Oil Palm and Human Rights

Oil Palm Farmer, Indonesia
“It used to be easy for us to find roots in the forest for use in traditional medicines, but now it is difficult, now there aren’t any. Now that the forest is gone, all of that has disappeared. We also used to grow all sorts of crops. Now it has become impossible. The oil palm roots are everywhere, nothing grows.”

By 2012, palm oil is forecast to be the world’s most produced, consumed and internationally traded edible oil. Almost all palm oil (87% in 2006) is grown as an industrial plantation crop in Indonesia and Malaysia. The fastest rate of expansion is occurring in Indonesia. In early 2008, Indonesia already had a reported 7.3 million hectares of land under oil palm. and a further 20 million hectares of plantations are planned by 2020.

Oil palm plantations have been identified as a major contributor to rainforest destruction and associated pressures on species such as the orang-utan. In the decade between 1992 and 2003 orang-utan habitat declined by 5.5 million hectares, while the plantation area across Borneo and Sumatra increased by almost 4.7 million hectares. Oil palm plantation expansion is also known to contribute to forest fires and to the drying out of tropical peat-lands, which has been identified as a major contributing factor to global CO2 emissions.

Oil Palm and Human Rights - It is increasingly apparent that expanding oil palm plantations lead to severe social impacts. About 60 million people in Indonesia are dependent on forests and forest products for their livelihoods. Most of the land that is intended for oil palm plantations is also the land on which indigenous peoples have lived since time immemorial.

However, the complexities of Indonesian laws mean that most of the customary lands of indigenous groups are considered under national law to be state land. When companies wish to set up new oil palm plantations they are given permits from the government. Oil palm expansion in Indonesia is a form of massive expropriation where the notion of the ‘public good’ is invoked as an excuse for the transfer from communal land tenure to private company control.

Although the state does not recognise community rights over land, companies nevertheless try to convince communities to relinquish any claims to the land, in order to secure their own financial investment and avoid civil conflict. Companies make promises to communities in the form of jobs, smallholdings and infrastructural development – and often do not fulfil these promises.

Remote communities often receive information only from the oil palm companies and from government officials who personally stand to gain from the plantations. Communities have little idea of the negative impacts of oil palm plantations, which include:

• The loss of forest resources that support their livelihoods
• Job insecurity and low wages on plantations
• Huge debts incurred by those who are ‘given’ smallholdings in plantation schemes.
• The loss of the material basis of indigenous culture.
• Water shortages from plantation establishment, especially forest clearance, and drainage
• Water pollution associated with oil palm mills and heavy pesticide and fertiliser use.
• The loss of communities’ ancestral domains to the state and to the companies.
• A rise in horizontal and vertical social conflicts.

The Economic Crisis and Oil Palm in 2009

Oil Palm Resources

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