is incorrect in asserting that The RFS precludes government gazetted Protected Areas because they do not pass a three-level additionality test. The RFS explicitly states the following:
“ER1: The RFS™ endorses the strict Legal Additionality Test, but allows one exception under very limited circumstances: i.e. where there is a history of recent and repeated Tree Biomass removals inside a Protected Area.
Limiting evidence of removals to those that have occurred inside a Protected Area eliminates consideration of threats from external Drivers of Deforestation such as highway construction or expanding farming and ranching activity. In the view of The RFS™, outside threats should not be considered because the law has already recognized those threats when prohibiting removals inside the Protected Area. In other words, external threats to a Protected Area cannot trigger a finding of Additionality; instead there must be evidence that the Protected Area is experiencing recent and repeated Tree Biomass removals despite its legal protection, i.e., there is clear evidence of ineffective enforcement in the Protected Area. The RFS™ recognizes that there may also be examples of ineffective enforcement of laws against removing Tree Biomass outside of Protected Areas; however, the extent to which any Project Proponent is complicit or compliant with respect to illegal removals is presently deemed too difficult to determine. The RFS™ makes the presumption that the Governmental Authority managing a Protected Area would not be so complicit or compliant. Therefore, The RFS™ retains strict legal Additionality for all Project Areas other than Protected Areas[1].
[1] Reduced Removals in Protected Areas will be able to earn a special form of RFS Credit™ to be known as RFS Protected Area Credits™. Important features of RFS Protected Area Credits™ include: (a) proceeds from their sale must be used solely for the social, environmental, and economic well-being of the Protected Area and its Rightsholders; (b) the credits cannot be resold or transferred by the initial purchaser, and therefore will not be subject to market price fluctuations or speculation; and (c) credit purchase agreements will be long-term and performance-based. RFS Protected Area Credits™ will be used to financially support management of Protected Areas to reduce their deforestation and degradation consistent with the integrated social, environmental, and economic well-being practices required by The Rainforest Standard. . . .  Based on on-the-ground experience of this group of nearly 70 practitioners [who created the Rainforest Standards], a conservative method was developed to include Protected Areas. Why? Because in all but a very few countries, Protected Areas are not protected. The principal reason for the lack of protection is a lack of funding to underwrite a Best Practices Management Plan that includes all stakeholders in the protection of the Protected Area.

Comment 2 [to previous commenter]:.1. Deforestation in West Bali National Park is low compared to many other areas of Indonesia (whether or not they are inside national parks).
2. Determining how much carbon is saved from entering the atmosphere as a result of a REDD project is fiendishly complicated. It’s difficult to measure the carbon accurately and it’s even more difficult to guess what would have happened in the absence of the project. Having said that, it’s even more difficult to stop deforestation in areas of current rapid deforestation such as Sumatra or Kalimantan or where the threat of deforestation is high .  . . . If the aim is to reduce deforestation in Indonesia, why is stopping deforestation in the West Bali National Park a priority?
3. If the aim is to stop deforestation in national parks in Indonesia, why start in a national park with very little deforestation?
4. How much money has the University of Columbia received from USAID for the Rainforest Standard project in total? 

http://www.redd-monitor.org/2014/01/21/avoided-deforestation-or-avoiding-the-issue-usaids-forest-carbon-project-in-west-bali-national-park-in-indonesia/#more-14782

Happy 10th Anniversary to us . . .

December 2014 marks the 10th anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami that caused incredible destruction in Southeast Asia and killed over 160,000 in Aceh province alone.  The earthquake in Aceh Jaya was the epicenter of the disaster, and it's there that JMD started its work.  I'm hoping that journalists from all over the globe will be providing continuous coverage all year.  I've been making a list of media outlets who interviewed me during the worst of it and again five years later, and I'll share them here in a few days--I'm planning on contacting them to see if they want to do another follow-up.  I think that the changes Aceh has gone through in 10 years, and the effects of the reconstruction funds  on local infrastructure, government agencies, poverty, and the environment will surprise everyone, and not in a good way.

I'd like to start the anniversary ball rolling by re-printing an article that appeared 2 weeks ago on Mongabay.org:

Indonesia police nab illegal wildlife traffickers in sting operation

Diana Parker, Mongabay-Indonesia correspondent
January 12, 2014

Police in Indonesia’s Aceh province have arrested two wildlife trafficking suspects allegedly behind five tiger poaching rings operating in the forests of northern Sumatra. The arrests followed a months-long investigation and an undercover sting operation in which police seized thousands of dollars worth of illegal animal parts.
Posing as potential buyers, undercover police caught the suspects with stuffed Sumatran tigers and other illegal wildlife including a clouded leopard, two golden cats and a sun bear skin. Aceh Police Criminal Investigation Director Joko Irwanto estimated the confiscated animals to be worth hundreds of millions of rupiah, roughly tens of thousands of dollars.
The suspects were arrested on Jan. 3 under a 1990 conservation law and are believed to be linked to a network of rare animal traders in Aceh’s Gayo Highlands and a known tiger kingpin in Medan. If found guilty, they face up to five years in prison and a fine of Rp 100 million ($8,200).

--> Garish? Stuffed wildlife seized by Aceh police. Photo by Chik Rini of Mongabay-Indonesia.

“This recent arrest shows that Indonesia is getting increasingly serious about not tolerating wildlife crime, which threaten its spectacular natural heritage,” said Joe Walston, Asia programs director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, a New York-based conservation organization that assisted with the case.
“We congratulate the group of law enforcement professionals that worked together on a local, regional, and national level to make this important arrest happen.”
Police believe the suspects acquired the rare animals from poachers in and around Central Aceh. The area has a reputation as a center for the illegal wildlife trade, fueled by high demand for stuffed endangered animals throughout Aceh.
“There is mythology that makes people believe that tigers, bears and certain other animals have magical powers,” Azhar, a species coordinator for WWF-Indonesia’s Aceh program office told Mongabay-Indonesia, adding that many local officials in the province have illegal wildlife on display in their homes.

Stuffed animals seized by Aceh police on display at a press conference in Aceh. Photo by Chik Rini of Mongabay-Indonesia.

Despite its reputation as a poaching hub, arrests and prosecutions for wildlife crimes in the province are rare. In October, a military court in Aceh convicted two soldiers for possessing a pair of stuffed Sumatran tigers and a stuffed sun bear, marking the first ever successful prosecution for wildlife crimes in Aceh and the second wildlife crimes case successfully prosecuted by an Indonesian military court. 

“WWF urges the government to address the conservation of tigers and other rare species more seriously,” Azhar told Mongabay-Indonesia. “If poaching continues unchecked, [tigers] will go extinct in Aceh.”
 
CITATION: Chik Rini. 2 Pembuat Offset Satwa Dilindungi di Aceh Ditangkap. Mongabay-Indonesia. January 6, 2014.
Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0112-dparker-aceh-poaching-arrests.html#t7zspsIisObgrmJE.99

“Follow the Coffee” Part II

-->

In my January 7 post I mentioned sending out a few emails to companies asking them about a bag of coffee my friend purchased at a store that said it was “organic” and came from Aceh.  I traced the “provenance” of this bag to two organizations: Project 7, and Topco, who is a distributor of “store brands” to large supermarket chains.  Full Circle, the company listed on the coffee bag, is one of their distributors.

This is the email I sent to Topco:

Dear Topco:

Building Bridges to the Future supports a local sustainable livelihoods agency in Aceh province, Indonesia, called Jembatan Masa Depan (JMD) that in part that helps farmers increase coffee production. We understand that your company distributes a brand of coffee called Full Circle Coffee, Organic Medium Roast Sumatra Aceh Ground.
To help JMD better serve coffee and cocoa farmers in Aceh, we are conducting a survey from "the other end of the value chain" to see if we can trace our farmers' coffee from the store back to its origins, and if importers and distributors have information regarding the provenance of their product.

Can you let us know how Topco verifies that its "Sumatra Aceh ground" coffee comes from Aceh?

Which is the entity that verifies certification and farm location?

There are several "certification" bodies and we'd like to know which one your company chooses when it is purchasing beans from the importer.

Thanks in advance for any and all information you can give us.

On January 24 I received this email back from Topco:

Subject: Full Circle Coffee

Thank you for your request, but our vendor and certifications of this product are company information and therefore propriety information. Please be assured that any claims on the package are correct and have been verified.

Thank you for your time and have a great day.

Ticket #269691

Sincerely,

Consumer Services Team

www.topco.com

I am not really great with languages, but I think this translates to “Buzz off.”  Thoughts?

I wonder if Project 7 will ever write back.

It reminds me: I saw some interesting Twitter feed the other day from an organization called Coffee_Aceh, and when I went to find out more about them, their website, which has been up since 2010, had no information on it --I mean, it was blank, except for some photos that said “our farmers” and the only thing their Facebook page said was

Promoting coffee in Aceh

Mission: To sell direct from the farmer to the consumer

Both this, and the text on the coffee bag and myriad websites are admirable sentiments, but they all lead to dead ends.  None of the people saying or writing these things knows, I am convinced, if what they are saying is true.  The coffee could have come from anywhere.  How can Aceh establish itself as a leader in specialty commodities like cocoa and coffee if we cannot verify the value chain?