Aegon Nederland pulls out of palm oil investments

DutchNews, October 2, 2018

Palm oil plantations often involve illegal deforestation. Photo: Depositphotos.com

Aegon Nederland has sold its interests in palm oil after 15 years, stating that the sector ‘is unable to implement improvements, keep to existing rules and bring in sanctions.’ 

Palm oil production is highly controversial and the sector is regularly linked to land grabbing, deforestation and human rights violations as well as climate change. 

The insurance company said in a statement that ‘these negative factors’ had led to the decision to sell its interests in palm oil. According to the Financieele Dagblad, the investments amounted to €7m and were spread through several funds. 

Fourteen companies, including Bunge, IOI and Indofood are now on the Aegon blacklist, the paper said. 

Environmental campaign group Milieudefensie said in a statement that Aegon is ‘hero of the day’ for pulling out of palm oil. ‘We are now calling on ABN Amro, Rabobank and ING to stop with palm oil,’ the organisation said. 

The organisation published a report in July highlighting the links between the big three Dutch banks and the palm oil industry.

Related Article:

EU palm oil ban sows bitter seeds for Southeast Asian farmers

In Mataram Declaration, Belated Recognition of Indigenous Rights

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia,  Apr 23, 2015

The government is finally getting serious about recognizing Indigenous
groups’ forest rights. (Antara Photo/Ahmad Subaidi)

Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara. Proponents of the rights of indigenous groups have hailed a pledge by the Indonesian government to do more to recognize their stewardship of forests, seen as crucial in efforts to stave off deforestation.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar made the so-called Mataram Declaration last weekend in a belated response to a May 2013 Constitutional Court ruling relinquishing the state’s default claims to forested areas settled and used by indigenous groups.

“Long before this, civil society organizations and local communities were struggling for the recognition and protection of customary land,” said Abetnego Tarigan, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi. “Now the government has shown good faith, and we really appreciate it.”

He said the central and local governments often violated indigenous people’s land rights because the latter lacked title deeds to their land. In many cases, he noted, the people were disenfranchised of their rights, and their land given over to logging, plantation or mining operators.

“There are a few policies that regulate the rights of local communities to the land, such as the 2012 law on customary forests, but they don’t cover the recognition of people’s customary territory, so we need another framework to guarantee it,” Abetnego said. “This declaration should really be a form of political will for all stakeholders to push the recognition and protection of customary forests managed by the people.”

Civic-centered development

At the signing of the declaration on Saturday in Mataram, in West Nusa Tenggara province, Siti said the government and other stakeholders were committed to expediting the process to craft policies that improved the welfare and protection of local communities and conserved the environment.

“These policies are really important,” she said. “President Joko Widodo’s government has indicated that the citizenship concept is a democratic one, in which we seek to bring welfare to the people.”

She said the government was making efforts to involve people, especially indigenous groups, in environmental protection.

“Here, our development must be civic-centered,” Siti said. “This issue has been echoed by the people and environmental organizations, and now the government is listening.”

Under Joko’s 2015-2019 National Mid-Term Development Plan, the administration plans to designate 12.5 million hectares of land for “social forestry,” in which indigenous groups and local communities will commit to sustainable forestry practices, and nine million hectares for agriculture.

“These [social] forests can be developed as community forests, village forests and customary forests,” Siti said, adding that the agricultural land, to be staked out from former logging concessions, would go primarily to subsistence farmers.

Collaborative effort

Siti said it was important for all stakeholders — the central government, regional administrations, civil society organizations and local communities — to work closely together.

“The policy is ready to go, but we can’t do it alone. We need help from other stakeholders to cooperate. For example, I hope the Home Affairs Ministry will help us identify indigenous communities and their problems to ensure that all land is distributed rightly and fairly,” she said.

“We also need civil society organizations to work with the people on mediation, community building and others. Access to welfare for all Indonesians is our responsibility.”

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, an adviser to the Home Affairs Ministry, said the institution was open to cooperating with the other stakeholders.

“But the identification process isn’t easy. There are a few requirements to meet before we can definitively say that a given community is an indigenous one,” he said. “The process must be really selective. And this is the task of regional leaders.”

Zudan said that for a forest community to qualify, it would have to show some kind of environmentally sustainable practice in its interactions with the forest.

“Here we need experts and help from civil society organizations,” he said.

People first

Siti said the new policy, unlike previous ones, prioritized the role of people in economic development through the exploitation of forests and other natural resources.

“I believe the system will be no longer like the past, when government didn’t put the people at the front of its development plans. Now, we must use dialogue in our approach to developing the economy of this country,” Siti said.

West East Nusa’s Deputy Governor Muhammad Amin welcomed the declaration, but said further talks on the issue were still needed between the central government and regional administrations.

“We realize there hasn’t been a regional policy that recognizes the territorial rights of indigenous people. However, with this declaration, we hope that the people will receive greater consideration in the policy-making process,” he said. “Should the synergy run smoothly, we may be able to achieve an environment-oriented development framework.”

Yansen T.P., the head of Malinau district in North Kalimantan, who was among the more than 30 regional heads attending the Mataram Declaration, said an increasing number of regions across the country were beginning to prioritize land rights protections when crafting new policies.

“We’ve been done a lot for several years now to show our support for our environment,” he said. “We have vast areas of natural resources and considerable local wisdom. The forest we have is the forest we must hold on to. We understand that people depend on the forest and they will try to maintain it. But to do that, we in the regional government have to provide them with legal certainty.”

Yansen said he hoped that future investments would “take the side of the people.”

“We don’t need to exploit all of our natural resources right away. We have to think about our children, grandchildren and our future generations,” he said. “Hopefully the central government’s policy will accelerate the recognition of indigenous people’s right to the forest.”

Test cases

Adi Rozal, the head of Kerinci district in Sumatra’s Jambi province, said his administration had designated 12 swaths of forest as customary forests.

“Now we’re waiting for coordination from the central government to issue a policy that fully mandates the forests for use by the local community,” he said.

Mathius Awoitauw, the head of Jayapura district in Papua province, agreed that while the central government had a key role to play, it was local governments that would serve as the test cases for various frameworks on the issue.

“All we need to do to establish nationwide synergy is to hold regular dialogues to test how capable regional governments and people are in managing their forests. In addition, there should be a regulation that truly guarantees the rights of each region to map its own customary forests,” he said.

In prioritizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities, the government has switched from an earlier paradigm that served large corporations, said Chalil Muhammad, the chairman of the Association for Community and Ecology-Based Law Reform, or Perkumpulan HuMa.

“There’s a need to create a scheme to build rights coordination between the central government, regional governments and the people in an effort to prevent forests from rampant exploitation,” he said. “These stakeholders need to change their mind-set. We need to increase human resource capacity and fix existing forestry policies.”

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno

Murder of Jambi Man Renews Call for Land Rights, Security

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia, Mar 08, 2015

Supporters have rallied behind Indigenous groups fighting for land rights.
(Antara Photo/Zabur Karuru)

Malinau, North Kalimantan. The recent death of a farmer in Sumatra’s Jambi province has highlighted the need to address land conflicts often interwoven with rampant deforestation in Indonesia.

Indra Pelani, 22, a member of the local Sugarcane Farmers Union (STT), died late last month after being beaten by security officers hired by Wirakarya Sakti, a subsidiary of paper giant Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), as he attempted to pass through a checkpoint near an acacia plantation run by the company, police have said.

Indra’s alleged assailants surrendered themselves to Jambi Police last week.

The incident has prompted international environmental group Greenpeace to suspend cooperation with APP, according to Agence France-Presse.

The green group had once been one of the strongest critics of APP, accusing it of destroying vast swaths of carbon-rich forests that are home to endangered species such as Sumatran orangutans and tigers. But following APP’s announcement two years ago that it would stop using any logs from Indonesia’s natural forests, Greenpeace had been supporting the company’s efforts.

However, Bustar Maitar, the head of Greenpeace’s Indonesia forest campaign, told AFP last week that the group was temporarily withdrawing support for the company’s initiatives on forest conservation after Indra’s death.

APP said in a statement that it had ordered Wirakarya Sakti to suspend all personnel allegedly involved in the incident.

“We condemn violence and we support Greenpeace’s decision to focus its efforts on this issue,” it said, adding that efforts would be made “to ensure that justice is done.”

STT had been involved in a long-running conflict with Wirakarya over the ownership of 2,000 hectares of land in Jambi prior to last month’s incident.

In 2010 and 2012, two other farmers were killed Jambi and Riau under similar circumstances — also amid conflicts with APP suppliers.

“APP must take immediate action to ensure that this is fully and fairly investigated by the authorities with full and unconditional cooperation from the company,” Bustar was quoted as saying by Mongabay.com last week.

“APP must also launch a full investigation of security procedures and its contractors to ensure such incidents never happen again,” he added.

Food and water crises

Separately, Jambi’s Social Services Office has reported that 11 members of indigenous tribes in Batang Hari and Sarolangun districts had died over the past month due to starvation, amid food and clean water crises plaguing the region.

The coordinator of the Indonesian Conservation Community (KKI), Sukmareni, said the crises had been triggered by an increasing rate of land conversions for plantation use in the area.

Indigenous people, who depend on resources provided by the forests, have been increasingly losing their source of food due to rapid growth of monocultural plantations in the areas.

Zenzi Suhadi of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) says the series of deaths due to land conflicts and deforestation should serve as a wake-up call for the government to urgently address the matter.

“This is urgent. We don’t want any other people to fall victim. The government must quickly take action in response to this,” he said, adding that the government had been turning a blind eye toward land conflicts for decades.

“People must understand their rights. Indra’s and other victims’ deaths should be a signal for us to help them demand the government uphold their rights.”

‘Participatory mapping’

An indigenous community in North Kalimantan, however, has not had to wait for the government to protect its forests from exploitation. In 2012, the residents of Punan Adiu village in Malinau district found a way to protect their forests through what is called “participatory mapping.”

The mapping allows them to draw strict lines around their customary forests, which in turn allows them to register the forests with the local administration for protection.

“The forest is our home. No one should ever take it from us,” says Markus Ilun, the community head of Punan Adiu village.

Punan Adiu, home to 121 people, is surrounded by a swath of 17,400 hectares of virgin tropical forest.

The village is a two-hour drive from the capital of Malinau, but the remoteness of the location has not discouraged corporations from visiting the area to explore for more land to plant oil palms, Markus told the Jakarta Globe in his home village recently.

“In 2013, the subdistrict chief along with three corporate representatives came to our village to lure us to give over our land to be planted with palm trees. Those corporate representatives were introduced as businessmen who had been investing in oil palm plantations in Riau and Jambi districts [in Sumatra],” Markus said.

“We were told that we would get a large amount of money should we give them the land. But we don’t want the money. We don’t want other people to manage our forests. So we stood against the offer, although other villages near us have agreed to sell their lands to those corporations,” he added.

The experience left Markus and his people worried; they feared they might lose their home soon.

That concern motivated Markus, who once visited plantations in Jambi, to consult a local NGO, Punan Watchdog and Empowerment of Malinau (LP3M), to help map their area along with the forests.

“I’ve visited places like Jambi. And what I’ve seen worries me. The forest is our home, a place where we turn to when we run out of food. Turning it into monoculture plantations would leave us, as well as our future generations, with nothing,” he said. “That’s why we initiated a plan to map our village and its surrounding areas, including the forests.”

Customary forests

In 2013, the Constitutional Court partially granted a judicial review filed by the Alliance of the Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN), who sought a revision to the 1999 Forestry Law.

AMAN holds the law responsible for the rapid degradation of indigenous forests in many areas in Indonesia.

The revised law stipulates that customary forests no longer belong to the state — that the state has its own forests and should not disturb indigenous forests.

LP3M chairman Boro Suban Nikolaus said the Constitutional Court’s verdict, coupled with a local bylaw that regulates participatory mapping, allowed Punan Adiu villagers to protect their forests.

“To claim theirs as customary forests, a village must first conduct participatory mapping to identify their borders with other villages, along with their forests. That was what the Punan people did,” he said. “We started the mapping in 2012 soon after the bylaw was issued. Coupled with the court ruling, our legal basis became even more complete.”

The mapping took three years and included forest explorations, demarcations and negotiations.

Punan Adiu and LP3M collaborated with the Indonesian Paddy Community (IPC), Community Mapping Network (JKPP) and AMAN in carrying out the activities.

The final map was completed in January this year.

“The next step is to bring this map to the district head of Malinau. Should he agree, he will immediately issue a regional decree, with which Punan Adiu will obtain a legal umbrella to protect its forests,” Boro said.

“Through our communications, the local government has shown a positive response. We really hope that the process will run smoothly; it will likely take six months,” he added.

The bylaw also regulates the establishment of the Malinau Indigenous Affairs Supervisory Agency (BPUMA), among other things.

The agency will be tasked with verifying the authenticity of participatory mapping, and ensuring protection of the rights of the indigenous peoples of Malinau.

“We have drawn the map. We hope that the district head will approve of this,” Markus said. “But the most important thing is, we know we are safe. Our forest is safe.”

According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), 71 percent of Indonesian villagers rely on forest resources.

“It is really important for indigenous people to understand their rights and the law,” said IPC chairman Akhmad Asyami. “We hope [Punan Adiu's] map will inspire other villages in Kalimantan and the rest of Indonesia, because we know many people depend on the forest.”

Jokowi Pledges to Protect Female Human Rights Activists

Jakarta Globe, Ezra Sihite, Dec 22, 2014

Activists protesting against violence against women, in Central Jakarta
on Sunday. (Antara Photo/Reno Esnir)

Jakarta. Having granted clemency to a female activist just last week, President Joko Widodo on Monday promised that other female Indonesian activists would never be imprisoned again for defending human rights.

“We have to keep fighting for people’s rights. Female activists, who strive for their rights and also other people’s rights, should never be imprisoned. Something like that should never happen again,” Joko, also known as Jokowi, said on Monday in Jakarta.

The president was speaking on Indonesia’s Mother’s Day. It was not immediately clear whether his pledge would also apply to male human rights defenders.

Last Wednesday, the Justice and Human Rights Ministry issued a letter granting clemency to Eva Susanti Bande, a human rights activist who had been jailed after standing up for farmers’ rights in Luwuk, South Sulawesi, in 2010

Eva, who was released from the Petobo detention center in Palu, Central Sulawesi, on Friday, was convicted of instigation and vandalism for her involvement in a rally with a group of farmers against a palm oil company.

In 2010, the Luwuk District Court in Central Sulawesi sentenced Eva to 3.5 years in prison but her sentence was increased to four years on appeal. Eva requested presidential clemency after the Supreme Court turned down her appeal last year.

“I granted Eva’s plea for clemency because I’m fully aware of what she’s striving for, which is the people’s right to land,” Joko said.

As forests are cleared and species vanish, there's one other loss: a world of languages

A new report shows a direct link between disappearing habitats and the loss of languages. One in four of the world's 7,000 spoken tongues is now at risk of falling silent for ever as the threat to cultural biodiversity grows

The Guardian, The Observer, John Vidal, Sunday 8 June 2014

A Nenets reindeer herdswoman in Russia's Arctic region. Photograph: Staffan
Widstrand/WWF (click on picture for graphic depicting global language loss)

Benny Wenda from the highlands of West Papua speaks only nine languages these days. In his village of Pyramid in the Baliem valley, he converses in Lani, the language of his tribe, as well as Dani, Yali, Mee and Walak. Elsewhere, he speaks Indonesian, Papua New Guinean Pidgin, coastal Bayak and English.

Wenda has known and forgotten other languages. Some are indigenous, spoken by his grandparents or just a few hundred people from neighbouring valleys; others are the languages of Indonesian colonists and global businesses. His words for "greeting" are, variously, Kawonak, Nayak, Nareh, Koyao, Aelak, Selamt, Brata, Tabeaya and Hello.

New Guinea has around 1,000 languages, but as the politics change and deforestation accelerates, the natural barriers that once allowed so many languages to develop there in isolation are broken down.

This is part of a process that has seen languages decline as biodiversity decreases. Researchers have established a correlation between changes in local environments – including the extinction of species – and the disappearance of languages spoken by communities who had inhabited them.

"The forests are being cut down. Many languages are being lost. Migrants come and people leave to find work in the lowlands and cities. The Indonesian government stops us speaking our languages in schools," says Wenda.

According to a report by researchers Jonathan Loh at the Zoological Society of London and David Harmon at the George Wright Society, the steep declines in both languages and nature mirror each other. One in four of the world's 7,000 languages are now threatened with extinction, and linguistic diversity is declining as fast as biodiversity – about 30% since 1970, they say.

While around 21% of all mammals, 13% of birds, 15% of reptiles and 30% of amphibians are threatened, around 400 languages are thought to have become extinct in the same time.

New Guinea, the second-largest island in the world, is not just the world's most linguistically diverse place, it is also one of the most biologically abundant, with tree-climbing kangaroos, birds of paradise, carnivorous mice, giant pigeons, rats bigger than domestic cats and more orchid species than any other place on the planet.

Today, both its wildlife and its languages are endangered. According to linguist and author Asya Pereltsvaig, the language of Bo is spoken by 85 people, Ak by 75 and Karawa by only 63. Likum and Hoia Hoia have around 80 speakers, and Abom just 15. Guramalum in New Ireland Province had at the last count only three speakers and Lua is almost certainly extinct, with a single speaker recorded in 2000.

Ironically, Lua is now the name of a successful computer programming language.

More than half of New Guinea's and one in four of the world's remaining languages are threatened, says Jonathan Loh. This compares with estimates that suggest a quarter of all mammals, a third of all sharks and rays and one in seven bird species are endangered.

"There are extraordinary parallels between linguistic diversity and biodiversity," says Loh. "Both are products of evolution and have evolved in remarkably similar ways, and both are facing an extinction crisis."

But exactly why there should be such a close link between languages and biological diversity is unclear, even though it was noticed by Darwin. "Places of high diversity, especially tropical forests, have always been known to have high linguistic diversity, whereas tundra and deserts have low diversity," says Loh. "It is possible in some way that higher biodiversity is capable of supporting greater cultural diversity. The explanation seems to be that both biological and cultural diversity depend on the same environmental factors such as temperature and rainfall."

Conservationists fear that the loss of species due to man's activities is accelerating. And linguists say that the wealth of the world's human languages is now safeguarded by very few indigenous peoples, most of whom live precarious lives in developing countries.

Of the 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, half now have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and these 3,500 languages are spoken by only 0.1% of the world's population – equivalent to a city about the size of London. These eight million people are now responsible for keeping the wealth of human cultural history alive, says the report.

At the other end of the spectrum, because of colonisation, globalisation and the worldwide move to cities in the last 30 years, a handful of global languages increasingly dominates: 95% of the world's population speaks one of just 400 languages, each spoken by millions of people, and 40% of us speak one of just eight languages: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian and Japanese.

"We are losing the richness of human diversity, becoming more and more similar. The languages we speak define how we think and understand the world," says Mandana Seyfeddinipur, director of the endangered languages archive at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

"The loss of human culture is frightening," says Loh. "Nearly all the threatened languages are spoken by indigenous peoples and, along with the languages, the traditional knowledge of these cultures is being forgotten. The names, uses, and preparation of medicines, the methods of farming, fishing and hunting are disappearing, not to mention the vast array of spiritual and religious beliefs and practices which are as diverse and numerous as the languages themselves."

Loh and Harman argue that if you want to save nature it may be vital to conserve cultures too. "The vast store of knowledge that has evolved and accumulated over tens of thousands of years could be lost in the next 100 years," says Harman. "While linguists have made efforts to archive as many of the endangered languages as possible, and ethnobiologists have attempted to record the traditional use of plants, the most important conservation takes place on the ground as part of a living culture."

"As we lose rare indigenous languages we lose the cultures and all the knowledge that they contain. The knowledge of indigenous people is phenomenal. Conservationists should make use of it," says Loh.

The authors have developed an "index of linguistic diversity" which shows that the fastest declines have taken place in the Americas and Australia. Languages spoken in Africa, Asia and Europe are faring better. For biodiversity, the fastest rates of decline have occurred in the Indo-Pacific region, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

"Species populations in North America, Europe and northern Asia have been more stable. Biodiversity has declined most rapidly in the tropics, but remained steady in temperate regions.

"However, linguistic diversity has declined rapidly in the new world [Americas] but more slowly in the old world," says Harman.

The explanation for the different speeds of decline, they say, lies with the threats that both languages and species face. "Habitat loss and degradation is the greatest threat for species, and since 1970 most has taken place in the tropics. In the developed world most habitat destruction took place before 1970, so biodiversity loss has flattened out.

"Languages do not usually go extinct because an entire population of speakers dies out, but because the speakers of a minority, usually indigenous, language shift to a more dominant language and, typically within a few generations, lose their mother tongue.

"Migration, urbanisation and national unification policies have been the primary drivers of language shift in Africa, Asia and Europe. In the Americas and Australia, the primary driver has also been migration, but where the migrants, mainly European, greatly outnumbered the indigenous populations.

"Ultimately both biodiversity and linguistic diversity are diminishing as a result of human population growth, increasing consumption and economic globalisation which are eroding the differences between one part of the world and another," says the report.

Benny Wenda says the link between human culture and biodiversity is clear because it is the indigenous peoples of the world who have mostly conserved nature.

"If you fell the trees then you destroy human culture as well as the birds of paradise. People depend on the forest and the forest has always depended on us. We are as one."

IT'S ALL TALK …

Around 7,000 languages are spoken in the world, 90% of which are used by fewer than 100,000 people.

Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry. English is related to German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European family of languages. Romance languages, which include French, Spanish and Italian, come from Latin.

2,200 of the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260.

The world's most widely spoken languages by number of native speakers and as a second language are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French.

Some of the oldest languages known include Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hebrew and Basque.

Around 2,500 languages are at risk of extinction. One-quarter of the world's languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people.

The United Nations uses six official languages to conduct business: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic.

Communities isolated from each other because of mountainous geography sometimes develop multiple languages. Papua New Guinea has 832 different languages. In Mexico, there are 68 different indigenous languages, further subdivided into 364 variations.

At least half of the world's population are bilingual or plurilingual. While there are "perfect bilinguals", who speak two languages equally well, most bilinguals do not.

South Africa has 11 official languages – the most for a single country.

The pope tweets in nine languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese and Latin.

Related Article:

WRI: A Chance for Forests, if Government Can See Past the Trees

Call for Decree Restoring Forests To Indigenous to Be Implemented

Jakarta Globe, Vita A.D. Busyra, May 16, 2014

Kajang men holding bamboo trees at Amatoa village where the Kajang tribe live
 in Bulukumba, South Sulawesi, on Aug. 12, 2013. Deep in a remote forest in the
 archipelago, the Kajang tribe lives much as it has done for centuries, resisting
nearly all the trappings of modern life. (AFP Photo/Adek Berry)

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is facing criticism over delays in issuing a decree to implement a Constitutional Court verdict handing over the country’s customary forests to their indigenous people.

One year on, the ruling shows no signs of being realized, civil society groups said on Tuesday, resulting in continued conflict between indigenous groups, companies and local governments over the management of the forests.

The Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) and other nongovernmental organizations are planning to send an open letter to Yudhoyono as well as the country’s next leader if the former fails to act during his term, which ends in October.

Abdon Nababan, AMAN secretary general, expressed hope that Yudhoyono would not want to end his term with red marks on his presidential performance record, leaving a legacy of ignoring the plight to save the forests and their inhabitants.

“Therefore, I believe he will consider this issue,” he said during a discussion to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the verdict on Tuesday.

Abdon said a presidential decree would detail instructions to both the central and regional governments on the steps they can take to help empower the country’s indigenous population.

This can be accomplished, he explained, by allowing them to manage and benefit from their own forests without damaging the environment.

Deputy secretary general of the Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) Iwan Nurdin said the matter has been prolonged by ministries that hold a vested interest in the areas to be transferred.

“Although Yudhoyono has given his commitment, other officials — particularly the Home Affairs Ministry and the Forestry Ministry — are against the idea,” he said, adding that the indigenous people have not received any benefits from the customary lands as part of reciprocal promises the government had made.

“They [ministries] should receive the blame; they issued permits for their own interests, leaving the indigenous people and the country with nothing,” he said.

Iwan also “rent-seeking political elites” failed to prioritize an agenda for a agrarian reform.

“The imbalance in land ownership between corporations and the native inhabitants is still extremely high.”

Agrarian conflict

The indigenous community, people who hail from customary forest areas and their surroundings, have been pushed out from their own homes by agrarian conflicts, activists said.

Data collected by AMAN revealed that the 143 violent clashes recorded in 2013 were just the tip of the iceberg as researchers claimed missing reports and incomplete documents of many other instances were not taken into consideration.

“The agrarian conflicts have violated human rights. More locals will be punished as criminals and poverty will remain high as long as the government does nothing,” Abdon said.

AMAN, in a joint venture with other NGOs including Epistema, HuMa, WALHI, Greenpeace, Forest Watch Indonesia, Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) and Indigenous Territory Registration Board (BRWA) plan to draft a proposal on what the current government can do to bring justice to the indigenous people.

Sandra Moniaga, commissioner of the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM), said her institution has initiated a national inquiry and conducted thorough investigations on issues connected to the status of the basic rights of Indonesia’s indigenous communities, particularly those still living in forests and their surroundings.

“I expect the national inquiry to become a priority, because numerous cases of infringement have caused national concern in the past,” she said, adding that last year’s Constitutional Court (MK) verdict should not only reinstate the indigenous people’s rights, but further expand them and empower indigenous people.

Mirna A. Safitri, executive director of the Epistema Institute, emphasized that local governments had an important role in carrying out orders issued by the MK as the central government has mandated the implementation to the regions in question.

“Each region’s bylaws are still far from satisfactory and, thus, should be improved. We need more regulations that look after the indigenous community’s best interests, preserve their homes and improve their way of living,” she said.

Mirna added that the MK verdict should also help to establish a peaceful relationship between the indigenous communities and the modern society that surrounds them.

Greenpeace Calls Out Procter & Gamble for Dirty Palm Oil Sourcing

Jakarta Globe, Ethan Harfenist, February 26, 2014

This file photograph taken on June 7, 2012 shows the boundary between the
 remaining rainforest and newly developed palm oil plantation over cleared
tropical forest land in Central Kalimantan province. (AFP Photo)

Jakarta. Greenpeace accused the US-based consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble on Wednesday of being complicit in environmentally destructive activities in Indonesia, including encroachment of Sumatran tiger habitats, slash-and-burn clearing and the presence of an “orangutan graveyard.”

The environmental NGO slammed the company for sourcing “dirty” palm oil from allegedly unscrupulous suppliers in a report titled ”Procter & Gamble’s Dirty Secret.” The report, the result of a yearlong investigation by Greenpeace International, uncovered evidence that Procter & Gamble-linked palm oil companies were involved in the destruction of orangutan and Sumatran tiger habitats and the kind of slash-and-burn land clearing methods responsible for the region’s annual haze.

“[Procter & Gamble] needs to stop bringing rainforest destruction into our showers,” Bustar Maitar, head of the Indonesian forest campaign at Greenpeace International, said in a press statement. ”It must clean up its act and guarantee its customers that these products are forest-friendly.”

Greenpeace urged Procter & Gamble to adopt a “zero deforestation” pledge and undergo a serious review of its supply chain.

“Procter & Gamble should follow the lead of other palm oil using companies like Unilever, Nestlé and L’Oréal, which have already promised to clean up their supply chains,” Bustar said.

Palm oil is the world’s most ubiquitous vegetable oil and a main driver of deforestation in Indonesia. The oil accounted for roughly 40 percent of the world’s vegetable oil production from 2012-2013, and it is a key ingredient in many household products, like Procter & Gamble’s Head & Shoulders shampoo and Gillette shaving gel.

Procter & Gamble purchased some 462,000 tons of palm oil between 2012-2013, much of it derived from plantations located in Indonesia. One of the companies Greenpeace zeroes in on in its report is BW Plantation, a Jakarta-based firm that is a third-party supplier for Asian Agri — a palm oil company owned by Sukanto Tanoto’s RGE Group.

BW Plantation is allegedly responsible for the recent clearance of orangutan habitats in Central Kalimantan. The company is also linked to a police investigation into an “orangutan graveyard” next to the province’s Tanjung Putting National Park, a 416 thousand-hectare nature reserve famous for its orangutan population.

“We’ve been confronting P&G over the last eight months with how it’s exposing consumers to forest destruction,” said Areeba Hamid, forest campaigner at Greenpeace International. “Instead of taking urgent action, the company has been greenwashing its actions.”

Procter & Gamble pledges, according to its website, to “confirm that all palm oil purchases have originated from responsible and sustainable sources by 2015.” In its 2012 sustainability report, Procter & Gamble promised to achieve zero net deforestation, in accordance with the Consumer Goods Forum.

Proctor & Gamble and BW Plantations were not immediately available for comment.

Greenpeace has been engaged in a highly vocal campaign against destructive and unsustainable agricultural business practices in Indonesia for decades. The group has been successful in forcing corporate change through campaigns raising awareness of the involvement of large multinational companies in deforestation in Indonesia and abroad.

In October, a report titled “License to Kill: How deforestation is driving Sumatran tigers toward extinction,” focused on questionable sourcing by Wilmar — the world’s largest palm oil trader. The Singapore-based company has since announced a zero deforestation policy.

Asia Pulp & Paper, the world’s largest pulp company, caved to similar pressure after losing several high-profile clients to Greenpeace’s once-active campaign against the paper company. APP has now adopted similar sustainability goals and invited Greenpeace to oversee the process as an independent observer.

“Greenpeace believes palm oil must make a genuine contribution to Indonesia’s development,” Bustar said. “Progressive palm oil producers in the Palm Oil Innovation Group, along with ambitious commitments from big palm oil players GAR and Wilmar, prove that there is a business case for responsible palm oil.

“There is no excuse for companies like P&G, Reckitt Benckiser and Colgate Palmolive to delay immediate action on deforestation.”

Palm oil production is the largest cause of deforestation in Indonesia, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. The country was home to nearly half of the world’s palm oil plantations in 2006 after years of concession land grabs, illegal logging and lax law enforcement, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

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'An inspiring victory for tribal people around the world'

Deutsche Welle, 14 January 2014

The Dongria Kondh tribal people of India have successfully stopped a mine from opening up on their traditional lands. DW speaks to Sophie Grig from Survival International, who supported the protests for a decade.

DW: After ten years of protests, the Indian environment ministry has now rejected a huge bauxite mining project by the multinational company Vedanta. Survival International has called this a 'sensational victory'. How likely is it that a small group like the Dongria Kondh win a case for their rights, when they are pitched against a huge multinational like Vedanta?

Sophie Grig: It's fantastic news, it's a real David and Goliath story. There's only about 8000 Dongria people. One of the main reasons why they have had this great success is their incredible tenacity and courage and the fact that they are so united and so proud of their way of life. They are so determined to protect their sacred hills that they have done everything they can to campaign against the mine. That has also been supported by Survival International and a number of other organizations both on the ground and internationally.

In this battle that the Dongria fought for such a long time, the group were confronted with many obstacles. Can you give us an idea of what they experienced?

Sophie Grig, Asia Expert
at Survival International

Their leaders have been arrested, there have been a lot of threats against them, there has been a lot of pressure and harassment for the community. There's also been a lot of pressure from the company who have tried to buy them off by claiming that they will bring development. The Dongria have rightly said 'We don't want development', 'What sort of development is it, if you destroy our hills?'

The Dongria have a wonderful agricultural system where they have huge numbers of plants that they cultivate or collect from the forest that enable them to live well and very happily in their hills, as they have done for generations. They say 'Development for us is being able to live here and make our own choices'.

Defenders of this mining project have always said that the Dongria, like other tribal people, are among the most impoverished in the country and they need economic development. Isn't that also the case?

They certainly don't see themselves as poor and in fact they told us 'We live like kings'. They feel like they live a very wealthy and happy existence in the hills. They themselves look at people in the plains and in the cities and they feel sorry for them. They say, 'You have to pay for your water', 'You have to pay for everything, we get it for free in the hills, why would we want to leave'. What they want is to be able to live their own way of life on their own land.

And, of course, this land is also sacred to them.

Yes, it is. They worship the hills they live in which would have been destroyed by the mining company. That's also played a huge part in their rejection of the mines.

Apart from the determination of the Dongria Kondh, how important was the international campaigning on their behalf? What was the tipping point that made this victory possible?

I think that the international and national campaigns were extremely important. The Dongria on their own, however determined they were, would not have been able to generate the awareness in the government of what was happening to them on the ground. That's the danger when tribal people's voices are just ignored. They needed the national and the international pressure to make the government sit up and listen.

Survival's campaign involved us making a film which allowed them to speak out themselves. We know that 600,000 people viewed that film. Thousands of letters were sent to the Indian government, protests were held, we lobbied the British government and they condemned the mining there and the Church of England disinvested from Vedanta mining. Then, the Supreme Court said that the Dongria should be allowed to make the decision. This last weekend, the news has finally come that the [Indian environment] ministry has said no. So, it's been a culmination of all that hard work.

What repercussions will this news have for other tribal people in Asia and around the world?

This win for the Dongria Kondh is having
 repercussions around the world, says Grig

We know that the news of the Dongria is being listened to. And the big meetings they had last August, and the way that they rejected the mine back then, has already had repercussions. I have spoken to Sami reindeer herders in Sweden who said that they were inspired by the Dongria's rejection of the mine and that it galvanized them in their cause.

Vedanta will have looked at the Dongria and thought, 'Here are 8000 people living in a really remote part of Odisha'. They didn't think that these people were going to be able to stop them. They didn't think people were going to be able to find out about it. This can really send a strong message to mining companies and governments that they cannot go ahead with mines like this or other development projects on the lands of tribal people without getting the consent of those tribal people. And, if they don't want it, that has to be listened to and it can't go ahead.

But, bauxite is in high demand. Even though new places are being explored, there might be no real alternatives to the place that Vedanta wanted to mine in. Do you think there will be a new attempt to gain access to the sacred hills of the Dongria Kondh?

I would love to say no, but who knows. There is an election coming up in India and it is always possible that the decision might be overturned. I think at the moment though there's so much public attention that has gone into this case, it would be extremely difficult for it to be overturned. But it's definitely something that the Dongria will be watching.

There's a refinery that has been built at the base of their hills, which was supposed to be processing the bauxite mined in the area. While that is still there, the Dongria will be nervous about further attempts to mine. But, I think as things stand, it's a huge victory and we have to hope that it will be maintained.

Sophie Grig is an Asia Expert for Survival International and is based in London.

Indonesia’s Forest Communities Victims of ‘Legal Land Grabs’

Jakarta Globe, Silvia Giannelli, November 16, 2013

Sesaot, where a village committee has managed a forest reserve extending 3,600
hectares for over 50 years. (IPS Photo/Amantha Perera)

Indonesia’s rainforests are facing “legal land grabs,” nongovernmental organizations have alleged. Its ancient communities are finding that ancestral lands are slipping into the hands of foreign companies for oil palm cultivation, as demand for the product grows in Europe, India and China.

“There are 33,000 villages in Indonesia’s forest zone and many thousand more in areas marked for agriculture,” said Marcus Colchester, a senior policy adviser at Forest Peoples Program, an international NGO.

“The government allocates these areas to companies without even consulting the communities. So concessions have been handed out over lands where these communities have lived for hundreds or even thousands of years,” he told IPS.

On Friday, Colchester flew to Medan to present the findings of his research, carried out in conjunction with two local organizations, on the impact oil palm cultivation has on the lives of Indonesian communities.

“It is being left to the conscience of the companies — whether they want to give a fair deal to the communities and recognize their rights or not,” Colchester said.

“What our study shows is that the communities’ rights are not being adequately recognized. The people lose access to the land they have traditionally depended on for forest produce, for hunting, fishing, medicines, agriculture and many other purposes.”

According to Sawit Watch, an Indonesian network against palm oil plantations, the country already has 3.2 million hectares of oil palm plantations, mainly located in Sumatra.

Oil palm is known as ‘Sawit’ in Indonesia. Every year, 330,000 hectares of forest is targeted for conversion into new plantations and 650 investors, 75 percent of which are foreign companies, apply to convert forests into oil palm plantations, according to the network.

Palm oil companies and the government are both involved, alleges Augustin Karlo Lumban of Sawit Watch.

Companies first ask communities to release their lands, saying they are taking it [to] rent, he said. But later, when the same people want the land back, they are told it belongs to the state. The government, in turn, puts a business permit on the land and gives it to companies.

“This is land grab[ing] by legal means,” Lumban told IPS.

For some time, the palm oil industry has been criticized by human rights and environmental organizations for its operations in Indonesia.

It has also triggered a debate in the scientific and political arena.

Mark Winslow, communication consultant at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics, an organization that works on sustainable ecological farming, says there are many ways of producing palm oil.

“Palm oil is generally considered the most energy-efficient biofuel and has the highest yield per unit of land area. The problem is that its cultivation is carried out in a very sensitive ecological area — Indonesia and Malaysia,” Winslow told IPS.

But there are alternatives to land grabbing, Winslow said. Data from the World Resources Institute shows that there is at least six million hectares of degraded land in Indonesia.

“These lands are not used at all because they are covered in dense grass called ‘alang alang,’ but if you use herbicides to kill it, you could then plant oil palms there without clearing any new forest,” he said.

Also, rainforests are not the only option for oil palm plantations. “The oil palm is a forest tree by nature, but it has potential to expand into drier areas which have a lot of rivers, or underground water, especially in Africa,” Winslow said.

Oil palm is an edible crop. Its cultivation has gone up vastly over the last decade, reaching 50 million tons in 2012 to become the leading vegetable oil in terms of production and trade, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

In 2011, Indonesia and Malaysia accounted for 85 percent of worldwide palm oil production.

According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, 80 percent of palm oil is used for food, the rest is used in oleochemistry, for products like cosmetics and soaps, and increasingly, for biofuels.

After India and China, Europe is the third top importer of palm oil, according to FAO data for 2011.

As part of the so-called “20-20-20″ climate and energy targets, the European Union aims to raise the share of its energy consumption from renewable sources to 20 percent by 2020, out of which 10 percent is for the transport sector, according to European Commission data.

While this directive has made the projection for future palm oil import higher, signs of a course reversal are coming from the European Parliament.

“In September, the European Parliament adopted a position that caps first-generation biofuels, stating that within the 10 percent target of renewable source, only six percent can come from first-generation biofuels,” Bas Eickhout, a member of the European Parliament with the Greens, told IPS.

But no measure is in sight as far the social impact of biofuels like palm oil is concerned.

“As far as including social standards in the sustainability criteria goes, unfortunately the European Union is not moving at all,” Eickhout said.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is an organization that represents all stakeholders throughout the industry supply chain.

“RSPO is not yet ready to show that palm oil is sustainable in climate terms,” said Colchester.

When it comes to the social dimension, RSPO certification should be enough to prevent human rights abuses.

“It would, if they were complying,” Colchester said. “=Our report shows that even companies that are members of the RSPO and are certified still have problems in the way they deal with the communities,” he said. “And that’s what is so shocking.”

Inter Press Service