By Irene Hadiprayitno , Utrecht

The palm oil industry is not only popular in the discourse of biofuels, but it is also economically lucrative.

In Indonesia alone the industry covers 17 provinces, employing about 2 million workers. The industry has generated an income amounting to Rp 7.779 million.

However, while examining the situation at the grassroots level, the effect is to the contrary, rather than improving it is victimizing.

Millions of hectares of tropical forests have been burned to make way for oil palm plantations; an annual haze is being experienced by people living in the vicinity. According to Sawit Watch, Indonesia has increased its palm estates to 7.3 million hectares and is planning to expand the area by a further 20 million hectares — an area the size of England, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined.

Moreover, the industry is also notoriously known as the cause of local conflicts. In January 2008, Sawit Watch monitored 513 conflicts between communities and companies. Some of these conflicts can be traced back to earlier land disputes. Mostly, they are over land rights, but other disputes arise over compensation, unmet promises and smallholding arrangements.

The industry has also caused displacement, homelessness and morbidity. In Aceh, 360,000 people were displaced from their homes and 70 died as a result of floods in 2006, which have been a common problem in the region since oil palm plantations arrived.

At the grassroots level, regardless of how important the palm oil is for biodiesel production, the rising price does not affect peasants’ income. Their salaries remain determined by the regional minimum wage scheme. In the case of North Barito, Central Kalimantan, one of the prominent palm oil plantations, it is only Rp. 876,536, an unreasonable amount compared to the selling price of crude palm oil, which was US$1135 per metric ton on Jan. 15, 2008.

Ideally, development should imply a structural improvement to people’s ability to sustain their daily livelihoods. Indeed, not only are economies to be uplifted, but the people themselves. Thus, both living standards and capabilities of those living at the grassroots should increase.

When designing a policy, a primary concern should be how to protect those affected by the consequences and, in particular, how to secure their entitlements within the execution of development policies. It is here we touch upon internationally accepted human rights standards and procedures. Human rights pertaining to each and every human being constitutes a necessity for protecting people against hazards.

When combating hazards caused by the palm oil industry, one can refer to the United Nations’ Declaration on the Right to Development adopted by the General Assembly in 1986. The declaration defines the right to development as an inalienable human right by virtue. Accordingly, every human and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development so that all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized.

Obviously, development is seen here as a process that encompasses economic, social, cultural and political aspects. This implies a structural uplifting of welfare and well-being, affecting not just infrastructure, but also human beings.

The declaration regards those affected by development policies as right-holders who have to be protected against losing their entitlements, a common situation in development hazards. Accordingly, the right to development requires adopting favorable measures for development beneficiaries in the development process and for development victims to seek claims for compensation from development hazards.

The Indonesian government is responsible for implementing the right to development. However, rather than eradicating the hazard, they continues to comply with other interests rather than people. There are no appropriate measures allocated to deal with homelessness, degradation of health, morbidity or social conflict.

Instead the government recently adopted a forestry law, which provides a broad license for companies to exploit protected forests as long as they are willing to pay annual rental fees ranging between Rp 1.2 million (US$125) and Rp 3 million per hectare. Notably, the law prioritizes companies over people, who are now more vulnerable to development hazards.

In the case of the palm oil industry, the Indonesian government not only denies access to compensation, but also fails to protect and respect peoples’ entitlements by not taking actions to eradicate the hazards and adopting disincentive regulations.

Using human rights to combat hazards caused by the palm oil industry entails protecting people during the process and ensuring fairness in development distribution. From the peoples’ perspective, this grants opportunities for legitimate claims addressing correlated obligations or duties. Thus, it stresses the opportunity to seek remedies and compensation in the case of development hazards.

The writer is a PhD Candidate at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University, writing on the topic of the right to development.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/05/27/using-human-rights-combat-palm-oil039s-hazards.html

By Matt Ford

Making contact: Indigenous tribes’ fight to survive

(CNN) — Last month photographs of the discovery of one of the world’s last “uncontacted” tribes on the Brazil/Peru border made front covers across the world, vividly illustrating a way of life that is mostly unknown and ignored in the industrialized world.

But in the group’s very “otherness” lies a vulnerability that makes them some of the most marginalized people on Earth.

Far from being a unique example there are actually over 100 tribes across the world — half of whom live in Brazil and Peru — that have chosen to reject contact with outsiders and fight for the right to live as their ancestors did before them.

But without proper protection such tribes could soon become extinct, according to Stephen Corry, the director of campaign group Survival International.

“These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist,” he says.

“The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct.”

Many remote tribes’ refusal to engage with the modern world has meant that they have been forced to effectively live on the run; frequently their communities have been besieged by loggers, mining companies, oil drillers, farmers and cattle ranchers who all want access to the land for themselves.

But it’s not only being forced off their land that these groups have to fear, exposure to new diseases for which they have no immunity, can be deadly.

There are cases when half of a tribe has died within the first year of “contact” with the outside world.

Far from bringing “progress” and a better life, contact with the outside world has frequently meant disease, death and drug addiction for tribal people.

Plus, the exposure to a different values system — that can bring with it drugs, alcohol and prostitution — can be corrosive to existing social structures leading to the erosion of tribal bonds, depression, suicide, HIV/Aids and obesity.

Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior, an official in the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department described the threat to such tribes as “a monumental crime against the natural world” and “further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilized’ ones, treat the world”.

The struggle to stay detached

The Brazilian government has a policy of not contacting isolated tribes and says it is committed to protecting them.

But human rights activists such as Fiona Watson from Survival International say that the rights of native tribes is still low down on the government’s list of priorities, and the small groups of civil servants charged with defending the tribes people find it hard to fight large, high profile projects such as hydro-electric dams that impinge on their lands.

It’s a problem by no means limited to South America, and wherever isolated tribes rub up against industrialized society — from India to Africa, the Americas and Asia — there is conflict.

Globally the pressure on tribal lands is only increasing as recent hikes in food and oil prices encourage farmers to convert more wild areas to the cultivation of plants for biofuel production, or global commodity crops such as maize, sugar, soy beans and palm oil.

According to Survival International, in Malaysia six million hectares of oil palm have been planted, much of it on indigenous territory, while in Colombia, many indigenous families have been evicted because of palm oil plantations and other crops.

“[Tribal] lands are being increasingly invaded, whether by loggers or settlers or oil companies, and they are facing violence,” says Watson.

“So it’s absolutely crucial that governments and companies respect and uphold their land rights.”

Plus, because the tribes live in such remote areas, it is often hard for police and security services to effectively protect them, even if the Government does make their safety a priority — a problem that can be compounded by corruption and the collusion of local officials.

Survival International has recently released shocking video footage of an attack on a Makuxi Indian villageVideoin Brazil by men armed with assault rifles and home-made grenades, who they allege were hired by farmers, including the mayor of a nearby town.

Ten people, including six children, were injured in the attack. Although the Makuxi Indians live in an official reserve, ranchers have occupied the land around them illegally and it is claimed they are trying to drive the Makuxi away with threats and violence.

Since the footage was released rancher and local mayor Paulo César Quartiero has been arrested after police found a cache of weapons on his farm.

Freedom to choose progress

In a shrinking world contact between urban society and isolated tribes is becoming increasingly inevitable.

But for Survival International the key objective is to ensure that tribal people are effectively protected by law, giving them the opportunity to control and choose how much contact they would like, if any, giving them the power to direct their own “development.”

“It is not that the Yanomami do not want progress, or other things that white people have,” said Davi Kopenawa, a shaman from Brazil’s Yanomami people.

“They want to be able to choose and not have change thrust upon them, whether they want it or not. “I am not saying I am against progress. I think it is very good when whites come to work amongst the Yanomami to teach reading and writing and to plant and use medicinal plants. This for us is progress.

“What we do not want are the mining companies which destroy the forest and the miners, who bring so many diseases. These whites must respect our Yanomam land. The miners bring guns, alcohol and prostitution and destroy all nature wherever they go. For us this is not progress.

“We want progress without destruction.”

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/06/27/eco.rainforesttribes

NEWSWEEK SPECIAL REPORT
The Threat From Trees

Global warming isn’t just a problem of cars and smokestacks but of the chain saw, too.

By Thomas Lovejoy | NEWSWEEK July 7-14, 2008 issue

The phrase “carbon emissions” usually conjures images of coal-burning power plants or smog-enveloped cities. Less widely appreciated is the role of trees as a source of emissions. When a tree dies or a forest is cut, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. This simple fact presents a big environmental challenge (and an opportunity). Whereas the two biggest carbon emitters, China and the United States, have coal plants and cars to blame, the No. 3 culprit—Indonesia—produces 85 percent of its carbon emissions from forests.

Indonesia’s magnificent dipterocarp forests, a hardwood valued for its timber, have been in retreat for decades. They’re almost entirely gone on heavily populated Java. In the 1990s, Sumatra lost 35 percent of its forests and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) lost 19 percent—much of it lowland forest rich in iconic creatures like the Sumatran rhinoceros and the orangutan. In the forestry component of Yale and Columbia’s Environmental Performance Index, Indonesia comes in last with a score of zero. (Brazil, more infamous for rain-forest destruction, scores an 82.)

Although much of the loss was initially due to harvesting for timber and forest products, particularly plywood, in recent decades illegal logging has been more widespread. The rapid spread of oil-palm plantations is a relatively new threat. Palm oil has recently been recognized as a source of biofuels. From 1990 to 2005, 56 percent of the expansion in oil-palm plantations in Indonesia occurred at the expense of biodiversity-rich forests. Another disturbing trend is the conversion of peat forests, which hold huge amounts of carbon, into plantations by international companies, China’s Asia Pulp & Paper principal among them. Once the forest is cut, the peat dries out, releasing its carbon and raising the risk of fires, which can smolder for years.

Many efforts are underway to stem the deforestation. Emil Salim, Indonesia’s first minister of the Environment, created protected areas and laws and regulations to control logging. Conservation International is working with coffee producers to maintain upland forest in Sumatra. Of particular promise is the innovative Samboja Lestari project on Kalimantan, which uses income from sugar palm (a biofuel source) to wean locals from logging.

In the long run, the most promising development is carbon trading—the only way to generate funds on a sufficient scale to address rampant deforestation in the tropics and its contribution to greenhouse-gas emissions. The beauty of carbon trading is that funds can largely flow to the people in the forest regions who currently have no financial incentive to stop logging. Carbon trading, of course, has many critics. One concern is “leakage”—the notion that controlling the damage in one forest would simply shift the cutting to other forests, with no net gain. This could be avoided with a system of national forest accounting to keep track. Another concern is preventing a proprietor from cutting down a tract of forest shortly after being paid to keep it intact. The simple solution would be to avoid one-time payments and instead use something akin to rent—a periodic payment in return for keeping carbon in the forest and out of the atmosphere.

Collective management of the world’s forests must be sensitive to national aspirations and sovereignty. Done right, it could turn rain-forest nations into powerful forces for environmental good. At the same time, we shouldn’t forget the need to establish incentives to conserve biodiversity as well; valuing a forest for its carbon is like valuing a computer chip for its silicon. Compared with the alternative, investing now in preserving the world’s forests would be a bargain.

Source: Newsweek

By Martin Roberts

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament’s environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

“This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity,” said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

Spain may be better known abroad for bull-fighting than animal rights but the new measures are the latest move turning once-conservative Spain into a liberal trailblazer.

Spain did not legalize divorce until the 1980s, but Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialist government has legalized gay marriage, reduced the influence of the Catholic Church in education and set up an Equality Ministry.

The new resolutions have cross-party or majority support and are expected to become law and the government is now committed to update the statute book within a year to outlaw harmful experiments on apes in Spain.

“We have no knowledge of great apes being used in experiments in Spain, but there is currently no law preventing that from happening,” Pozas said.

Keeping apes for circuses, television commercials or filming will also be forbidden and breaking the new laws will become an offence under Spain’s penal code.

Keeping an estimated 315 apes in Spanish zoos will not be illegal, but supporters of the bill say conditions will need to improve drastically in 70 percent of establishments to comply with the new law.

Philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri founded the Great Ape Project in 1993, arguing that “non-human hominids” like chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured.

(Reporting by Martin Roberts; Editing by Richard Williams)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL256586320080625?feedType=RSS&feedName=scienceNews&rpc=22&sp=true

By PAUL MULROONEY – The Dominion Post

Fulbright scholar Josephine Beck is about to go ape over the vocal repertoire of orang-utans.

That’s the research topic that has earned her a $33,000 grant to attend Harvard University to examine the chest-beating behaviour and screeching sounds of the primate in its natural habitat.

Only after she has completed her studies of two remote areas of Indonesian Borneo will she be able to enjoy the relative gentility of Harvard University’s ivy-league surroundings.

From August till the end of the year Ms Beck, 24, from Taupo, expects to be roughing it in the wilds of Borneo to research the primates’ sound, their behavioural patterns and the extent to which these characteristics have been passed down through generations.

No comprehensive study of the sounds of the wild orang-utan species Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus had been carried out, she said.

“I want to make a database of their vocal repertoire, that includes all of their sounds, all of the calls and all of their functions.”

She would also compare one population of orang-utan with another.

More than 50 of the primates would be studied by the Canterbury University graduate, who would be accompanied by two Indonesian field assistants and a student from an Indonesian university.

The Graduate Award, from Fulbright and the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, is worth about US$25,000 (NZ$33,000).

The money pays for Ms Beck’s tuition and living expenses but not her research costs, which she hopes to fund from separate grants.

It had been five years since the orang-utans had been visited by researchers so Ms Beck hoped that by the time her field research was completed they would be more at ease.

Primate acoustics was “a fairly new field” for her, she said.

“It’s going to tell us whether these calls are learned from other members of the group, and whether they are completely different to another population they haven’t come into contact with.”

The pending isolation did not bother her, she said. “It sounds more romantic than it is. Once you get out there and you’re up to your waist in water and there’s things like leeches, the reality is a little different from what it sounds. But it’s definitely what I love to do.”

Long term, Ms Beck does not want to focus solely on primatology, though her background in biology saw her carry out field work studying chimpanzees and puppy-nosed monkeys in Nigeria.

It had sparked an interest in conservation in developing countries.

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/central-north-island/505182

Let’s just hope the PM’s announcement is not simply a question of ‘why cut down our forests when we can take Indonesia’s instead?’. Keep a close eye on this one… ~ Rich

KUALA LUMPUR: The government will not allow the clearing of forest areas for any new oil palm plantations, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said yesterday.

He said this was avoid accusations being made by some western parties that the opening of oil palm plantations was destroying the forest and ecosystems.

“We realise there are campaigns being carried out by some non-governmental organisations in the west to spread negative news about us as they think that the oil palm plantations are a result of forest clearing which is also endangering the existence of orang utan,” he told reporters here.

Abdullah, who is also Finance Minister, said the existing oil palm plantations were enough to cater to current demands and there was no need for the opening of new plantations at the moment.

There are currently 4.3 million hectares of oil palm plantation land in the country.

“We don’t have to reduce the protected forests to increase new oil palm plantations. We have proof. With more effective management of the plantations and new technologies, production can go up by 30 per cent,” he said after chairing the meeting of the cabinet committee on the competitiveness of the country’s oil palm industry.

He said continued research and development would also result in value added products in the industry.

On the expansion of the biofuel industry, he said: “This will depend on the investors, on whether they want to produce palm oil as a fuel material. The high price of world crude oil will be a major determinant on whether they produce oil palm-based fuel.”

On whether he was concerned with the increasing palm oil price, he said: “As far as we are concerned, price of oil (palm oil) is our wealth. As for cooking oil, it is a controlled food item.”

- Bernama
Source: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Wednesday/National/2276540/Article/index_html

The Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium: Anti-poverty group Oxfam International on Tuesday urged the world’s poorest nations to think twice before jumping on a biofuel boom that could drive farmers off their land and hit food supplies.

In a report, campaigners recommended that developing countries “move with extreme caution” before embarking on any broad push to increase output of energy crops such as palm oil.

It said biofuel exports to Europe and the United States may be lucrative but the potential economic, social and environmental costs are “severe.”

Oxfam said governments need to set safeguards to make sure small farmers are not thrown off their land and that food crops continue to be grown.

The report said Indonesia has seen sharp price rises for palm oil which local people use as a staple cooking oil as the government sets aside 40 percent of output for biofuel.

It warned that this may worsen because both Indonesia and Malaysia want to produce more palm oil to supply a fifth of Europe’s future biofuel demand.

Oxfam is calling on the European Union to scrap a target for biofuel to replace a tenth of transport fuel by 2020. It says the target will not fulfill Europe’s goal of either reducing greenhouse gas emissions or cutting its dependence on imported oil.

“Biofuels currently provide a solution neither to the oil nor to the climate crisis, and are now contributing to a third: the food crisis,” Oxfam spokesman Robert Bailey told reporters.

The group claims that biofuels are partly responsible for hikes in food prices and are to blame for dragging some 30 million people worldwide into poverty.

Europe appears to be rethinking its target. EU leaders last week called for a careful assessment of how using more biofuels might affect global food production.

However, some voices see biofuels as a huge opportunity for developing countries.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says the biofuel boom creates a profitable export for energy crop producers in Africa, Central America and Caribbean that would allow them to claw their way out of poverty.

Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/24/europe/EU-GEN-EU-Biofuels-Development.php