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.
We said it in Mundemba, Cameroon, we reiterated it in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, we re-affirm this in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire: the abuse against women in and around industrial oil palm plantations must STOP!
A Collection of Articles Published in the WRM Bulletin on the issue of Resistance, Women and the Impacts of Plantations.
Despite that most forest fires in Indonesia started within expanding oil palm plantation concession areas, companies are not being persecuted. (Available in Indonesian).
DRC is following the trend of promoting programmes to ‘integrate’ peasants with agribusinesses, putting people’s control over their lands at risk.
The oil palm company Socapalm in Cameroon plans to renew its ISO 14001 certification, which expired in 2017. We expose the company's attempts to cover up the destruction caused to the communities and the environment
How secrecy and collusion in industrial agriculture spell disaster for the Congo Basin’s rainforests.
"12 Replies to 12 Lies about Oil Palm Monoculture Plantations" has been updated. The publication now includes a chapter about how oil palm companies lie when they say they respect women's rights.
From rapes, forced body searches and searches of private spaces, to the risk of losing their lives: this article calls on us not to be accomplices to the violence women living around tree plantations in Cameroon suffer.
The expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia has turned women into landless food buyers and cheap labour, with no adequate safety and health protection, for the plantation companies. (Available in Indonesian).