Greenpeace activists have blockaded a palm oil refinery owned by IOI in the port of Rotterdam after a report linked the company\u2019s third-party suppliers in Indonesia to deforestation, forest fires and human rights abuses, including child labour.<\/p>\n
For seven hours on Tuesday, a felled tree barricaded the entrance to the Croklaan refinery, which processes palm oil mostly sourced from Indonesia and Malaysia.<\/p>\n
Police watched as a Greenpeace ship, the Esperanza, and kayakers blocked entrances to the docking jetty. Officers later moved in, forcibly cutting activists from the log and a company fence that they had locked themselves on to. Thirteen people were arrested.<\/p>\n
The 750,000 tonnes of palm oil that enter Croklaan every year are destined for use across western Europe in biodiesel and products ranging from shampoos to baby milk powder.<\/p>\n
About two-thirds of IOI\u2019s palm oil is sourced from third-party suppliers such as Korindo, Eagle High, and the Indofood\/Salim group, which have contributed to the disappearance of a quarter of Indonesia\u2019s rainforest in the last two decades, according to a Greenpeace report.<\/p>\n
Meike Rijksen, a Greenpeace campaigner on the protest, said: \u201cIOI has been involved in rainforest destruction, fires and human rights abuses in Indonesia, through the actions of its suppliers, for almost 10 years. Unilever and Nestl\u00e9 have already cancelled contracts with IOI at the beginning of this year over these issues but unfortunately IOI has not changed its practices. Today, we hope to give them an extra push to do what is necessary to protect the rainforests and peoples of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fire \u201cseasons\u201d in the Indonesian archipelago began in 1997 and have been attributed to the \u201ccollective negligence\u201d of companies, smallholders and governments.<\/p>\n
So far this year, blazes in the region are 75% down on last year\u2019s total, thanks to heavy rain and government action. But more than 100,000 people are thought to have died in the region last year due to haze caused by the fires, which are frequently caused by slash and burn, peatland drainage and land clearances for plantations.<\/p>\n
In 2015 haze killed 19 people and triggered 500,000 cases of acute respiratory tract infections, in a hellish inferno that threatened a third of the world\u2019s wild orangutangs.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s fires were also a major contributor to global warming, releasing more CO2 emissions daily \u2013 from burned trees and carbon-rich peatland \u2013 than the entire US economy.<\/p>\n
Greenpeace reveals Indonesia’s forests at risk as multiple companies claim rights to same land\u200b<\/p>\n
Greenpeace\u2019s report alleges that third-party suppliers to IOI have been involved in primary forest destruction in Papua and Kalimantan, as well as peatland developments and human rights abuses of forest peoples.<\/p>\n
Extensive fires in concessions held by one reported IOI supplier \u201craise questions about deliberate or negligent mismanagement\u201d, the analysis says. The palm oil supplier controls about 425,000 hectares of land in Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Papua and Sumatra, and is also accused of human rights abuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been reported that children as young as six work in the plantation to support their parents,\u201d the paper says, of the same supplier. \u201cIn April 2014 two employees were imprisoned after demanding better working conditions. Indonesian state security forces appear to be used as guards at the plantation, and its members were involved in the fatal shooting of a company employee in December 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palm oil produced from such third-party operators has been imported into Europe and North America over the last year, according to Greenpeace\u2019s paper.<\/p>\n
Its analysis is based on IOI supply data, concession maps, Nasa fire hotspot data, deforestation alerts, public reports, and official Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil complaints.<\/p>\n
A statement by IOI acknowledged there was a problem but said that an industry-wide approach was critically needed to ensure compliance by third-party suppliers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIOI accepts Greenpeace\u2019s challenge to use its voice and influence to help achieve the outcomes both IOI and Greenpeace desire. We therefore today call for all our fellow industry players to come together and reach agreement on solutions that will lead to a truly sustainable supply of one of the world\u2019s most commonly used commodities,\u201d an IOI statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also ask that Greenpeace use its own convening power and leverage, by joining us in encouraging others to take part, and that it and other specialist NGOs also participate. IOI stands ready to host such a gathering of the major palm oil producing businesses, and asks that Greenpeace joins us in this endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greenpeace dismissed the offer as \u201can exercise in passing the buck\u201d designed to block its demands for cancelling contracts with the named third-party suppliers.<\/p>\n
Annisa Rahmawati, an Indonesian Greenpeace activist, said: \u201cUnless IOI is willing to take these decisive, measurable actions to clean up its supply chain, its commitment to \u2018use its voice and influence\u2019 is meaningless. A failure to act is a betrayal of the millions of people affected each year by land conflicts, forced labour, and pollution from forest fires as a result of the actions of IOI and its suppliers.\u201d<\/p>\n
More Greenpeace direct actions against IOI are thought likely in the near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Greenpeace activists have blockaded a palm oil refinery owned by IOI in the port of Rotterdam after a report linked the company\u2019s third-party suppliers in Indonesia to deforestation, forest fires and human rights abuses, including child labour. For seven hours on Tuesday, a felled tree barricaded the entrance to the Croklaan refinery, which processes palm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[6406,5528],"supplier":[2204,12673,499],"class_list":["post-37809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-environment","tag-sustainability","supplier-greenpeace-international","supplier-ioi-loders-croklaan-edible-oils","supplier-roundtable-on-sustainable-palm-oil-rspo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37809"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=37809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}