{"id":14184,"date":"2021-08-09T08:48:38","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T08:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/?p=14184"},"modified":"2021-12-01T12:38:28","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T12:38:28","slug":"cameroonians-rally-to-demand-eu-stop-deforestation-for-rubber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/press\/14184\/cameroonians-rally-to-demand-eu-stop-deforestation-for-rubber\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameroonians rally to demand EU stop deforestation for rubber"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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SOLIDARITY WITH BAKA PEOPLE<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

Monday, 9 August 2021, Yaound\u00e9 \u2013 <\/strong>More than 30 young Cameroonian activists crowded in front of the headquarters of the European Union Delegation in Cameroon\u2019s capital, Yaound\u00e9, this morning to demand the end of the EU support for rubber originating from rainforest destruction. The mobilization took place while the European Commission in Brussels is drawing up the articles of a new law on commodities linked to deforestation and forest degradation.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cCameroonians rally today for a bold EU policy: rubber products linked to deforestation must be kept out of the European market. Europeans cannot vote with one hand for a Green New Deal and use the other one to buy commodities or finance plantations that erase our forests and displace our people,\u201d said Nkolo Thade, a Baka indigenous leader who spoke at the rally.<\/p>\n\n

The rally marks the International Day of the World\u2019s Indigenous Peoples<\/a>, after 10,000 hectares of rainforest in the South of Cameroon (an area about the size of Paris) were trashed by the multinational rubber company Halcyon Agri and the previous owner of its local subsidiary Sudcam<\/a>. This operation, from 2011 to 2018, resulted in the displacement of Baka Indigenous People<\/a> and the threatening of the Dja Faunal Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[1] Demands for restoration of the forest and compensation of the Baka community have been consistently flouted by Halcyon Agri\u2019s management.<\/p>\n\n

Nevertheless, rubber from plantations such as this is being processed and marketed undisturbed to markets around the world, including the EU\u2019s. Furthermore, European banks are financing such plantations: in July 2020, Deutsche Bank\u2019s scandalously described a $25 million loan to Halcyon Agri<\/a> as a \u201csustainability loan.\u201d For over a year, the bank has refused to reconsider its loan after Greenpeace Africa and Greenpeace Germany have shared reports concerning its client\u2019s human rights violations, environmental crimes, and lack of transparency.[2] <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe people in the EU unwittingly consume rubber from deforestation areas, and EU banks are financing the land grabs. If the rubber industry gets away with trashing our rainforest, it will continue to do so with rainforests everywhere,\u201d said Marie Grace Ngo, a Cameroonian activist from Greenpeace Africa and a student at the Institut des Relations Internationales du Cameroun (IRIC).<\/p>\n\n

While youth activists rally today, the Greenpeace European Unit and Greenpeace Africa handed over a letter to the ambassador of the EU delegation in Yaound\u00e9<\/a>, calling for the adoption of ambitious and effective legislation on forest-and-ecosystem-risk commodities (FERCs). <\/p>\n\n

New EU legislation is urgently needed to regulate the placing of forest-and-ecosystem-risk commodities on the EU market. Greenpeace Africa calls to include natural rubber as a key risk commodity in the upcoming EU law to halt deforestation and forest degradation driven by EU consumption. <\/p>\n\n

Greenpeace demands:<\/p>\n\n