There's a saying in Indonesian palm oil industry: Sumatra is yesterday, Kalimantan is today, and Papua is tomorrow. Tomorrow might well have arrived. A new report sheds light on the industry's rapid expansion in Indonesia's easternmost region and the companies behind the plantation drive.
More than 300 villagers formed a human barrier, blocking bulldozers owned by the two foreign companies, Vietnamese developer Thy Nga and Taiwanese firm PNT who are encroaching ancestral farmland and operating outside of the boundaries set by their concessions.
Asia’s largest sugar producer, Thailand’s Mitr Phol Sugar Corporation, has withdrawn from its three plantations in Oddar Meanchey province in Cambodia following years of criticism over alleged illegalities and human rights abuses at the concessions.
My Home, My Land is a graphic representation that dismantles the myths promoted by donor countries, development agencies, and corporations about the positive effects of foreign direct investments through large-scale land acquisitions.
One of China’s largest beef producers, Honda Agriculture, is looking to buy up to $100 million worth of cattle property in Australia over the next 12 months.
Because of plantations or infrastructure projects, people are displaced from the land that their livelihood depends on. To improve matters, the UN voluntary guidelines on the tenure of land, forests and water must be implemented.
English translation of the joint request by 6 Japanese NGOs to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Japan, and the President of JICA
Land-based investments in Africa supported by the G8's New Alliance follow similar patterns to unrealised ambitions of biofuels investments.
A comprehensive investigation into the oil palm industry in West Papua, by awasMIFEE and Pusaka and local Papuan organisations Belantara Papua, Bin Madag Hom, Jasoil, SKP KAME and Jerat. Papua, and Sawit Watch.
Irrigated farmland near the Niger River should be the breadbasket of Mali. But a lack of infrastructure, political instability, climate change and botched foreign investment deals mean the region isn't living up to its potential.
It’s right to hold destructive palm oil companies to account, but until we look to the organisations funding their activities we’re missing an important part of the puzzle.
Legislative changes now sweeping across Asia threaten to displace millions of peasant families, undermine local food systems and increase violent conflicts over land. Already, just six percent of Asia's farm owners hold around 66% of its farmland.
