Last month, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature listed the Bornean orangutan as critically endangered -- joining its cousin the Sumatran orangutan in that classification. Immediately following, the IUCN World Conservation Congress agreed to take action to halt the expansion of the palm oil industry, for its role as a leading killer of tropical biodiversity. Simultaneously, news reports have begun to reveal that orangutans will be extinct within 10 years unless action is taken…
In Nigeria, as elsewhere across the world, women are disproportionately affected by corporate land grabs and deforestation. Two recent victories by Nigerian women reclaiming 13,750 hectares of land from a palm oil company (Okomu Oil Palms Plc/Socfin Group) and a rubber company (Iyayi Group) demonstrate how women are organizing to challenge corporate power and win concrete gains for their people.
In this current edition of Friends of the Earth International’s Real World Radio,…
Today, an international coalition of over 70 organizations launched a call on financial regulators in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, China, Europe and the United States to apply emergency sanctions on major commercial banks, to stop financing companies that are known to contribute to the massive forest fires that annually choke much of Southeast Asia.
The demand went out to dozens of bank CEO’s and financial regulators in Asia, Europe and the United States, in a…
Berta Cáceres ¡presente! On Friday, March 4, Friends of the Earth joined other supporters in front of the U.S. State Department to remember Honduran civil and environmental rights activist Berta Cáceres. Berta was assassinated in her home Thursday, March 3, targeted for her decade-long fight against the building of the Agua Zarca Dam along the Gualcarque River -- territory sacred to the indigenous Lenca people.
Supporters gathered to recount stories of Berta, remember her generous…
Yesterday, Friends of the Earth co-sponsored a rally at the UN in New York City for Berta Cáceres and International Woman’s Day. Berta is a well-known indigenous environmental activist who was murdered in her home on March 2.
Dozens of activists and human rights supporters denounced the criminal violence plaguing Honduran environmentalists – violence that has increased dramatically since the 2009 coup in that in that country.We joined the Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH), Associates (JASS),…
For years, Friends of the Earth has been supporting farmers in Uganda's Kalangala Islands to fight back against a palm oil land grab that has turned them from subsistence farmers and fishers, with a small but diverse income stream, into wage laborers on palm oil plantations that were once their own land.
It's been a controversial campaign because the palm oil effort is financed by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development, and joint partner Wilmar…
Earlier this year, Friends of the Earth groups in Nigeria and the United States published the report Exploitation and empty promises: Wilmar’s Nigerian land grab, which raises serious concerns about human rights, equity and development justice in regards to PZ-Wilmar’s purchase of lands in Nigeria’s Cross River State. Wilmar responded by dismissing many of our concerns as misleading or out-of-date -- though the company did acknowledge that it needed to take some corrective actions.
In partnership with…
Massive forest fires have engulfed Indonesia for several months, and produce more daily CO2 emissions than the entire U.S. economy. The fires are responsible for as many as 500,000 cases of respiratory infections, and are directly threatening the world's last orangutans; for all of this, the fires are being referred to as a crime against humanity. This particular crime against humanity can be directly traced to the palm oil and pulp and…
The oil palm tree is native to West Africa and palm oil, in its rawest form, is a staple of the West African diet. So, while it is new to Western consumers as an ingredient in roughly half of our packaged foods and cosmetics, palm oil is nothing new to Nigerians. But what is new, and having drastic impacts in the Nigerian rain forest province of Cross River State, is the industrial-scale expansion of palm…
This week the Food and Drug Administration bowed to a years-long effort by consumer groups to ban artificial trans fats from the U.S. food supply. The agency ruled that partially hydrogenated oils, the source of trans fats, can no longer be “generally recognized as safe,” and gave the food industry three years to eliminate them. As reported in the New York Times, removing industrial trans fats from the American diet by 2018 could…