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CSR Sugar owner linked to palm oil deforestation
ABC 7.30 Report - December 8, 2016
Transcript
Hayden Cooper, reporter: The aerial view of deforestation in Indonesia. This footage was filmed earlier this year. It reveals the rainforests of West Papua, cleared and ready to be replaced by palm oil plantations.
Gemma Tillack, Rainforst Action Network: Papua is a critically important tropical rainforest. It is an area that we cannot afford to lose, and right now it is being threatened by palm oil development including the development for other crops like pulp, paper, and other agri business commodities.
Hayden Cooper: This is the end result – massive plantations of palm oil as more companies line up to capitalise often at the expense of the environment and local Indigenous communities.
Wensi Fatubun, Papuan filmmaker: Papuan people facing difficult with economic development project create by Indonesian governments. Economic development project for who? This is the big question, from the Papuans to the Indonesian government.
Hayden Cooper: This has been occurring across the region at an extraordinary rate.
Indonesia and Malaysia produce 85 per cent of the world's palm oil. Across Aceh, Sumatra, Borneo, Kalimantan and now Papua, millions of hectares of forests have been cleared and replaced by the lucrative crop, often endangering species like the Sumatra orangutan.
The palm oil is shipped all over the world and used in roughly half of the products in a typical supermarket.
Gemma Tillack: So what you can see here is excavators ripping down the rainforests.
Hayden Cooper: San Francisco-based Australian, Gemma Tillack monitors the industry for the rainforest action network.
Gemma Tillack: So right now we're at a critical juncture in the fate of Indonesia's rainforests.
The Indonesian president has actually taken a big, bold step forward and announced a moratorium on the further development of oil palm plantations in Indonesia. So we have a critical opportunity right now to get it right and to act together as a global community to protect Indonesia's rainforests.
Hayden Cooper: But this footage obtained by 7.30 reveals destruction continues in Indonesia's rainforest and peatlands despite the moratorium. It was filmed in North Sumatra, in the crucial Leuser Ecosystem.
Gemma Tillack: It is the last place on earth where you can find the Sumatra orangutans, the tigers, the elephants and the rhinos all co-existing together in the wild.
Hayden Cooper: This land clearing can be linked to some of Australia's most famous food brands through their parent company, Wilmar.
Wilmar International is the world's biggest palm oil trader. The Singapore-based agri business is controlled by the Malaysian billionaire Kuok Khoon Hong. It's the owner of CSR Sugar, one of Australia's most popular brands.
Together with the Hong Kong based conglomerate, First Pacific, Wilmar also owns Goodman Fielder, the maker of many well-known Australian food products. The footage was filmed last month and shows a plantation owner clearing forest in the vulnerable Tripa peatland.
Gemma Tillack: You can see that the excavator is ripping down the rainforest in the Tripa peatland. This is the orangutan capital of the world. So this is prime habitat for the Sumatra orangutan.
Hayden Cooper: The workers have been digging canals in the area and the clearance appears to have been under way for months.
Gemma Tillack: The drainage of the peat systems reduces the water table so that you can actually plant oil palm on the land.
Hayden Cooper: The Rainforest Action Network researchers decided to investigate further.
At the same plantation, they filmed palm oil fruit being loaded into a truck. They followed it as it drove to a nearby processing mill. The name of the site, PT Raja Marga. This mill is listed on Wilmar International's website as a supplier.
Gemma Tillack: I was shocked. I actually thought that by now Wilmar would have identified all of the third party actor that were still destroying the Leuser and convinced them to either stop or to shut down their operations.
Nick Xenophon, NXT senator: It's pretty full on, isn't it? There's no, it's not selective. It's just...
Hayden Cooper: Senator Nick Xenophon is a vocal critic of the palm oil industry. It even got him deported from neighbouring Malaysia three years ago. Should Wilmar be held accountable for what is going on there?
Nick Xenophon: Look, absolutely, and they need to be up front with Australian consumers, all of us, who would have consumed one of the products that Wilmar now controls or owns as to what's going on here. Particularly where there appears to have been a blatant disregard in the supply chain of a moratorium announced by the Indonesian government.
Hayden Cooper: Wilmar International declined 7.30's request for an interview. In a statement it said it shares the concerns about the Leuser Ecosystem. It says it proactively audits its supply chain and after its own investigation it halted buying from the rogue processing mill in October.
Gemma Tillack: Two years ago Wilmar did commit to stopping deforestation, to stopping the destruction of peatland and the exploitation of workers and communities.
So it has taken the first step with this commitment but what we have found on the ground is that its third party suppliers continue to destroy rainforests including those in the Leuser ecosystem.
Nick Xenophon: Well, Wilmar is talking the talk but not only are they not walking the walk, they're actually walking away from their previous commitments.
Hayden Cooper: So how far will the deforestation of Indonesia's rainforests go? West Papua is now considered the last frontier. But there, too, major companies are looking to expand.
Camellia Webb-Gannon, Western Sydney University: The companies that are interested in buying the land tend to be Malaysian, Indonesian, Korean and Singapore-based companies, and these companies are the world's major traders in oil palm.
Hayden Cooper: Among them is Indo Agri, a key subsidiary of Wilmar's business partner First Pacific, the other part owner of Australia's Goodman Fielder. As this footage confirms, it's now on the hunt in West Papua.
What's your company, say again?
Indo Agri worker: I'm from Indo Agri.
Hayden Cooper: Indo Agri?
Indo Agri worker: Yeah.
Hayden Cooper: That's a group of...?
Indo Agri worker: A company.
Hayden Cooper: A company? Based in Jakarta?
Indo Agri worker: Yes, based in Jakarta.
Hayden Cooper: Your core business is...?
Indo Agri worker: Oil palm.
Hayden Cooper: Oil palm? Oh okay.
Hayden Cooper: The encounter was filmed near the hometown of a Papuan filmmaker, Wensi Fatuban.
Wensi Fatubun: When (inaudible) come and taken Marine people's land, they not only lost land but they also lost their culture.
Camellia Webb-Gannon: For the majority of these negotiated contracts, there has not been free, informed and prior consent on behalf of the Indigenous peoples and that is something companies are beholden to ensure.
Hayden Cooper: These latest images have inspired Nick Xenophon to act. He'll reintroduce a bill to require better labelling of palm oil products.
Nick Xenophon: At the moment palm oil is just labelled as a vegetable oil and it's given a number. It's meaningless in terms of consumers being informed.
Hayden Cooper: In the meantime, the clock is ticking for Indonesia's forests and the famous Australian brands that have aided their demolition.
Gemma Tillack: Wilmar is connected to the destruction of Tripa's peatland and it is connected to the destruction of the Leuser ecosystem. That needs to change. Wilmar need to go beyond the mill, they need to get down to the front line of forest destruction and stop the bulldozers in their tracks.
Leigh Sales: Hayden Cooper reporting.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2016/s4589563.htm.
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