Corporations in Indonesia grabbing and destroying indigenous forest land

by | May 26, 2013 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy

By John Vidal / The Observer

Land conflicts between farmers and plantation owners, mining companies and developers have raged across Indonesia as local and multinational companies have been encouraged to seize and then deforest customary land – land owned by indigenous people and administered in accordance with their customs. More than 600 were recorded in 2011, with 22 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The true number is probably far greater, say watchdog groups.

The Indonesian national human rights commission reported more than 5,000 human rights violations last year, mostly linked to deforestation by corporations. “Deaths of farmers caused by the increase in agrarian conflicts all across Indonesia are increasing,” said Henry Sarigih, founder of the Indonesian Peasant Union, which has 700,000 members.

“The presence of palm oil plantations has spawned a new poverty and is triggering a crisis of landlessness and hunger. Human rights violations keep occurring around natural resources in the country and intimidation, forced evictions and torture are common,” said Sarigih. “There are thousands of cases that have not surfaced. Many remain hidden, especially by local authorities,” he says.

Communities complain that they are not warned, consulted or compensated when concessions are handed out and that they are left with no option but to give up their independence and work for minimal wages for the companies.

At fault are badly drafted laws, unclear regulations, corruption and heavy-handed security and paramilitary forces – all of which favour large business over the poor. Illegal land purchases and logging are mostly supported by police, armed forces and local government staff. Companies are even allowed to work with security forces.

Feelings run high when land is taken and livelihoods are wiped out by deforestation. In December 2011, 28 protesters from a logging concession area on Padang island in Sumatra sewed their mouths shut in front of the parliament building in Jakarta in a protest against having their land “grabbed” by a giant paper and pulp company.

Last year, three people were killed in a clash with security forces during a protest over gold prospectors in Bima on the island of Sumbawa. Farmers from Mesuji in Sumatra claimed that security forces murdered residents to evict them from their land.

Over 10m hectares (24.7m acres) of land has been given away and converted to plantations in the last 10 years, forcing thousands of communities to give up forest they have collectively used for generations. Politicians offer land to supporters and give permission to develop plantations with little thought for the human or ecological consequences. In addition, government attempts to move landless people from densely populated areas to less populous areas with “transmigration” policies have caused major conflicts with indigenous groups in provinces like Papua and Sulawesi.

“Who controls the land in Indonesia controls the politics. Corruption is massive around natural resources. We are seeing a new corporate colonialism. In the Suharto era you were sent to prison for talking about the government. Now you can be sent there for talking about corporations,” says Abetnego Tarigan, director of Friends of the Earth Indonesia in Jakarta.

Three of the group’s staff members, including its south Sumatra director, are in prison following protests at the involvement of the police and military in a land dispute involving a state-owned palm oil plantation firm. “The scale of the conflicts is growing. Every day new ones are reported. More and more police are now in the plantations. Government is trying to clamp down on mass protests,” said Tarigan.

“These developments are classed as ‘growth’ but what we are seeing is the collapse of communities of fisherfolk or farmers and increasing poverty. We are exchanging biodiversity for monocultures, local economies for global ones, small-scale producers are becoming labourers and community land is becoming corporate. This is the direction we are going.”

From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/25/indonesia-new-corporate-colonialism

Samsung admits that it profits from the exploitation of children in tin mining

Samsung admits that it profits from the exploitation of children in tin mining

by | Apr 26, 2013 | Mining & Drilling, Worker Exploitation

By Mongabay

Mobile device giant Samsung has admitted to using tin sourced from a controversial mining operation on the Indonesian island of Bangka, where unregulated mining kills 150 miners a year and causes substantial environmental damage, reports The Guardian and Mongabay-Indonesia.

Samsung’s admission came after a campaign by Friends of the Earth, which led to nearly 16,000 customers contacting the company. In an email sent the customers and the NGO, Samsung said it is investigating the matter.

“While we do not have a direct relationship with tin suppliers from Bangka Island, we do know that some of the tin that we use for manufacturing our products does originate from this area,” Samsung said. “We are also undertaking a thorough investigation of our supply chain in the region to better understand what is happening, and what part we play.”

Bangka and neighboring island Belitung account for about 90 percent of Indonesia’s tin production. Mining on the islands involves more than half the population, but is largely unregulated, leading to a raft of ills. An investigation last year by the Guardian and Friends of the Earth found widespread use of child labor, clearing of forests, and degradation to coral reefs. Accidents kill scores of people each year.

After the investigation, Friends of the Earth called on Samsung and Apple to disclose whether they use tin from Bangka in their smartphones and tablets. To date only Samsung has admitted to sourcing Bangka tin, a point highlighted by Friends of the Earth.

“It’s great Samsung has taken an industry lead by tracking its supply chains all the way to Indonesia’s tin mines and committing to taking responsibility for helping tackle the devastating impact that mining tin for electronics has on people and the environment,” said Craig Bennett of Friends of the Earth in a statement.

“Rival Apple is already playing catch-up on the high street in terms of smartphone sales – it’s time it followed Samsung’s lead by coming clean about its whole supply chains too.”

From Mongabay: “Samsung admits to using tin linked to child labor, deforestation; Apple mum on sourcing“

Palm oil industry burning Indonesian orangutans into extinction to build plantations

by | Jun 29, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Lobbying

By Oliver Milman / The Guardian

The world’s densest population of orangutans is set to be “extinguished” by a massive new wave of fires that is clearing large tracts of a peat swamp forest in the Indonesian island of Sumatra, conservationists have warned.

Environmentalists claim that satellite images show a huge surge in forest blazes across the Tripa peat swamp in order to create palm oil plantations, including areas that have not been permitted for clearing.

Tripa is home to a tight-knit enclave of around 200 critically endangered orangutans. However, this number has plummeted from an estimated population of 3,000.

Just 7,000 orangutans remain in Sumatra, with rampant forest clearing for palm oil cultivation blamed for their decline.

Ian Singleton, head of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP), said that the Tripa orangutans are being “extinguished.”

“The situation is indeed extremely dire,” he said. “Every time I have visited Tripa in the last 12 months I have found several orangutans hanging on for their very survival, right at the forest edge.”

“When you see the scale and speed of the current wave of destruction and the condition of the remaining forests, there can be no doubt whatsoever that many have already died in Tripa due to the fires themselves, or due to starvation as a result of the loss of their habitat and food resources.”

Felling trees from Tripa’s carbon-rich peat also triggers the release of large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Indonesia has been named as the third highest emitter of CO2 emissions in the world when deforestation is a factor, although the country disputes this.

Environmentalists have lodged a lawsuit against PT Kallista Alam, one of the five palm oil firms operating in Tripa, and Irwandi Yusuf, the former governor of Aceh, over the approval of a permit for the 1,600-hectare (3,950-acre) palm oil plantation.

Irawardi, previously styled as a “green” governor, says he granted the permit due to delays in the UN’s Redd+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) programme, which has seen Norway pledge $US1bn to Indonesia to reduce deforestation.

“The international community think our forest is a free toilet for their carbon,” Irawardi said in April. “Every day they are saying they want clean air and to protect forests … but they want to inhale our clean air without paying anything.”

SOCP and lawyers representing Tripa’s local communities have called upon the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to bypass an ongoing government investigation into the forest clearing and immediately halt the razing of the area.

“This whole thing makes absolutely no sense at all, not environmentally, nor even economically,” said Singleton.

From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/29/fires-indonesia-orangutan

Palm oil industry rapidly destroying Indonesian forests

by | Jun 19, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Noncooperation

By Agence France-Presse

Surging demand for palm oil in India for cooking and everyday grocery items is driving tropical forest destruction in Indonesia, Greenpeace said Tuesday.

In its report “Frying the Forest” the group called on Indians to boycott products by brands Britannia, ITC, Parle and Godrej, such as biscuits and soap, until the companies commit to sustainable palm oil supply chains.

“Palm oil plantations in Indonesia are expanding rapidly every year to meet India’s demands,” Greenpeace forest campaigner Mohammed Iqbal Abisaputra said in Jakarta.

“We are asking Indian consumers now to stop buying products made from unsustainable Indonesian palm oil.”

Booming India is the world’s hungriest nation for palm oil, consuming almost 7.4 million tonnes last year, or 15 percent of global production, almost all of it imported, US Foreign Agricultural Service data show.

Of that amount, 5.8 million tonnes is imported from Indonesian companies, many of which Greenpeace claims are illegally clearing carbon-rich peatland.

One company targeted by the group is Duta Palma, which owns 155,000 hectares of palm oil plantations in Indonesia, the report says.

The company is deforesting peatland up to eight metres deep on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, the report says, despite a law banning the clearance of peatland more than three metres deep.

Greenpeace also claims fires continue to burn on peatland within the company’s concession, even though the slash-and-burn technique for forest clearance is illegal.

The report comes after a string of successful consumer-targeted Greenpeace campaigns, in which brands like Barbie-maker Mattel and food-maker Kraft dropped paper packaging contracts with Asia Pulp & Paper, who were accused of logging outside their concession area.

The focus on India marks a shift in Greenpeace’s strategy to consumers in developing countries.

“Asian countries will be among the first to feel the effects of climate change, so we can no longer act as if it’s Europe or America’s problem,” Abisaputra said.

Indonesia has implemented a two-year moratorium on issuing new logging concessions on peatland and other high-conservation forest. But unsustainable logging continues within companies’ existing concessions.

Before the moratorium, 80 percent of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions came from deforestation, UN data show, making it the world’s third-biggest emitter.

From PhysOrg: http://phys.org/news/2012-06-palm-oil-india-indonesian-forests.html

In one-sided negotiations, palm oil corporation obtains Moi land for 1/7000th its economic value

In one-sided negotiations, palm oil corporation obtains Moi land for 1/7000th its economic value

by | May 23, 2012 | Agriculture, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy

By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay

A palm oil company has paid indigenous Moi landowners in Indonesian Papua a paltry $0.65 per hectare for land that will be worth $5,000 a hectare once cultivated, according to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Indonesian NGO, Telepak. The report outlines similar disadvantageous deals in timber with the same companies breaking their promises of bringing education and infrastructure.

“Papuans, some of the poorest citizens in Indonesia, are being utterly exploited in legally questionable oil palm land deals that provide huge financial opportunities for international investors at the expense of the people and forests of West Papua,” said Jago Wadley, EIA Senior Forest Campaigner, in a press release.

During investigations in 2009, the EIA and Telepak interviewed the Moi tribe about their interactions with palm oil producer PT Henrison Inti Persada (PT HIP). Although the tribe never received a copy of the contract, the EIA was able to secure a hand-written contract for the 1,420 hectares of forest.

“Highly one-sided negotiations were characterized by persuasion and pressure from company staff backed by local government officials and, at times, intimidation from military and police,” the report reads. “Landowners unanimously reported they had initially agreed to release large areas following up-front cash offers, but also largely due to company promises of benefits such as new houses, vehicles, and free education for their children.”

Yet, the tribe was paid over 7,000 times less than the company expected to profit, and the promises of a better life never materialized.

The tribe told the EIA that the primary reason for signing the contract was the promise of free education. However, they were not told that education would only be offered to a few students selected by the company who would receive three years of polytechnic education in Java for free—but with conditions. In exchange for the education these same students must commit to working for the palm oil company, PT HIP, for seven years. The EIA says the scheme “verg[es] on indentured labour.”

The Noble Group, a commodities trading giant, has a majority stake in PT HIP, but did not respond to questions from mongabay.com regarding the report and if it planned to investigate the allegations.

The report goes on to accuse Norway of profiting off the exploitation of Indonesian Papuans by investing in Noble Group, even while the Nordic nation spends a billion dollars to jump-start a program in Indonesia to reduce deforestation. Norway is a major backer of Indonesia’s first Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, but at the same time has invested nearly $50 million in Noble Group through its sovereign wealth fund.