We’ve just seen the 10th meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil take place in Singapore. This meeting of producers and consumers of palm oil was set up to try to address the many conflicts that the growth in palm oil has produced. From loss of habitat and wildlife to human rights abuses and land grabs the rush for palm oil has not been smooth. It was against this background the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was put together.
Sadly though on the 10th meeting of the group there was news from across the globe of bad practices being undertaken by palm oil producers and how the RSPO is failing to react in a timely and effective manner to deal with the conflicts that it was set up to deal with.
As members of the RSPO sat down to their meeting issues that they should be dealing with were being left aside:
- Indonesian company Golden Veroleum – a RSPO member – is developing 33,000 acres of land in Liberia, Africa, despite local communities not wanting their lands developed. Alfred Brownell, the lawyer representing the Kru tribes impacted by the project who is attending the 10th Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil said, ”Golden Veroleum is in clear violation of the RSPO’s New Planting Procedure as it has not advertised its plans to clear and plant oil palms and carry out and publicise a High Conservation Value Assessment in advance of expanding its operations. Under the RSPO procedure, the company should now cease clearance until due process is followed. The villagers are concerned that their lands are being taken without their fully informed or free consent.”
- Indian company BioPalm claim to be members of RSPO but are currently ignoring the need to consult with the Bagyeli Pygmies in Cameroon as they start to develop their palm oil operations in the tribal areas.
- Again in Cameroon an American palm oil company, SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon PLC, have decided to pull out of RSPO so they can progress their developments without having to be restricted by the demands of membership of the group and having to deal with the growing opposition to their operations in the region.
Producers of palm oil who sign up to be members of RSPO commit themselves to certain levels of operation to reduce their impact and to protect indigenous rights. They need to undertake assessments for areas of high conservation value and not exploit those areas and they need to consult and get permission from the land owners before they begin operations. The RSPO oversees the standards and if a complaint is made the RSPO will make an initial assessment and if it finds it to be valid then the producer must stop all operations while full consultations take place. The RSPO are required to make that initial assessment within 2 weeks of the complaint being made. But there is evidence the RSPO are failing to respond to complaints in a timely or effective fashion.
The Environmental Investigation Agency – a London based NGO – highlights the case of the Singapore based First Resources Ltd whose palm oil-producing company PT Borneo Surya Mining Jaya (PT Borneo) is grabbing land from local residents and developing it without undertaking and consultation or gaining consent. Despite a formal complaint being submitted to the Grievance Panel of RSPO October 17, outlining First Resources’ breaches of the body’s Principles and Criteria and New Planting Procedure the RSPO have still not made a decision on the case and in the mean time PT Borneo’s bulldozers are destroying habitat and farmland.
The complaint was submitted to the Grievance Panel by the EIA on behalf of the local communities in Kutai Barat, East Kalimantan.
Accepting the complaint as legitimate would have obligated First Resources to cease operating in Muara Tae until the dispute was resolved. However, the RSPO secretariat has to date not done so and has repeatedly failed to inform EIA of the deadline for its decision, three weeks after receiving the complaint.
Masrani, the Petinggi (village head) of Muara Tae, attended the RSPO’s annual roundtable in Singapore last week. At the meeting, both Bambang Dwi Laksono, Corporate Head of Sustainability at First Resources, and Ravin Krishnan, RSPO complaints coordinator, encouraged the community to enter into dialogue with the company.
However, in meetings with First Resources during the past two years, the community has repeatedly rejected the proposed plantation, a view which has been entirely ignored. Indeed, while offering the prospect of dialogue to Masrani in Singapore, First Resources was simultaneously preparing to bulldoze his father’s land.
Faith Doherty, Head of Forests Campaign at EIA, said: “It’s disgraceful that the RSPO has failed to take any meaningful action and farcical that it believes First Resources can be trusted to carry out fair negotiations with the community while it has been utterly disingenuous with the RSPO itself. What sort of dialogue are they expected to have in the presence of armed police?
“The fact that First Resources has the audacity to submit phony documents, carry on destroying community forests without a shred of consent and then turn up at the RSPO roundtable poses some very serious questions about the credibility of the RSPO. Clearly, First Resources doesn’t hold its grievance process in very high regard.”
A new film has been released about the plight of the villagers and their fight against BT Borneo. One person featured in the film, Pak Masrani, Village Leader of Muara Tae highlighted, “Any company that enters an area should adhere to the principles of FPIC [Free, Prior and Informed Consent]. That is, they should only enter with the consent of the community and without coercion, and the community should be given sufficient information by the company.
“But PT Borneo Surya Mining Jaya’s entry into the village of Muara Tae does not comply with the principles of FPIC. Because they did not enter with the consent of the community. They forced entry, demolishing the community territory forcibly. Even though the people resisted them, they remain displaced. They have ignored the rejection by the villagers of Muara Tae.”
Another of those featured, Petrus Asuy, Muara Tae elder and customary landowner said, “PT Borneo Surya Mining Jaya is destroying forests, depriving the rights of the indigenous peoples of Muara Tae, bringing BRIMOB [riot police] to intimidate people so they don’t defend their land. And they have violated our human rights, particularly by damaging the environment. Damaging the sources of spring water for the rivers that flow to Muara Tae and destroying the forest wood and traditional medicines that have been maintained by the community of Muara Tae.”
With the RSPO failing to come to a quick acceptance of the complaint and with its complaints co-ordinator siding with the palm oil company in trying to get the community to carry on with consultations while their land is being destroyed has to raise a question of what the RSPO is there for. Is it to act as an organisation to protect the environment and people’s rights or is it there to greenwash the operations of palm oil producers?
