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
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.
Bulletin articles
26 February 2024
In the Acará Valley, Pará state, the Tembé and Turiwara indigenous peoples, and quilombola and peasant communities are fighting to take back part of the living spaces they traditionally occupied. It is not just a struggle for territory, but one to reverse a history of oppression and injustice. Today, they are denouncing structural violence and state omission.
Bulletin articles
26 February 2024
The expanding agricultural frontier to grow soybean and oil palm, in addition to mining and the potential construction of mega-dams, are advancing upon the living spaces of indigenous and peasant communities. In late 2018, communities organized a coordinating committee to defend their territories and their right to a dignified life.
Articles
24 February 2024
Between August 4 and 7, 2023, there were violent attacks on the lives of four indigenous Tembé people as a consequence of the struggle to take back territories from the hands of the company Brasil BioFuels (BBF). In the face of this, the Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA) sent a formal letter to the authorities requesting the immediate regularization of indigenous and quilombola territories, as well as an investigation into the mechanisms of criminalization of their leaders and the suspension of all incentives to companies involved in the violence.
Articles
24 February 2024
On August 8, 2023, the National Human Rights Council (CNDH) sent a recommendation to federal and state authorities regarding measures to protect, promote and defend indigenous peoples and quilombola, riverine, peasant and agro-extractivist populations in Pará state.
Bulletin articles
19 December 2023
Almost 30 years of UN climate negotiations have resulted in the establishment of policies and practices that facilitate the constant expansion of the fossil fuel-based economy (and its profits) while hiding its implacable negative impacts for the territories where it expands.
Bulletin articles
19 December 2023
The Afrise women's association launched an international petition to stop the replanting of oil palm monocultures around their homes and over the grave sites of their ancestors. They are denouncing decades of sexual abuse, land dispossession and misery. They are demanding that their territory be returned to them, so that they can lead a life of dignity.
Multimedia
19 December 2023
The Afrise women's association launched an international petition to stop the replanting of oil palm monocultures around their homes and over the grave sites of their ancestors. Here we share the testimony of the president of Afrise.
Action alerts
28 November 2023
Sign this petition against the replanting of oil palm by Socapalm (Socfin/ Bolloré) in the vicinity of the homes and tombs of the neighbouring village Apouh à Ngog, in Edea-Cameroon.
Action alerts
20 November 2023
Collective statement, 20 November 2023
Bulletin articles
25 October 2023
Land related struggles in India’s Northeast states might worsen with the push to expand oil palm plantations on small-farmers and Indigenous land, threatening their food sovereignty and the ancestral practice of Jhum (shifting cultivation). On top of this, a new Forest Amendment Law will facilitate this expansion, jeopardizing further the region’s forests and Indigenous Peoples.
Other information
25 October 2023
The video "Uganda: Resisting Industrial Oil Palm Plantations" is now available in Bahasa Indonesian. It highlights the resistance of communities in Buvuma Island, in Uganda, where the Bidco company (partially owned by the transnational Wilmar company) is trying to expand its oil palm plantations.