{"id":11698,"date":"2017-12-04T08:59:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T07:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.p4.greenpeace.org\/international\/uncategorised\/11698\/the-palm-oil-industry-promises-reform-but-theres-still-no-sign-of-change\/"},"modified":"2020-11-30T18:17:23","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T17:17:23","slug":"the-palm-oil-industry-promises-reform-but-theres-still-no-sign-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/11698\/the-palm-oil-industry-promises-reform-but-theres-still-no-sign-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"The palm oil industry promises reform, but there\u2019s still no sign of change"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was ten years ago that Greenpeace first published an investigation<\/a> into Indonesia\u2019s palm oil industry. We showed that the world\u2019s biggest brands got their palm oil from companies destroying Indonesia\u2019s rainforests – threatening local people as well as tigers and orangutans.<\/p>\n

\"Haze

Children play without wearing any protection at the playground while the air is engulfed with thick haze from the forest fires at Sei Ahass village, Kapuas district in Central Kalimantan province on Borneo island, Indonesia.<\/p><\/div>\n

As people learned the truth about their shampoo, cosmetics and chocolate bars, brands and their suppliers started to feel the pressure. In 2013, Wilmar became the first palm oil trader to adopt a No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) policy<\/a>. Others followed suit, and by the end of 2014, most household brands and big palm oil companies had sworn to protect Indonesia\u2019s rainforests.<\/p>\n

Greenpeace doesn\u2019t take companies at their word \u2013 we watch them closely to make sure they\u2019re keeping their promises. A couple of years ago, we investigated household brands<\/a> and weren\u2019t that impressed with what we found. So this year, we took a look at the biggest palm oil traders<\/a> – the companies that brands get their palm oil from.<\/p>\n

\"Bearing

A Greenpeace investigator documents the devastation of a company-identified ‘No Go’ area of peatland in the PT Bumi Sawit Sejahtera (IOI) oil palm concession in Ketapang, West Kalimantan. This area of the concession suffered extensive fires in 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n

The results are alarming. Not one of the traders could prove it wasn\u2019t buying from palm oil companies that destroyed rainforests. Most could not even say when there would be no deforestation in their supply chains. Instead of cutting out dirty palm oil, traders have a \u2018don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u2019 policy – they pretend everything is under control while Indonesia\u2019s forests go up in smoke.<\/p>\n

Indonesia\u2019s people and environment are paying for the industry\u2019s failure. The country has lost 31 million hectares of forest \u2013 an area almost the size of Germany \u2013 since 1990. A recent study on Borneo and Sumatra orangutans <\/a>showed that the population has significantly declined, with destruction of their habitat a leading cause of the crisis. Forest destruction has also contributed to the annual fires and haze crisis<\/a> that threatens the health of people across Southeast Asia. One study estimated that the 2015 fires crisis contributed to over 100,000 premature deaths<\/a>. NGOs have also uncovered widespread human rights abuses in palm oil plantations, including child labour<\/a> and worker exploitation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This should be a wake-up call for brands like PepsiCo, Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Mondelez. These brands promised their customers they would cut ties with forest destruction. For too long, brands have passed the buck to their suppliers – the traders whose progress we assessed and found wanting.<\/p>\n

\"Land

An excavator constructs a canal in recently cleared land in an oil palm concession owned by PT Andalan Sukses Makmur (PT ASMR) concession, a subsidiary of Bumitama Agro Ltd.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s time brands took responsibility for the palm oil they\u2019re using. The first step is to tell us where their palm oil really comes from. Then brands need to clean up their supply chains and cut out anyone still destroying forests. That\u2019s the only way we\u2019ll get this destructive industry to change.<\/p>\n

Thankfully it\u2019s not all bad news. Just a few weeks ago, scientists discovered a whole new species of orangutan in Sumatra<\/a>! This is an amazing discovery – but like the rest of the orangutan popular, there\u2019s a big risk that their habitat gets destroyed. It\u2019s up to us to make sure that these amazing creatures have healthy branches to swing on in the future.<\/p>\n

Bagus Kusuma is a forest campaigner with Greenpeace Southeast Asia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was ten years ago that Greenpeace first published an investigation into Indonesia\u2019s palm oil industry. We showed that the world\u2019s biggest brands got their palm oil from companies destroying Indonesia\u2019s rainforests – threatening local people as well as tigers and orangutans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":12343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[100,70],"tags":[84,101],"p4-page-type":[59],"class_list":["post-11698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about","category-nature","tag-forests","tag-fires","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11698"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45754,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11698\/revisions\/45754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11698"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=11698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}