Major palm oil companies accused of breaking ethical promises

"Non-complying member organisations can simply opt to leave the RSPO in the midst of a complaint, and consequently they will not be governed by any of our rules. The RSPO closely monitors the activities of its members [but] it has no legal way to enforce its members to comply." This is the case of Herakles Farms, Cameroon AKA SGSOC. The company withdrew from the RSPO in 2012.

“Non-complying member organisations can simply opt to leave the RSPO in the midst of a complaint, and consequently they will not be governed by any of our rules. The RSPO closely monitors the activities of its members [but] it has no legal way to enforce its members to comply.” This is the case of Herakles Farms, Cameroon AKA SGSOC. The company withdrew from the RSPO in 2012.

Large plantations are destroying forests, damaging wildlife and causing social conflict in Asia and Africa, report finds

by Jon Vidal, the Guardian

Large palm oil companies that have promised to act ethically have been accused of land grabbing, ignoring human rights and exploiting labour in their African and Asian plantations.

In a damning 400-page investigation, the companies are variously charged with impacting on orangutan populations, destroying tropical forest and burning and draining large tracks of peat swamp forest.

Sixteen palm oil concessions, in Indonesia, Liberia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cameroon, all operated by members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) were visited by monitors working with international human rights groups including UK-based Forest peoples programme and Sawit Watch, from Indonesia. Local communities consistently accused the companies of not respecting their customary land rights, violating laws and court rulings and acting in such a way that encouraged conflict.

The growing global demand for palm oil has fuelled a massive expansion of plantations across the forests of southeast Asia and Africa but concerns have been growing for over a decade about the resulting environmental and social impacts. The RSPO, set up in 2004 by the industry and civil society groups including WWF, sets criteria for greener palm oil production and tries to encourage industry expansion in ways that do not cause social conflict.

About 15% of the world’s palm oil is now certified as “sustainable” by the RSPO, whose members range from some of the largest growers and traders, to relatively small companies.

“Since its founding the RSPO has adopted good standards, but too many member companies are not delivering on these paper promises,” said Norman Jiwan, director of human rights group Transformasi Untuk Keadilan Indonesia.

The report will be published on Thursday in Sumatra, where over 10.8m hectares of land has been planted with oil palm trees, to coincide with the annual meeting of the RSPO in Medan, Indonesia.

It follows growing alarm at the way communities in Asia and Africa are being pushed aside to make way for large plantations and the loss of wildlife, including the tiger. Many organisations, including the World Bank, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Greenpeace and Walhi, have expressed deep concern at the resulting impoverishment of local communities and the growth of conflict around the concessions.

According to some, the RSPO’s voluntary “best practice” rules and guidelines are not working and the organisation is in danger of becoming a fig leaf for agribusiness to take advantage of weak land laws.

“Underlying this failure of ‘voluntary best practice’ are national laws and policies which deny or ignore indigenous peoples’ and communities’ land rights,” said Marcus Colchester, an adviser at Forest Peoples Programme.

“In their rush to encourage investment and exports, governments are trampling their own citizens’ rights. Global investors, retailers, manufacturers and traders must insist on dealing in conflict-free palm oil, and national governments must up their game and respect communities’ rights.”

Concern in the report centres on the Indonesian legal system which is described as “unjust” because it allows land to be expropriated from local people without regard for internationally recognised rights. Land laws favour large-scale plantations and lead to the widespread abuse of human rights. The report found that palm oil expansion in the Malaysian state of Sarawak was systematically grabbing Dayak lands without their consent.

“So much effort has been invested in the RSPO … but to little avail,” said Jefri Saragih, executive director of Sawit Watch, a founding member of the RSPO. “We can point to one or two good results on the ground, but there are thousands of land conflicts with oil palm companies in Indonesia alone, and the problem is now spreading to other parts of Asia and Africa. We are calling for an urgent and vastly expanded response to this crisis.”

The RSPO responded to the criticism in a statement. “Making the palm oil market fully sustainable is possible but only over time, and with the right levels of commitment. The RSPO depends on the goodwill of companies on the ground, and local government authorities, to ensure that these principles and criteria are abided to. There have been a number of cases of non-compliant members.”

It further said that it has strengthened its commitment towards human rights, requiring companies to implement policies to counter corruption, ban forced labour and forbid use of disputed lands. However, there is no legal compulsion on members to comply with RSPO’s principles and criteria.

“Non-complying member organisations can simply opt to leave the RSPO in the midst of a complaint, and consequently they will not be governed by any of our rules. The RSPO closely monitors the activities of its members [but] it has no legal way to enforce its members to comply.”

Read the original article at the Guardian

When fraud goes green

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T shirts made by local residents to protest Herakles Farms, Southwest Region, Cameroon.

 

Reprinted from Al Jazeera Opinion

Herakles Farms appears to be operating illegally in Cameroon, lacking required government permits.

June 9, 2013

By Anuradha Mittal

Anuradha Mittal is the founder and executive director of the Oakland Institute, a policy think-tank dedicated to increasing public participation and promoting debate on social, economic and environmental policies that impact our lives.

In late May, the Oakland Institute and Greenpeace International publicly released internal documents of a New York-based corporation which is in the midst of constructing a massive palm oil plantation in the world’s second largest rainforest. The communications have brought to light an age-old tale of greed and deceit wrapped in the wholly modern packaging of international development work and green consumerism.

At the heart of this story is Herakles Farms (HF), a subsidiary of venture investment firm Herakles Capital: a heroic name which aptly frames the gallant branding necessary to secure support. On its public site, the phrases “sustainable”, “poverty reduction” and “environmentally benign” are used liberally to describe the forthcoming plantation. However, as the leaked documents reveal, behind the scenes lies a very different story, one which shows a startling disregard for the noble goals on which Herakles claims to be founded.

At the helm of this venture stands CEO Bruce Wrobel, a man who extols the company’s sustainability mission, going so far as to declare: “Throughout my entire life I have considered myself to be an environmentalist and an activist for the poor.” Yet the company is constructing what it claims will be among “the largest palm-oil plantations in all of Africa” – an area roughly 12 times the size of Manhattan – in a hotspot of biodiversity. Last year, after complaints about Herakles to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) highlighted the company’s alleged environmental violations, Wrobel made no attempts to set the record straight. Instead, Herakles resigned from the Roundtable before the claims were to be investigated, spuriously stating that they “remain committed” to RSPO’s standards.

Shockingly, Herakles’ wayward actions continued with brazen attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of many more than just its “green” supporters. As the documents reveal, the company also appears to be knowingly lying to its investors about its viability and financial health.

Perhaps the most important debunking of Herakles’ claims by Greenpeace and Oakland is the well-guarded secret that the company is operating without all required permits in Cameroon, and therefore, the legality of its operations is questionable. In communications with investors, Herakles assures that it has “secured a 99-year lease… and also received all required permits and approvals to commence field operations”. But in an internal communication, a senior Herakles official states unequivocally: “We do not have the required government approvals for field planting.”

Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife has on numerous occasions – the most recent, just last month – formally warned the company to stop felling trees until it receives the necessary approvals. Among these missing approvals is a signed presidential decree required to validate the leases of all land concessions of more than 50 hectares on public lands in Cameroon. Yet despite its many reproaches, Herakles proceeds with impunity.

Not only is Herakles knocking down the trees, but the company assures investors that it will go on to sell the timber, which it believes will result in “a potential upside of $60 to $90 million over the next seven years”. Yet in an open letter, written by CEO Wrobel in September in an attempt to pacify the project’s growing number of critics, he stated: “We surrendered the timber to the government [for] a lower lease rate.”

This unabashedly two-faced style of negotiation by Herakles betrays a greater truth: that many foreign investors see Africa as the new Wild West where laws can be bent at will. The laws seem to become particularly pliant when the company is, as one senior employee reveals to be the case for Herakles, “in a cash crunch”. The fact of Herakles’ operations appears to be that Wrobel and his cohort are in over their heads and are desperate to cover their shortfalls.

The company did, however, take its public mission to address “a dire humanitarian need”, straight to the communities and local leaders. It did so by dangling the promise of hospitals, jobs, food security and “tremendous long-term benefits”, and managed to gain pockets of consent in the area, to which it now clings as proof of its right to operate.

In the meantime, local people have come to terms with the notion that they have been hoodwinked by Herakles. Their dreams of stronger infrastructure began to evaporate at the moment when, instead of hospitals and jobs, the only new features to materialise in the area were red tape perimeters and warning signs, flaunting the fact that their land rights had been forfeited.

Now villages and local NGOs have mobilised – and they are seeking support from international civil society organisations to undo what amounts to a herculean human rights and environmental catastrophe. This is a sobering lesson for all parties involved – that the land rush by foreign investors into African nations is not philanthropically driven, despite claims to the contrary. Rather, companies such as Herakles Farms have exploited images of poverty and hunger, and couched their efforts in the language of sustainability, allowing them to handily reap profits from Africa’s resources while undermining national laws, local communities and the environment.

While investors may have initially bought into Wrobel’s multi-tiered façade of the perfect “sustainable” investment with the promise of mega-returns, it is time to come to terms with the fact that they, too, are among the victims of Herakles’ many deceptions. But the time is now to begin to make things right, and the first step is to help the Cameroonian people free themselves from Herakles’ greenwashed snare by demanding accountability.

This is not a rebuke to the very real efforts to bring infrastructure and aid to Africa. However, it must serve as an imperative for the international community to proceed only with the understanding that Africa is open for business, not for theft.

Anuradha Mittal is the founder and executive director of the Oakland Institute, a policy think-tank dedicated to increasing public participation and promoting debate on social, economic and environmental policies that impact our lives. 

Follow her on Twitter: @Mittaloak

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.