Cameroon

Herakles Farms is engaged in the development of a controversial 20,000 ha oil palm plantation in the South-West Region of Cameroon that faces strong opposition from affected communities.

On 29 January 2014, a letter was sent by several NGOs to relevant UN Special Rapporteurs requesting they investigate and intervene in these cases of acts of repression and criminalisation of local organisations and activists in Cameroon. You can learn more about the case here:

Photo: credito: Greenpeace/Alex Yallop On 25 November 2013, the President of Cameroon issued three decrees granting 19,843 ha of native land to SGSustainable Oils Cameroon/Herakles Farms in southwest Cameroonfor the establishment of a large-scale oil palm plantation.

Governments are opening the doors to corporations for planting vast areas of land with oil palm plantations. This trend is not only happening in West and Central African countries, but is even expanding to parts of Eastern Africa. Large scale oil palm plantations are already causing serious environmental and social impacts in some countries, resulting in loss of community rights over their territories.

 

Powerful countries and corporations have targeted the African continent to become a commodity supplier for their industrial needs. This has led to intense land grabbing with industrial oil palm plantations becoming in recent years a new source of land grabbing in many African countries.

By Forests Monitor, 2001 Sold Down the River - The Need to Control Transnational Forestry Corporations: A European Case Study

The forest of the Congo Basin expands over an area of continuous tropical rainforest cover only second to that of the Amazon forest. Those forests are currently receiving a lot of attention within the Climate Change negotiations.

Au milieu d’un désert vert de 60 000 hectares de plantations de palmiers à huile se trouvent 150 hectares de terres agricoles et boisées qui appartiennent au village d’Apouh A Ngog de la région d’Edéa, au Cameroun. Le village en question, comme tant d’autres, est encerclé par les plantations et, depuis des années, est en conflit avec Socapalm, filiale locale du groupe français Bolloré [1].

Most Baka, Bagyeli and Bakola, recognised as “people of the forest,” still rely on hunting and gathering to secure their livelihoods, and even though some also cultivate annual crops, the majority still rely on the forests. For them, the forest is their ancestral home, their reliable grocery, the root of their existence, and their customary right (seeWRM Bulletin Nº 87).

After French industrialist Vincent Bolloré filed two lawsuits against Radio France Inter, both for alleged defamation regarding plantations operated by SOCAPALM (Société Camerounaise de Palmeraies), photographer Isabelle Alexandra Ricq and researcher Julien-François Gerber addressed ten lies typically used to defend Bolloré, one by one.