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.
Bulletin articles
28 September 2026
A group of Turiwara People reclaimed one of their traditional villages with a single goal in mind: to advance demarcation of their ancestral territory invaded by Agropalma, a company acquired by the Daabon Group.
Bulletin articles
7 April 2026
Resistance of communities from Cameroon and Sierra Leone whose lands have been invaded by the palm oil and rubber company Socfin for decades dealt an economic blow to the company. The company’s operations are particularly harmful for women, many of whom are facing threats for standing up against these violations and bringing them to public attention.
Bulletin articles
7 April 2026
The negative impacts of oil palm monocultures promoted by a national policy are already being felt in three villages in the state of Manipur. The turmoil it is creating at the plantation villages indicates a departure from the indigenous ways of land governance and relations to a system designed to cater to a corporate economic system.
Bulletin articles
15 October 2025
Whether they are in Brazil, amidst eucalyptus plantations, or in Thailand, surrounded by oil palm plantations, women suffer specific impacts from these monocultures. Women are on the frontlines of the resistance to these projects, which exploit and devastate the land in pursuit of profit. This is what two peasant activists fighting to defend the land – one from Brazil and one from Thailand – tell us.
Bulletin articles
15 October 2025
Two Joghban leaders who have been active in the fight against Equatorial Palm Oil's (EPO) invasion of their ancestral lands talk about their victorious resistance process. Their resistance culminated in 2018 with official state recognition of part of their territory. However, they stress that this long-term struggle is ongoing. “We are going to resist; we will always resist, because land matters to us and to our future generations”, says Isaac Banwon, one of the leaders.
Bulletin articles
24 June 2025
WRM Bulletin 274 included an article on the work of the Earthworm Foundation, entitled: ‘NGOs at the service of plundering territories: the Earthworm Foundation case’. It describes how corporations which are causing conflict in the territories where they operate profit from cooperation with groups like Earthworm Foundation, while violence against community activists, landgrabs and sexual assaults of women continue.
Bulletin articles
23 April 2025
Under the guise of ‘conflict mediation’ and community empowerment, the work of certain corporate NGOs results in communities continuing without access to and control over their lands, and in strengthening destructive production models. One example is the Earthworm Foundation's partnership with palm oil agribusiness in several countries. See the article and interview below.
Bulletin articles
24 October 2024
This article tells the story of a Podcast that is being jointly launched with Solidaritas Perumpuan, a feminist organisation from Indonesia. This espisode is the third in the series “Women’s struggles for land”, produced by WRM together with organisations from different countries. This one tells the story of women's resistance to oil palm plantations, REDD and a large-scale project for food production (Food Estate) in three villages in Central Kalimantan.
Bulletin articles
22 August 2024
Just like the Dutch colonizers in the past did, the Indonesian government, companies and investors consider the land of Papua to be a vast empty territory, a new frontier for extraction and profiteering However, the land of Papua is not empty, but rather home to hundreds of Indigenous Peoples—including the women and men of Kampung Bariat village, who are struggling to ensure control over their ancestral territory and keep it free of oil palm plantations.
Bulletin articles
22 August 2024
Peasant families are threatened with eviction by Brasil Bio Fuels (BBF) oil palm plantation company, with the complicity of the state government. This article shows that the much spoken of ‘bioeconomy’ is not ‘sustainable’ and even less ‘clean’. What it does is destroy communities’ territories, just like fossil fuel-based extractive industries have been doing for a long time.
Bulletin articles
22 August 2024
The company is in the process of renewing part of its oil palm plantations in Edéa. At the end of last year, communities started to mobilize against this process. The community resistance has led the sub-prefect to request Socapalm to stop its activities. This is a first victory of the community but the struggle will continue until SOCAPALM returns the lands to the communities!
Bulletin articles
27 February 2024
The Amazon region is one of the final frontiers of resistance to capital expansion. This is epitomized by the struggles of social activists such as Chico Mendes, as well as by the presence of most of the earth’s remaining indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. However, different forms of ‘green’ extractivism are currently and increasingly advancing on this territory.