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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:18 am
Time: 1:18 am
Results for illegal land grabs
1 results foundAuthor: Friends of the Earth Netherlands Title: Commodity Crimes: Illicit Land Grabs, Illegal Palm Oil, and Endangered Orangutans Summary: Two of the world's leading distributors of palm oil, a staple ingredient in many consumer food and personal care products and an important feedstock for biofuels in Europe, are obtaining the commodity from illegal sources - growers who are clearing vast areas of rain forests, including sensitive orangutan habitat and protected forest reserves, in violation of the law, the criteria of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and their financiers' investment policies. Our investigation used satellite imagery, trade data and on-the-ground reporting to uncover how, at the other end of a long chain of culpability, unwitting consumers are being sold products that are killing orangutans and destroying some of the world's last forested lands. Friends of the Earth has alerted the companies involved about the problems detailed in this report. We have also alerted financiers to their role in land grabbing previously. Their comments are summarized in this report. The chain extends thousands of miles, through many actors: - The producer, Bumitama Agri Ltd, one of the largest owners of palm oil plantations in Indonesia. - The palm oil industry's "sustainability" association, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which does little to prevent illegal activity and has proven ineffective at providing comprehensive protections for the environment and human rights. - The traders, such as Wilmar International who distribute palm oil to a global market which is expected to more than double by 2030 - a serious and growing threat to human rights and tropical forests. - The financiers and investors - including HSBC, Rabobank, Deutsche Bank as well as the largest pension funds in the Netherlands and Sweden - who provide the needed capital for Bumitama's key shareholders like IOI and clients like Wilmar. All three companies are violating not only voluntary standards like RSPO and the financiers' own Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) policies, but also national legislation. Bumitama Agri Ltd, (BUMI.SI) is headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia and operates through a number of subsidiaries. Bumitama controls over 200,000 hectares of plantation land bank in Central Kalimantan, West Kalimantan and Riau, Indonesia. Since 1990, development of palm plantations by Bumitama and others has cleared about 16,000 square kilometers of forested land in Kalimantan. The company has been a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil since 2007, and sells to global palm oil traders including IOI Corp. of Malaysia and Wilmar International of Singapore. This investigation specifically documents that: - Bumitama has knowingly destroyed forest that is the home for endangered orangutans. In April 2013, in response to a complaint filed at the RSPO, Bumitama promised it would not clear land near forest reserves in West Kalimantan until studies were completed to appraise the land's ecological importance. These reserves host one of the largest, and last, populations of the Central Bornean orangutan in the region. However, satellite imagery shows that hundreds of hectares of peatland and forests in the area were cleared between May and September 2013. So while Bumitama was negotiating with the RSPO to address the complaint, the company continued to clear land, despite its pledge to stop the cutting. - Bumitama's actions are unpermitted. The plantation in West Kalimantan that is managed by Bumitama was cleared in violation of national laws, without permits or proper approval of the Ministry of Forestry and the Environmental Monitoring Agency. This land bank consists of at least 7,000 hectares of "ghost estates" - plantations that lack valid permits. Selling palm oil from unpermitted plantations is illegal. - Bumitama's investors knowingly or unknowingly purchased shares of an illegal operation. Prospective investors were informed through Bumitama's prospectus in April 2012 that Bumitama's expansion plans included preferential rights to manage and harvest from a plantation that was operating illegally, without the required licenses for its operation and management, and that the Hariyanto family - the majority owner of Bumitama Agri - would bear the liability risk while the permits were sorted out. Despite this admission of illegality, all the shares were sold. - After gaining control over thousands of hectares of unpermitted plantation landbank Bumitama continued the illegal production of palm oil without the necessary permits and engaged in further illegal land grabbing and clearing. Wilmar International and IOI Corp. bought shares of Bumitama despite their likely knowledge of the illegal landgrab. Before Bumitama's public offering in April 2012, IOI Corp. became one of Bumitama's controlling shareholders, with a current stake of 31 percent of the company. At the same time, Wilmar bought between 0.9 percent and 4.3 percent of shares of Bumitama's stock. This makes IOI and Wilmar not just purchasers of the palm oil illegally produced by Bumitama, but significant investors in its illegal operations. - The RSPO provides greenwash for the industry's illegal, unethical and environmentally harmful practices. The Bumitama Group, IOI Corp. and Wilmar International are all members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. They have been involved in several illegal landgrabs in Kalimantan over the past five years, but the RSPO has been unable to prevent this, nor has it taken any effective enforcement action. The revelations about Bumitama Agri in this report illustrate how palm plantation companies and commodity traders use the lack of legal enforcement, complicated transfers of land and assets, and inter-company agreements to take illegal control over land, regardless of its legal status, traditional use or ecological importance. The report also highlights the role of financiers, including banks and equity investors, in Bumitama Agri, IOI and Wilmar, and on the kind and amount of money invested in these companies, their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Policies and the responses investors gave to inquiries by Friends of the Earth on this case. The bottom line is that the current system of producing palm oil as a global commodity is unjust and unsustainable and all actors involved should take immediate action to address this. Details: Amsterdam: The Friends, 2013. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 17, 2016 at: https://milieudefensie.nl/publicaties/rapporten/comodity-crimes.-illicit-land-grabs-illegal-palm-oil-and-endangered-orangutans Year: 2013 Country: International URL: https://milieudefensie.nl/publicaties/rapporten/comodity-crimes.-illicit-land-grabs-illegal-palm-oil-and-endangered-orangutans Shelf Number: 147930 Keywords: Environmental CrimesIllegal Land GrabsIllegal Palm OilIllegal ProductsOffences Against the EnvironmentWildlife Crime |