In a huge environmental and human rights victory, World Bank to stop giving palm oil loans

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private arm of the World Bank, has decided to suspend funding in the palm oil sector, affecting the world’s top producer, Wilmar International, pending a review of internal procedures on environmental and social standards…

A group of 19 environmental groups, plantation smallholders and local organizations representing indigenous people filed in 2007 a complaint to the IFC ombudsman over Wilmar’s business practices in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

–Jakarta Post

The destruction of rainforests for palm oil plantations in the world’s tropical regions is one of the biggest environmental problems in the world.  This is a huge step forward, and one of the only bits of encouraging news ever received, for those who know of the destruction of palm oil and work against it.

Go below the fold for more detail and some background info.

Crossposted at dailykos.com, greenchange.org, and opednews.com

According to Reuters, “IFC currently has $132 million invested in palm oil projects in Asia, central America, Ukraine and West Africa.”

The most immediate consequence of this victory is the denial of a $33.3 million dollar loan to Wilmar international, a “top producer” of palm oil.  Also from the Jakarta Post:

The IFC statement also reported that the ombudsman had succeeded in encouraging Wilmar and local community members to pursue a dialogue to help resolve local conflicts.

As a result, Wilmar has instigated a moratorium on further land clearance and has agreed to compensate households for the appropriation of land.

And from the activists’ point of view, here’s a bit of a statement from Survival International:

The decision was made less than a month after a World Bank internal report concluded its loans to the Wilmar oil palm trading group, operating in Indonesia, were violating the Bank’s own social and environmental standards. The report was triggered by a complaint from Sawit Watch and other organisations.

‘When we filed our complaint we noted that Wilmar subsidiaries were illegally using fire to clear primary forests and high conservation value areas and seizing indigenous peoples’ lands without their free, prior and informed consent, triggering serious conflicts. (The internal) report shows that the IFC (the World Bank’s private funding arm) overrode its standards,’ said a Sawit Watch spokesperson, quoted by the FPP.

For some background of the palm oil crisis, you can take a look at the two diaries I wrote about it a few months back.  Here’s an excerpt of each.

Are your Skittles destroying the rainforest? Part 1:

Let’s start with a basic statement, and add more to it as we go:

The rainforest is being cleared at an alarming rate to make room for palm plantations.

The rainforest is being cleared at an alarming rate, particularly in Southeast Asia, to make room for palm plantations.

The rainforest is being cleared at an alarming rate, particularly in Southeast Asia, to make room for palm plantations.  Many species – both discovered and undiscovered – are being driven to extinction because of habitat loss.

The rainforest is being cleared at an alarming rate, particularly in Southeast Asia, to make room for palm plantations.  Many species – both discovered and undiscovered – are being driven to extinction because of habitat loss.  The most notable is the orangutan, which could become extinct within the decade because of deforestation in Malaysia, Borneo, and Indonesia….

The thing that you can do right now that will have the most impact is to stop buying products with palm ingredients in them.  This will reduce the demand for them and send a message to companies that use them.  There are so many products with palm in them that you have to be ever vigilant at the supermarket, drugstore, convenience store, etc.  Below I’ve listed just a few off the top of my head:

Skittles

Good Humor chipwiches

Wasa crackers

Trader Joe’s chocolate chip cookies

Newman’s Own Oreos

Clearasil face wash

Kit Kats

Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets

A comment from user jayden:  “Kellog’s Eggo Nutri-grain whole wheat waffles have both palm oil and palm kernel listed in the ingredients.”

A comment from user BattleAngel:  “Noooo! Not my beloved Cheez-Its. They also contain palm oil as well as almost everything made by Little Debbie.”

And here’s a bit of part 2:

First, it’s extremely hard to tell what products palm oil is in.  Palm oil can be labeled on a list of ingredients anything from “palm oil” to “palm kernel oil” to “cetyl alcohol” to “sodium laureth sulfate” to plain old “vegetable oil.”  And a lot of things that palm oil appears as can also be from other kinds of vegetables.  For instance, “vegetable oil” can be from palm or canola or olives or many other plants.  And with palm oil being in one out of ten consumer products, there is little hope of avoiding it completely.

Second, there’s the biodiesel problem.  The majority of demand for palm oil is for the biodiesel market.  Ironically, this fuel that is supposed to help the environment is actually more detrimental than gasoline.

But palm oil isn’t just bad for the environment.  It’s also a human rights disaster, as this National Geographic article shows:

They are of the Kenyah tribe, and they moved here last year. Before, they lived in a village called Long Noran on the Wahau River, in the interior of Borneo. The forest there is long gone, cut by a big timber company once owned by the notorious Bob Hasan, a Suharto crony and former government minister who was later convicted of corruption. With only scrub left, the entire area around their village, which stood inside the company’s timber concession, burned in massive fires in 1997-98. The blazes were ignited by companies preparing land for plantations and spread rapidly to neighboring land during a season of drought.

“We had gardens, fruit trees, rubber trees, and vegetable fields, all burned,” Udan Usat says. “There was conflict with the timber company. They accused us of starting the fires, but we didn’t do it. The fires came from far away.”

This is good news.  With the emergence of eco-tourism, a new climate change agreement soon, and new and creative efforts to save the rainforest, I am hopeful.