Palm Oil
The oil palm tree is native to West Africa. It is an important tree for forest-dependent communities, their cultures and their economies. However, large-scale oil palm monocultures for industrial production (oil and agrofuels) have been driving deforestation and land grabbing in Southeast Asia. More recently, oil palm monocultures are also driving destruction in Africa and Latin America.
In a statement released on 14 August 2019, RIAO-RDC and support organisations call on DRC authorities to immediately find and arrest the murder suspect. Weeks have passed since the killing of Joël Imbangola Lunea without an arrest of the murder suspect.
A letter signed by over 140 organizations and social movements from different countries around the world and by over 110,000 individuals has been sent to the President of the DRC and the Governour of Equateur province, where the killing took place.
We ask for your urgent support. Please sign on to the Action Alert. It is important to send the letter as soon as possible.
A member of the Congolese environmental and human rights organisation RIAO-RDC was brutally killed by a security guard of the Canadian palm oil company Feronia Inc. on Sunday, July 21, 2019, near the company’s Boteka plantations in Bempumba, Eqauteur Province, DRC.
While the destruction of forest territories continues, more pledges, agreements and programs are being implemented in the name of ‘addressing deforestation and climate change’.
Only available in French.
Certification schemes for tree plantations initially generated many expectations, promising a true transformation. Yet after all these years, we can definitely conclude that what the RSPO and FSC also have in common is that they will not meet those expectations.
Interview with Hajaratu Abdullahi from Community Forest Watch in Nigeria who talks about the hardship and misery that the palm oil company Okomu Oil, subsidiary of global palm oil company SocFin, is bringing to communities like hers in Nigeria's Edo state
Nine communities from the DR Congo took a historic step this week by filing a complaint with the complaints mechanism of the German development bank (Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft – DEG)
DRC is following the trend of promoting programmes to ‘integrate’ peasants with agribusinesses, putting people’s control over their lands at risk.
How secrecy and collusion in industrial agriculture spell disaster for the Congo Basin’s rainforests.