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#tropicalrainforest — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #tropicalrainforest, aggregated by home.social.

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  1. Pilot makes ‘unusual’ animal discovery flying over Aussie outback: ‘No idea how it walked out there’

    An “unusual” sight in outback Queensland has sparked a bizarre and concerning mystery. For roughly six weeks, locals…
    #NewsBeep #News #Wildlife #AU #Australia #farnorthqueensland #GulfSavannah #MountSurprise #nativehabitat #OutbackQueensland #Queensland #SamKennedy #Science #southerncassowary #tropicalrainforest #WilKemp #YahooNewsAustralia
    newsbeep.com/au/268031/

  2. #AmazonForests poisoned by #mercury from #GoldMining

    Study finds unprecedented levels of #MercuryPollution

    January 28, 2022
    by Cheryl Walker

    "Wake Forest faculty in the University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and its Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) are part of an international team of researchers who have discovered that gold mining in the Amazon rainforest is causing exceptionally high levels of mercury pollution in the old-growth rainforest near the mining sites.

    "The total mercury concentrations in a forested area in #Peru’s #LosAmigosConservationConcession were the highest ever recorded.

    "The study, 'Amazon Forests Capture High Levels of Atmospheric Mercury Pollution From #ArtisanalGoldMining,' appears Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications. The research team was led by Jacqueline R. Gerson, as a Ph.D. student at Duke University.

    “What this study found was that the wildest forests left on earth are capturing mercury released by artisanal mining, and at superfund-site levels,” said Miles Silman, Andrew Sabin Presidential Chair of Conservation Biology and Director of Wake Forest’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. 'The wildlife and humans that live within these wild forests are poisoned as well, with effects that we are just beginning to understand.'

    "''This study reveals, for the first time, the mechanism of how mercury released into the air by gold mining contaminates #TropicalForests and forest #soils,' Fernandez said. “This atmospheric mercury, which is either deposited on to leaves or absorbed by leaves, eventually falls to the ground and gets incorporated into forest soils.'

    "The region of #MadreDeDios is considered a global #biodiversity hotspot, but in recent decades has suffered an unprecedented #GoldRush. mining is doing irreversible damage to one of the world’s largest remaining pieces of #TropicalRainforest and threatening its survival. In the Madre de Dios region of Peru, east of the Andes Mountains, nearly 250,000 acres of rainforest, roughly the size of Dallas, Texas, have been razed and transformed into somewhere that looks like a desert pockmarked by tens of thousands of mercury contaminated mining ponds by illegal #GoldMining.

    "Gold miners use toxic mercury to pull flakes of gold out of the river sediment. Then, they separate the gold from the mercury using open fire ovens. The heat melts the gold and turns the mercury to a toxic vapor.

    "'People had a lot of ideas about where mercury might be going in these tropical landscapes, and they turned out to be wrong,' Silman said. 'The paper shows that mercury isn’t staying in the mining zone, but rather that trees are scrubbing mercury from the air and transferring it into forest #ecosystems, and into forest wildlife and peoples, where it moves up the food chain with unknown effects.'

    "The study also reveals how these contaminated soils serve as a repository for this deposited mercury, preventing. or at least slowing, its transfer into rivers and lakes where it is transformed into a more toxic form of mercury, #Methylmercury, and contaminate aquatic food webs."

    news.wfu.edu/2022/01/28/amazon

    #WaterIsLife #GoldMine
    #GoldMining #Cyanide

  3. #AmazonForests poisoned by #mercury from #GoldMining

    Study finds unprecedented levels of #MercuryPollution

    January 28, 2022
    by Cheryl Walker

    "Wake Forest faculty in the University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and its Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) are part of an international team of researchers who have discovered that gold mining in the Amazon rainforest is causing exceptionally high levels of mercury pollution in the old-growth rainforest near the mining sites.

    "The total mercury concentrations in a forested area in #Peru’s #LosAmigosConservationConcession were the highest ever recorded.

    "The study, 'Amazon Forests Capture High Levels of Atmospheric Mercury Pollution From #ArtisanalGoldMining,' appears Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications. The research team was led by Jacqueline R. Gerson, as a Ph.D. student at Duke University.

    “What this study found was that the wildest forests left on earth are capturing mercury released by artisanal mining, and at superfund-site levels,” said Miles Silman, Andrew Sabin Presidential Chair of Conservation Biology and Director of Wake Forest’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. 'The wildlife and humans that live within these wild forests are poisoned as well, with effects that we are just beginning to understand.'

    "''This study reveals, for the first time, the mechanism of how mercury released into the air by gold mining contaminates #TropicalForests and forest #soils,' Fernandez said. “This atmospheric mercury, which is either deposited on to leaves or absorbed by leaves, eventually falls to the ground and gets incorporated into forest soils.'

    "The region of #MadreDeDios is considered a global #biodiversity hotspot, but in recent decades has suffered an unprecedented #GoldRush. mining is doing irreversible damage to one of the world’s largest remaining pieces of #TropicalRainforest and threatening its survival. In the Madre de Dios region of Peru, east of the Andes Mountains, nearly 250,000 acres of rainforest, roughly the size of Dallas, Texas, have been razed and transformed into somewhere that looks like a desert pockmarked by tens of thousands of mercury contaminated mining ponds by illegal #GoldMining.

    "Gold miners use toxic mercury to pull flakes of gold out of the river sediment. Then, they separate the gold from the mercury using open fire ovens. The heat melts the gold and turns the mercury to a toxic vapor.

    "'People had a lot of ideas about where mercury might be going in these tropical landscapes, and they turned out to be wrong,' Silman said. 'The paper shows that mercury isn’t staying in the mining zone, but rather that trees are scrubbing mercury from the air and transferring it into forest #ecosystems, and into forest wildlife and peoples, where it moves up the food chain with unknown effects.'

    "The study also reveals how these contaminated soils serve as a repository for this deposited mercury, preventing. or at least slowing, its transfer into rivers and lakes where it is transformed into a more toxic form of mercury, #Methylmercury, and contaminate aquatic food webs."

    news.wfu.edu/2022/01/28/amazon

    #WaterIsLife #GoldMine
    #GoldMining #Cyanide

  4. #AmazonForests poisoned by #mercury from #GoldMining

    Study finds unprecedented levels of #MercuryPollution

    January 28, 2022
    by Cheryl Walker

    "Wake Forest faculty in the University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and its Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) are part of an international team of researchers who have discovered that gold mining in the Amazon rainforest is causing exceptionally high levels of mercury pollution in the old-growth rainforest near the mining sites.

    "The total mercury concentrations in a forested area in #Peru’s #LosAmigosConservationConcession were the highest ever recorded.

    "The study, 'Amazon Forests Capture High Levels of Atmospheric Mercury Pollution From #ArtisanalGoldMining,' appears Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications. The research team was led by Jacqueline R. Gerson, as a Ph.D. student at Duke University.

    “What this study found was that the wildest forests left on earth are capturing mercury released by artisanal mining, and at superfund-site levels,” said Miles Silman, Andrew Sabin Presidential Chair of Conservation Biology and Director of Wake Forest’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. 'The wildlife and humans that live within these wild forests are poisoned as well, with effects that we are just beginning to understand.'

    "''This study reveals, for the first time, the mechanism of how mercury released into the air by gold mining contaminates #TropicalForests and forest #soils,' Fernandez said. “This atmospheric mercury, which is either deposited on to leaves or absorbed by leaves, eventually falls to the ground and gets incorporated into forest soils.'

    "The region of #MadreDeDios is considered a global #biodiversity hotspot, but in recent decades has suffered an unprecedented #GoldRush. mining is doing irreversible damage to one of the world’s largest remaining pieces of #TropicalRainforest and threatening its survival. In the Madre de Dios region of Peru, east of the Andes Mountains, nearly 250,000 acres of rainforest, roughly the size of Dallas, Texas, have been razed and transformed into somewhere that looks like a desert pockmarked by tens of thousands of mercury contaminated mining ponds by illegal #GoldMining.

    "Gold miners use toxic mercury to pull flakes of gold out of the river sediment. Then, they separate the gold from the mercury using open fire ovens. The heat melts the gold and turns the mercury to a toxic vapor.

    "'People had a lot of ideas about where mercury might be going in these tropical landscapes, and they turned out to be wrong,' Silman said. 'The paper shows that mercury isn’t staying in the mining zone, but rather that trees are scrubbing mercury from the air and transferring it into forest #ecosystems, and into forest wildlife and peoples, where it moves up the food chain with unknown effects.'

    "The study also reveals how these contaminated soils serve as a repository for this deposited mercury, preventing. or at least slowing, its transfer into rivers and lakes where it is transformed into a more toxic form of mercury, #Methylmercury, and contaminate aquatic food webs."

    news.wfu.edu/2022/01/28/amazon

    #WaterIsLife #GoldMine
    #GoldMining #Cyanide

  5. #AmazonForests poisoned by #mercury from #GoldMining

    Study finds unprecedented levels of #MercuryPollution

    January 28, 2022
    by Cheryl Walker

    "Wake Forest faculty in the University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and its Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) are part of an international team of researchers who have discovered that gold mining in the Amazon rainforest is causing exceptionally high levels of mercury pollution in the old-growth rainforest near the mining sites.

    "The total mercury concentrations in a forested area in #Peru’s #LosAmigosConservationConcession were the highest ever recorded.

    "The study, 'Amazon Forests Capture High Levels of Atmospheric Mercury Pollution From #ArtisanalGoldMining,' appears Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications. The research team was led by Jacqueline R. Gerson, as a Ph.D. student at Duke University.

    “What this study found was that the wildest forests left on earth are capturing mercury released by artisanal mining, and at superfund-site levels,” said Miles Silman, Andrew Sabin Presidential Chair of Conservation Biology and Director of Wake Forest’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. 'The wildlife and humans that live within these wild forests are poisoned as well, with effects that we are just beginning to understand.'

    "''This study reveals, for the first time, the mechanism of how mercury released into the air by gold mining contaminates #TropicalForests and forest #soils,' Fernandez said. “This atmospheric mercury, which is either deposited on to leaves or absorbed by leaves, eventually falls to the ground and gets incorporated into forest soils.'

    "The region of #MadreDeDios is considered a global #biodiversity hotspot, but in recent decades has suffered an unprecedented #GoldRush. mining is doing irreversible damage to one of the world’s largest remaining pieces of #TropicalRainforest and threatening its survival. In the Madre de Dios region of Peru, east of the Andes Mountains, nearly 250,000 acres of rainforest, roughly the size of Dallas, Texas, have been razed and transformed into somewhere that looks like a desert pockmarked by tens of thousands of mercury contaminated mining ponds by illegal #GoldMining.

    "Gold miners use toxic mercury to pull flakes of gold out of the river sediment. Then, they separate the gold from the mercury using open fire ovens. The heat melts the gold and turns the mercury to a toxic vapor.

    "'People had a lot of ideas about where mercury might be going in these tropical landscapes, and they turned out to be wrong,' Silman said. 'The paper shows that mercury isn’t staying in the mining zone, but rather that trees are scrubbing mercury from the air and transferring it into forest #ecosystems, and into forest wildlife and peoples, where it moves up the food chain with unknown effects.'

    "The study also reveals how these contaminated soils serve as a repository for this deposited mercury, preventing. or at least slowing, its transfer into rivers and lakes where it is transformed into a more toxic form of mercury, #Methylmercury, and contaminate aquatic food webs."

    news.wfu.edu/2022/01/28/amazon

    #WaterIsLife #GoldMine
    #GoldMining #Cyanide

  6. #AmazonForests poisoned by #mercury from #GoldMining

    Study finds unprecedented levels of #MercuryPollution

    January 28, 2022
    by Cheryl Walker

    "Wake Forest faculty in the University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and its Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) are part of an international team of researchers who have discovered that gold mining in the Amazon rainforest is causing exceptionally high levels of mercury pollution in the old-growth rainforest near the mining sites.

    "The total mercury concentrations in a forested area in #Peru’s #LosAmigosConservationConcession were the highest ever recorded.

    "The study, 'Amazon Forests Capture High Levels of Atmospheric Mercury Pollution From #ArtisanalGoldMining,' appears Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications. The research team was led by Jacqueline R. Gerson, as a Ph.D. student at Duke University.

    “What this study found was that the wildest forests left on earth are capturing mercury released by artisanal mining, and at superfund-site levels,” said Miles Silman, Andrew Sabin Presidential Chair of Conservation Biology and Director of Wake Forest’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. 'The wildlife and humans that live within these wild forests are poisoned as well, with effects that we are just beginning to understand.'

    "''This study reveals, for the first time, the mechanism of how mercury released into the air by gold mining contaminates #TropicalForests and forest #soils,' Fernandez said. “This atmospheric mercury, which is either deposited on to leaves or absorbed by leaves, eventually falls to the ground and gets incorporated into forest soils.'

    "The region of #MadreDeDios is considered a global #biodiversity hotspot, but in recent decades has suffered an unprecedented #GoldRush. mining is doing irreversible damage to one of the world’s largest remaining pieces of #TropicalRainforest and threatening its survival. In the Madre de Dios region of Peru, east of the Andes Mountains, nearly 250,000 acres of rainforest, roughly the size of Dallas, Texas, have been razed and transformed into somewhere that looks like a desert pockmarked by tens of thousands of mercury contaminated mining ponds by illegal #GoldMining.

    "Gold miners use toxic mercury to pull flakes of gold out of the river sediment. Then, they separate the gold from the mercury using open fire ovens. The heat melts the gold and turns the mercury to a toxic vapor.

    "'People had a lot of ideas about where mercury might be going in these tropical landscapes, and they turned out to be wrong,' Silman said. 'The paper shows that mercury isn’t staying in the mining zone, but rather that trees are scrubbing mercury from the air and transferring it into forest #ecosystems, and into forest wildlife and peoples, where it moves up the food chain with unknown effects.'

    "The study also reveals how these contaminated soils serve as a repository for this deposited mercury, preventing. or at least slowing, its transfer into rivers and lakes where it is transformed into a more toxic form of mercury, #Methylmercury, and contaminate aquatic food webs."

    news.wfu.edu/2022/01/28/amazon

    #WaterIsLife #GoldMine
    #GoldMining #Cyanide

  7. Pulau Kalimantan — meskipun kelihatannya masih hijau banget di google maps — sebenarnya udah porak poranda akibat ulah penebang yang nggak bertanggung jawab.

    Ini sisa pohon hutan yang masih tersisa, nama pohonnya menggeris (𝘒𝘰𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘢 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘢). Pohon ini nggak ikut ditebang karena pohon ini jadi favorit lebah hutan buat bersarang. Masyarakat dayak juga suka ngambilin madunya kalau kebetulan ada.

    #TropicalRainForest #SocialForestry #Menggeris

  8. Been a long time since I did an #introduction post.

    I'm a #Christian #Agorist who works in #infosec and lives in a #tinyhouse I drive an #electricvehicle and ride an #electricbike I teach #Reformed theology and am a #Father to 3. We also raise a few #pig #goat #chicken on our #homestead in #Tennessee only #TropicalRainforest

    Yep, TN has a #rainforest ! And just 20m from #Chattanooga

  9. Been a long time since I did an #introduction post.

    I'm a #Christian #Agorist who works in #infosec and lives in a #tinyhouse I drive an #electricvehicle and ride an #electricbike I teach #Reformed theology and am a #Father to 3. We also raise a few #pig #goat #chicken on our #homestead in #Tennessee only #TropicalRainforest

    Yep, TN has a #rainforest ! And just 20m from #Chattanooga

  10. Been a long time since I did an #introduction post.

    I'm a #Christian #Agorist who works in #infosec and lives in a #tinyhouse I drive an #electricvehicle and ride an #electricbike I teach #Reformed theology and am a #Father to 3. We also raise a few #pig #goat #chicken on our #homestead in #Tennessee only #TropicalRainforest

    Yep, TN has a #rainforest ! And just 20m from #Chattanooga

  11. Been a long time since I did an #introduction post.

    I'm a #Christian #Agorist who works in #infosec and lives in a #tinyhouse I drive an #electricvehicle and ride an #electricbike I teach #Reformed theology and am a #Father to 3. We also raise a few #pig #goat #chicken on our #homestead in #Tennessee only #TropicalRainforest

    Yep, TN has a #rainforest ! And just 20m from #Chattanooga

  12. Been a long time since I did an #introduction post.

    I'm a #Christian #Agorist who works in #infosec and lives in a #tinyhouse I drive an #electricvehicle and ride an #electricbike I teach #Reformed theology and am a #Father to 3. We also raise a few #pig #goat #chicken on our #homestead in #Tennessee only #TropicalRainforest

    Yep, TN has a #rainforest ! And just 20m from #Chattanooga

  13. If you've seen a lowland tropical rainforest tree, it is probably a member of the Dipterocarpaceae.

    "The Red List of Dipterocarpaceae contains analysis of all 535 species of Dipterocarpaceae and builds on national and regional red list publications."

    bgci.org/news-events/the-red-l

    #Dipterocarpaceae #Trees #TropicalRainForest #Rainforests #Conservation #Environment

  14. If you've seen a lowland tropical rainforest tree, it is probably a member of the Dipterocarpaceae.

    "The Red List of Dipterocarpaceae contains analysis of all 535 species of Dipterocarpaceae and builds on national and regional red list publications."

    bgci.org/news-events/the-red-l

    #Dipterocarpaceae #Trees #TropicalRainForest #Rainforests #Conservation #Environment

  15. If you've seen a lowland tropical rainforest tree, it is probably a member of the Dipterocarpaceae.

    "The Red List of Dipterocarpaceae contains analysis of all 535 species of Dipterocarpaceae and builds on national and regional red list publications."

    bgci.org/news-events/the-red-l

    #Dipterocarpaceae #Trees #TropicalRainForest #Rainforests #Conservation #Environment

  16. If you've seen a lowland tropical rainforest tree, it is probably a member of the Dipterocarpaceae.

    "The Red List of Dipterocarpaceae contains analysis of all 535 species of Dipterocarpaceae and builds on national and regional red list publications."

    bgci.org/news-events/the-red-l

    #Dipterocarpaceae #Trees #TropicalRainForest #Rainforests #Conservation #Environment

  17. If you've seen a lowland tropical rainforest tree, it is probably a member of the Dipterocarpaceae.

    "The Red List of Dipterocarpaceae contains analysis of all 535 species of Dipterocarpaceae and builds on national and regional red list publications."

    bgci.org/news-events/the-red-l

    #Dipterocarpaceae #Trees #TropicalRainForest #Rainforests #Conservation #Environment

  18. Sumatran elephants: Surrounded by palm oil and nobody knows how many are left alive!

    Sumatran elephants in Indonesia’s North Aceh district are being increasingly encircled by shrinking patches of forest. Their home is being destroyed primarily for oil palm plantations.

    Ongoing attempts of scientists to take a measure of their population have been hampered and oppressed by the Indonesian government, which has also attempted to prevent media coverage of the issue. Help these irreplacable beings every time you shop, #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

    https://youtu.be/S5olrnYKT4Q

    Just 924-1360 individual Sumatran elephants 🐘🐘🐘 😿 hang on for survival in Sumatra surrounded by #palmoil #deforestation 🤬🔥 “Sustainable” palm oil is a lie! Fight for them and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🪔🩸☠️🔥⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2023/02/01/sumatran-elephants-surrounded-by-palm-oil-and-nobody-knows-how-many-are-left-alive/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    Sumatran #elephants 🐘🩶 in #Indonesia’s 🇮🇩North Aceh are encircled by dead lands 🔥🌴🩸🔥 rainforests now gone for #palmoil plantations. Help them each time you shop! #Boycottpalmoil 🌴💀🤢🔫🙊⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2023/02/01/sumatran-elephants-surrounded-by-palm-oil-and-nobody-knows-how-many-are-left-alive/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    Originally written by Dyna Rochmyaningsi on 10 August 2022 for Mongabay. Read the original article.

    Saleh Kadri, a young farmer from Leubok Pusaka village in North Aceh district, was on his way to his plantation when he spotted eight elephants on the riverbank. From his canoe, he recorded a video with his phone. The animals looked stunned. One seemed to be staring at Saleh’s moving canoe, while the others turned to flee. “Elephants! Elephants!” Saleh and his friends shouted until all the animals were gone behind the trees.

    “They were trapped. They couldn’t cross the river and they couldn’t return to the forest due to land-clearing activities in the opposite direction, in the neighbouring village of Cot Girek.

    Nurdin, a conservation official in North Aceh, a district near the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island told Mongabay.

    Indonesian authorities slammed for not disclosing Sumatran elephant population estimate

    A few days later, the herd finally managed to escape during a downpour. But the story didn’t end there. When they reached Cot Girek, the elephants found food in the villagers’ farms and destroyed four houses. The villagers were not happy.

    In the past few years, there’s been massive land clearing in North Aceh, which lies along Sumatra’s eastern coast in the province of Aceh. Despite the district’s enforcement of a moratorium on issuing new permits for corporate oil palm plantations, conservationists report ongoing deforestation on the ground.

    The North Aceh government has granted permissions for land clearing for smallholder oil palm farms, some of which are said to be controlled by powerful people in the region. This land-use change, conservationists say, has further fragmented the habitat of Sumatran elephants. “If we don’t take this problem seriously, I believe the animals will soon go extinct,” Nurdin said.

    In Aceh alone, there are four to five instances of human-elephant conflict almost every day, he said, creating victims among elephants and people alike. Elephants continue being snared, hunted and poisoned, while farmers suffer economic, and sometimes physical, losses. “Our ship is sinking,” Azmi said, emphasizing the problem’s urgency.

    According to the latest population assessment by the Indonesian Elephant Conservation Forum, known by its Indonesian acronym FKGI, Aceh is home to 42 per cent of the Sumatran elephants (Elephas maximus sumatranus) thought to remain in the country.

    More than 85% of Sumatran elephants live outside conservation areas. We need to conserve the species which is already critically endangered. Our ship is sinking.

    Wahdi Azmi, elephant conservationist, Conservation Response Unit Aceh

    Between 924-1360 individual Sumatran elephants hang on for survival in Sumatra

     Scientists concluded that only 924-1,359 Sumatran elephants remain in 22 patches across the island of Sumatra. Nearly half live in Aceh province, where Cot Girek is located.A quarter are in the two national parks, while the rest struggle to survive within large blocks of land controlled by oil palm and pulpwood plantation companies on Sumatra’s eastern coast. The unreleased document explains the decline: “Habitat loss is the main problem … so the mortality rate of the Sumatran elephant surpasses its birth rate.”

    The rest of the estimated population of 924–1,359 is struggling to survive in oil palm and pulpwood concessions in Riau and Jambi provinces, while a few are in national parks in Lampung province.

    Sumatran elephants: Surrounded by palm oil and nobody knows how many are left alive!

    “Aceh is our [best] hope,” said Wahdi Azmi, a conservationist who leads CRU Aceh, a local conservation group. Across the province, 392–456 elephants still remain, according to the latest assessment, doing their best to survive in the fast-changing environment.

    “More than 85 per cent of Sumatran elephants live outside conservation areas,” Azmi said. In Aceh, there are four to five human-elephant conflicts reported every day, he added. In June, conflict intensity escalated in North Aceh, where much of the land has been cleared for oil palm.

    Living on the front lines

    In Cot Girek, a loud bang from a PVC air cannon woke Junaidi at 2 a.m. The 41-year-old farmer heads the village’s elephant patrol team. Hearing the sound, he knew it was a sign that wild elephants were moving in.

    “Shoot the canon five times if you find wild elephants around your house” – that’s how the villagers have been told to communicate with others who might live kilometres away with poor cellular service. Junaidi only heard one shot that night, but as patrol leader he had to get up and investigate despite the rain. In the darkness, he walked some 10 kilometres (6 miles) along muddy roads around the village to check the situation.

    Since early June, Junaidi and other villagers in Cot Girek and Leubok Pusaka have been staying awake at night. In the space of a month, four wooden huts were reportedly destroyed by elephants.

    Asnawi, a smallholder oil palm farmer who lives 3 km (nearly 2 mi) from Junaidi’s hut, was shocked to see 400 oil palm shoots in his plantation chewed up by elephants. Looking at the damage, “we couldn’t sleep well,” said Ida, Asnawi’s sister, who didn’t want her crops to meet the same fate.

    Husna, an environmental activist from a local NGO called People’s Conscience, or SAHARA by its Indonesian acronym, said the increasing cases of human-elephant conflict are caused by habitat loss. Cleared land can be seen from Junaidi’s hut, showing the forested hills from afar. Deforestation has eliminated the transition zone between the hills and the village. No lowland forest is visible in between.

    Sumatran elephants: Surrounded by palm oil and nobody knows how many are left alive!

    “Elephants are coming from that hill,” Junaidi said, pointing to a forested area over the horizon.

    According to Lukmanul Hakim, the geographical information system manager at Forest, Nature, and Environment Aceh (HAkA), a conservation group focused on Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, North Aceh has long had one of the highest deforestation rates in Aceh province. His analysis of satellite data generated by Planetscope, which he called the most accurate satellite image provider, shows the district lost 7,508 hectares (18,553 acres) of forest from 2017–2020.

    Satellite data generated from forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas show significant deforestation in Leubok Pusaka and Cot Girek, in the northern part of Leuser, over the past two years.

    Nurdin, the conservation agency official, said data he had collected from GPS collars tagged to elephants in North Aceh from 2016–19 showed that rainforest had been cleared within the elephants’ migration routes.

    Lilis Indriyani, the head of the North Aceh Plantation, Livestock and Animal Disease Agency, acknowledged land-clearing activities in Cot Girek.

    “But these lands are classified as non-forest,” she said. Lilis also said most of this clearing was done by local people rather than corporate actors. In general, she said, the district is pro-environment. Since 2016, the district has actively applied a freeze on new oil palm permits. “We no longer give permit for companies to open up new oil palm plantations,” she said. “Nor do we give oil palm seeds to smallholder farmers.”

    But on the ground, people are looking at different facts. Junaidi said the cleared land around his hut is owned by powerful government officials. There’s also more of a chance of new deforestation under a central government policy granting 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of land to ex-combatants of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, a now-disbanded armed insurgent group. Partai Aceh, the governor’s political party, is the political extension of the movement.

    It has always been poor villagers and elephants who suffer from conflict. In Aleu Buloh, Junaidi’s hut sits between the forest and oil palm plantations owned by state-owned PT Perkebunan Nusantara I. Junaidi said the company relies on the villagers’ patrol team to mitigate elephant conflicts, but don’t give them any compensation. “We are guarding their gate … all information about wild elephant movement comes from us,” he said. (PTPN I did not respond to an interview request.)

    Wilmar responsible for palm oil deforestation despite supposedly using “sustainable” palm oil.

    People like Junaidi and Saleh Kadri have to rely on their own resources to herd the elephants away from their village. “We have reported about elephant conflicts in our village so many times but there has been no response from the government,” Saleh said. “Conflict, always conflict. We are tired of this … We hope the government can help farmers like us.”

    A week after they strayed into Cot Girek, the elephants managed to leave the village, Nurdin said. They were last seen heading to Paya Bakung, a subdistrict of North Aceh where a huge infrastructure project is being constructed.

    To mitigate the annual flooding in Lhoksukon, the capital of North Aceh, authorities are building the Kreung Keureto reservoir in Paya Bakung, which would end the herd’s movements. “It’s a dead end. They will have to come back to … Cot Girek and finally Langkahan, where they can’t cross the river and start their journey all over again,” Nurdin said.

    Sumatran elephants: Surrounded by palm oil and nobody knows how many are left alive! #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife

    “Poor elephants … they are chased from every side,” he added.

    “They don’t know where else to go.”

    Photo: Sumatran Elephant, Spotlight on Sumatran Elephants by Craig Jones Wildlife Photography

    Originally written by Dyna Rochmyaningsi on 10 August 2022 for Mongabay. Read the original article.

    ENDS

    Read more stories about deforestation, landgrabbing and animal extinction related to palm oil and other commodities

    Pictured: Mushrooms on the forest floor by Wooter Penning for Pexels

    Boycott

    Finance giants fuel $8.9 trillion deforestation economy

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    Species Endangered by Palm Oil Deforestation

    Saola Pseudoryx nghetinhensis

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    Amazing Animal Adaptations

    Songbirds Socialise Mid-Flight During Migration

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    Amazing Animal Adaptations

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    South America: Species Endangered by Palm Oil Deforestation

    Tucuxi Sotalia fluviatilis

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    Amazing Animal Adaptations

    Javan Rhinos Not Safe from Poachers

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    News

    Frill-Necked Lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii

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    Amazing Animal Adaptations

    Beef, Palm Oil and Timber: How Wealthy Nations Fuel Deforestation

    Read more

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    Forests are still being bulldozed to make way for agricultural land for palm oil and beef production. Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock

    Take Action in Five Ways

    1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

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    2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

    Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

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    Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

    Read more

    Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

    Read more

    Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

    Read more

    The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

    Read more

    How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

    Read more

    3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

    https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

    https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

    https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

    4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

    5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

    Pledge your support

    #animalExtinction #animalRights #animalrights #animals #Bantrophyhunting #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #elephants #extinction #Indonesia #Pachyderm #pachyderms #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #SouthEastAsia #SumatranElephantElephasMaximusSumatranus #tropicalRainforest

  19. Land-grabbing and Climate Crisis Linked to Palm Oil

    A corporate monopoly for control over land and resources for palm oil must be dismantled immediately to give humanity, animals and our natural world a fighting chance for survival and to reverse the climate crisis. In Asia, many indigenous peoples are now joining forces and rising up to resist this corruption and ecocide. Help them to fight back and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

    Corporate monopolies 💰🔥👿 drive #landgrabbing for #palmoil. To give #indigenous peoples, animals and #nature a fighting chance, we must resist. “Sustainable” palm oil is #greenwashing! #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect 🌴🪔🧐🙊⛔️ https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    #Report by @FAO 📜 finds 90% of #deforestation is for BIG-AG by #Cargill, #Wilmar and #SimeDarby. Their monopoly drives #indigenous #landgrabbing for #palmoil 🌴💰 Take action! 🌴🪔💀🤢🚫 #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    Originally written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    Some closely following the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) say that the 27th session of its Conference of the Parties (COP27) puts more attention on food and agriculture than in previous years.

    For instance, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) noted that the climate gathering in Egypt features four pavilions and about 200 events on food and farming. But these are still outside official negotiations, where states do the actual policymaking and commitments.

    No meaningful focus at COP27 on accountability of industrial farming

    It is apparent in the discussions that matter in the COP process that there is no meaningful focus on the role and accountability of corporate farming in warming the planet.

    The industrial food system (i.e., agriculture and land use/land-use change activities plus supply chain activities like retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging) contributes about 34% to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with an estimated environmental cost of US$ 3 trillion annually.

    Yet, addressing and reversing the climate impacts of corporate farming through radical food systems transformation is not a priority among the COP27 negotiators.

    6 out of 10 of the worst affected countries for climate change are in Asia

    • For Asia, the urgency of the climate crisis cannot be overemphasised. Six of the ten worst affected countries by climate change in the past two decades are in Asia (i.e., Myanmar, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, and Nepal).
    • This year alone, heavy monsoon rains caused unprecedented flooding in Pakistan, affecting 33 million people and inflicting over US$ 30 billion in damages and economic losses.
    • Consecutive typhoons – Noru and Nalgae – hit the Philippines in the two months leading to COP27.
    • These disasters affected more than four million people, displaced more than 241,000, left more than 150 dead, and caused more than US$50 million in damages to agriculture alone.

    Land monopoly: an indispensable requirement of corporate farming

    Land monopoly, an indispensable requirement of corporate farming, creates favorable conditions for the climate crisis to persist and worsen. Corporate monoculture plantations, one of the most visible expressions of land monopoly since colonial times, are among the significant contributors to the existential crisis that the world faces today.

    Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): 90% of global deforestation is driven by agriculture

    Big agribusiness firms are cutting down massive swathes of forests for conversion into industrial plantations and livestock grazing. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that agricultural expansion drove almost 90 percent of global deforestation in the past two decades.

    In Asia, nearly 80 percent of deforestation during the same period is due to conversion into croplands, mainly by corporate plantations, based on the UN body’s study.

    Independent studies affirm this, such as the data compiled and analysed by the Land Matrix (a collaboration of civil society, farmers’ groups, and academic research institutions) on large-scale land acquisitions.

    These refer to lands in low and middle-income countries acquired by foreign and local investors through purchase, lease or concession for agricultural production, timber extraction, carbon trading, industry, renewable energy production, conservation, and tourism. Their 2021 report noted that 964 land deals caused the deforestation of almost two million hectares between 2000 and 2019.

    In East Asia and the Pacific, the Land Matrix reported that about 74 percent of the areas around the locations of land deals were still forested in 2000. By 2019, that number declined to 58 percent, mainly due to oil palm expansions in Malaysia and Indonesia and new agricultural frontiers in Cambodia, China, Laos, and Vietnam.

    Clearing forests releases CO2 and contributes to rising temperatures

    Clearing the forests releases the carbon dioxide (CO2) they store into the atmosphere, contributing to rising global temperatures.

    According to one study, deforestation – which has already claimed 420 million hectares of forests in the last 30 years – can also affect temperatures through its effect on various physical processes of nature. For example, cutting down trees eliminates the forests’ ability to absorb water from the soil and release it into the air as moisture and cool the atmosphere.

    Perpetuating plunder

    At COP27, the world’s largest transnational food companies led by Cargill, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland, among others, launched a roadmap to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains for soy, beef, and palm oil by 2025.

    However, these companies, which have already made similar pledges in the past only to fall short, continue to be implicated in the massive destruction of forests, like Cargill in the Amazon.

    Related: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Read more: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Even worse, they use the climate crisis to legitimise and perpetuate resource grabbing, plunder, and land monopoly. One of the supposed climate solutions that big corporations tend to rally around is planting “new forests”.

    However, the problem is that these large-scale tree-planting efforts are often a pretext to promote corporate plantations.

    Based on another estimate, 45% of oil palm plantations were built in forest areas in Southeast Asia, considered the global hotspot of palm-driven deforestation.

    Palm oil is considered the fastest-growing commodity crop worldwide, requiring an ever-expanding mass of arable lands and forests. FAO data shows that the size of land devoted to oil palm plantations in the past four decades ballooned by more than 571 percent – from 4.28 million hectares in 1980 to 28.74 million in 2020.

    Wilmar responsible for palm oil deforestation despite supposedly using “sustainable” palm oil.

    Climate justice vs. land monopoly

    Corporate plantations – motivated by profits for their investors that include the world’s wealthiest people and largest investment firms from mostly the industrialised countries – produce commodities dictated by the global market’s needs, not by the food security requirements and overall development agenda of mostly the underdeveloped countries and local communities where they are built often in violent ways. These big capitalists and finance oligarchs are oblivious to their operations’ harsh socioeconomic and environmental impacts.

    Aside from degrading or destroying the forests to establish monoculture, export-oriented industrial farms, corporate land monopolies also perpetuate the use of massive amounts of climate-warming fossil fuels by promoting harmful agrochemicals like synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and encouraging long supply chains. It is not a coincidence that as corporate plantations, agrochemicals such as pesticides have also soared by 80 percent in the past three decades.

    Agroecological, localised, and diversified food systems offer sustainable and climate-friendly alternatives, as much evidence suggests, but ultimately, decisions on how to use and manage the world’s forests and farmlands for the benefit of the greatest majority without harming the people and planet rest on the question of who effectively controls these resources.

    From colonialism to modern imperialism today, such control has been taken away from the indigenous and peasant communities, grabbed and monopolised by and for commercial interests.

    The people rising for climate justice necessitates the struggle to dismantle this corporate monopoly control over land and resources and give humanity a fighting chance to survive and reverse the climate crisis.

    Read more stories about human rights and land-grabbing in the palm oil industry and other extractive industries

    Pictured: Mushrooms on the forest floor by Wooter Penning for Pexels

    Boycott

    Greasing the Wheels of Colonialism: Palm Oil Industry in West Papua 

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Workers Expose Industry Practices Resembling Colonialism

    Read more

    Boycott

    Papua’s ‘Empty Lands’: A Dangerous Myth Displacing Indigenous Peoples

    Read more

    Boycott

    Key To Reversing Amazonia’s Mineral Demand: Indigenous Empowerment

    Read more

    Boycott

    Research: Palm Oil Plantations Threaten Indigenous Waterways

    Read more

    Boycott

    New Research: Indigenous Communities Reduce Amazon Deforestation by 83%”

    Read more

    Boycott

    Concerns Mount Over Palm Oil Expansion in Nagaland

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Is Ruining Kalangala Uganda — Locals Paying the Price

    Read more

    Boycott

    Violence for Palm Oil Against Peasant Communities in Honduras Meets Resistance

    Read more

    Load more posts

    Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

    Forests are still being bulldozed to make way for agricultural land for palm oil and beef production. Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock

    Written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    ENDS

    Here are some other ways you can help by using your wallet as a weapon and joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

    What is greenwashing?

    Read more

    Why join the #Boycott4Wildlife?

    Read more

    Greenwashing Tactic #4: Fake Labels

    Read more

    The Counterpunch: Consumer Solutions To Fight Extinction

    Read more

    Contribute to my Ko-Fi

    Did you enjoy visiting this website?

    Palm Oil Detectives is 100% self-funded

    Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.

    Say thanks on Ko-Fi

    #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Cargill #corporateSocialResponsiblity #deforestation #greenwashing #humanRights #indigenous #IndigenousActivism #indigenousRights #landRights #landgrabbing #nature #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #report #SimeDarby #SouthEastAsia #tropicalRainforest #Wilmar

  20. Land-grabbing and Climate Crisis Linked to Palm Oil

    A corporate monopoly for control over land and resources for palm oil must be dismantled immediately to give humanity, animals and our natural world a fighting chance for survival and to reverse the climate crisis. In Asia, many indigenous peoples are now joining forces and rising up to resist this corruption and ecocide. Help them to fight back and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

    Corporate monopolies 💰🔥👿 drive #landgrabbing for #palmoil. To give #indigenous peoples, animals and #nature a fighting chance, we must resist. “Sustainable” palm oil is #greenwashing! #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect 🌴🪔🧐🙊⛔️ https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    #Report by @FAO 📜 finds 90% of #deforestation is for BIG-AG by #Cargill, #Wilmar and #SimeDarby. Their monopoly drives #indigenous #landgrabbing for #palmoil 🌴💰 Take action! 🌴🪔💀🤢🚫 #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    Originally written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    Some closely following the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) say that the 27th session of its Conference of the Parties (COP27) puts more attention on food and agriculture than in previous years.

    For instance, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) noted that the climate gathering in Egypt features four pavilions and about 200 events on food and farming. But these are still outside official negotiations, where states do the actual policymaking and commitments.

    No meaningful focus at COP27 on accountability of industrial farming

    It is apparent in the discussions that matter in the COP process that there is no meaningful focus on the role and accountability of corporate farming in warming the planet.

    The industrial food system (i.e., agriculture and land use/land-use change activities plus supply chain activities like retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging) contributes about 34% to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with an estimated environmental cost of US$ 3 trillion annually.

    Yet, addressing and reversing the climate impacts of corporate farming through radical food systems transformation is not a priority among the COP27 negotiators.

    6 out of 10 of the worst affected countries for climate change are in Asia

    • For Asia, the urgency of the climate crisis cannot be overemphasised. Six of the ten worst affected countries by climate change in the past two decades are in Asia (i.e., Myanmar, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, and Nepal).
    • This year alone, heavy monsoon rains caused unprecedented flooding in Pakistan, affecting 33 million people and inflicting over US$ 30 billion in damages and economic losses.
    • Consecutive typhoons – Noru and Nalgae – hit the Philippines in the two months leading to COP27.
    • These disasters affected more than four million people, displaced more than 241,000, left more than 150 dead, and caused more than US$50 million in damages to agriculture alone.

    Land monopoly: an indispensable requirement of corporate farming

    Land monopoly, an indispensable requirement of corporate farming, creates favorable conditions for the climate crisis to persist and worsen. Corporate monoculture plantations, one of the most visible expressions of land monopoly since colonial times, are among the significant contributors to the existential crisis that the world faces today.

    Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): 90% of global deforestation is driven by agriculture

    Big agribusiness firms are cutting down massive swathes of forests for conversion into industrial plantations and livestock grazing. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that agricultural expansion drove almost 90 percent of global deforestation in the past two decades.

    In Asia, nearly 80 percent of deforestation during the same period is due to conversion into croplands, mainly by corporate plantations, based on the UN body’s study.

    Independent studies affirm this, such as the data compiled and analysed by the Land Matrix (a collaboration of civil society, farmers’ groups, and academic research institutions) on large-scale land acquisitions.

    These refer to lands in low and middle-income countries acquired by foreign and local investors through purchase, lease or concession for agricultural production, timber extraction, carbon trading, industry, renewable energy production, conservation, and tourism. Their 2021 report noted that 964 land deals caused the deforestation of almost two million hectares between 2000 and 2019.

    In East Asia and the Pacific, the Land Matrix reported that about 74 percent of the areas around the locations of land deals were still forested in 2000. By 2019, that number declined to 58 percent, mainly due to oil palm expansions in Malaysia and Indonesia and new agricultural frontiers in Cambodia, China, Laos, and Vietnam.

    Clearing forests releases CO2 and contributes to rising temperatures

    Clearing the forests releases the carbon dioxide (CO2) they store into the atmosphere, contributing to rising global temperatures.

    According to one study, deforestation – which has already claimed 420 million hectares of forests in the last 30 years – can also affect temperatures through its effect on various physical processes of nature. For example, cutting down trees eliminates the forests’ ability to absorb water from the soil and release it into the air as moisture and cool the atmosphere.

    Perpetuating plunder

    At COP27, the world’s largest transnational food companies led by Cargill, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland, among others, launched a roadmap to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains for soy, beef, and palm oil by 2025.

    However, these companies, which have already made similar pledges in the past only to fall short, continue to be implicated in the massive destruction of forests, like Cargill in the Amazon.

    Related: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Read more: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Even worse, they use the climate crisis to legitimise and perpetuate resource grabbing, plunder, and land monopoly. One of the supposed climate solutions that big corporations tend to rally around is planting “new forests”.

    However, the problem is that these large-scale tree-planting efforts are often a pretext to promote corporate plantations.

    Based on another estimate, 45% of oil palm plantations were built in forest areas in Southeast Asia, considered the global hotspot of palm-driven deforestation.

    Palm oil is considered the fastest-growing commodity crop worldwide, requiring an ever-expanding mass of arable lands and forests. FAO data shows that the size of land devoted to oil palm plantations in the past four decades ballooned by more than 571 percent – from 4.28 million hectares in 1980 to 28.74 million in 2020.

    Wilmar responsible for palm oil deforestation despite supposedly using “sustainable” palm oil.

    Climate justice vs. land monopoly

    Corporate plantations – motivated by profits for their investors that include the world’s wealthiest people and largest investment firms from mostly the industrialised countries – produce commodities dictated by the global market’s needs, not by the food security requirements and overall development agenda of mostly the underdeveloped countries and local communities where they are built often in violent ways. These big capitalists and finance oligarchs are oblivious to their operations’ harsh socioeconomic and environmental impacts.

    Aside from degrading or destroying the forests to establish monoculture, export-oriented industrial farms, corporate land monopolies also perpetuate the use of massive amounts of climate-warming fossil fuels by promoting harmful agrochemicals like synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and encouraging long supply chains. It is not a coincidence that as corporate plantations, agrochemicals such as pesticides have also soared by 80 percent in the past three decades.

    Agroecological, localised, and diversified food systems offer sustainable and climate-friendly alternatives, as much evidence suggests, but ultimately, decisions on how to use and manage the world’s forests and farmlands for the benefit of the greatest majority without harming the people and planet rest on the question of who effectively controls these resources.

    From colonialism to modern imperialism today, such control has been taken away from the indigenous and peasant communities, grabbed and monopolised by and for commercial interests.

    The people rising for climate justice necessitates the struggle to dismantle this corporate monopoly control over land and resources and give humanity a fighting chance to survive and reverse the climate crisis.

    Read more stories about human rights and land-grabbing in the palm oil industry and other extractive industries

    Pictured: Mushrooms on the forest floor by Wooter Penning for Pexels

    Boycott

    Greasing the Wheels of Colonialism: Palm Oil Industry in West Papua 

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Workers Expose Industry Practices Resembling Colonialism

    Read more

    Boycott

    Papua’s ‘Empty Lands’: A Dangerous Myth Displacing Indigenous Peoples

    Read more

    Boycott

    Key To Reversing Amazonia’s Mineral Demand: Indigenous Empowerment

    Read more

    Boycott

    Research: Palm Oil Plantations Threaten Indigenous Waterways

    Read more

    Boycott

    New Research: Indigenous Communities Reduce Amazon Deforestation by 83%”

    Read more

    Boycott

    Concerns Mount Over Palm Oil Expansion in Nagaland

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Is Ruining Kalangala Uganda — Locals Paying the Price

    Read more

    Boycott

    Violence for Palm Oil Against Peasant Communities in Honduras Meets Resistance

    Read more

    Load more posts

    Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

    Forests are still being bulldozed to make way for agricultural land for palm oil and beef production. Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock

    Written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    ENDS

    Here are some other ways you can help by using your wallet as a weapon and joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

    What is greenwashing?

    Read more

    Why join the #Boycott4Wildlife?

    Read more

    Greenwashing Tactic #4: Fake Labels

    Read more

    The Counterpunch: Consumer Solutions To Fight Extinction

    Read more

    Contribute to my Ko-Fi

    Did you enjoy visiting this website?

    Palm Oil Detectives is 100% self-funded

    Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.

    Say thanks on Ko-Fi

    #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Cargill #corporateSocialResponsiblity #deforestation #greenwashing #humanRights #indigenous #IndigenousActivism #indigenousRights #landRights #landgrabbing #nature #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #report #SimeDarby #SouthEastAsia #tropicalRainforest #Wilmar

  21. Land-grabbing and Climate Crisis Linked to Palm Oil

    A corporate monopoly for control over land and resources for palm oil must be dismantled immediately to give humanity, animals and our natural world a fighting chance for survival and to reverse the climate crisis. In Asia, many indigenous peoples are now joining forces and rising up to resist this corruption and ecocide. Help them to fight back and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

    Corporate monopolies 💰🔥👿 drive #landgrabbing for #palmoil. To give #indigenous peoples, animals and #nature a fighting chance, we must resist. “Sustainable” palm oil is #greenwashing! #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect 🌴🪔🧐🙊⛔️ https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    #Report by @FAO 📜 finds 90% of #deforestation is for BIG-AG by #Cargill, #Wilmar and #SimeDarby. Their monopoly drives #indigenous #landgrabbing for #palmoil 🌴💰 Take action! 🌴🪔💀🤢🚫 #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    Originally written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    Some closely following the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) say that the 27th session of its Conference of the Parties (COP27) puts more attention on food and agriculture than in previous years.

    For instance, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) noted that the climate gathering in Egypt features four pavilions and about 200 events on food and farming. But these are still outside official negotiations, where states do the actual policymaking and commitments.

    No meaningful focus at COP27 on accountability of industrial farming

    It is apparent in the discussions that matter in the COP process that there is no meaningful focus on the role and accountability of corporate farming in warming the planet.

    The industrial food system (i.e., agriculture and land use/land-use change activities plus supply chain activities like retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging) contributes about 34% to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with an estimated environmental cost of US$ 3 trillion annually.

    Yet, addressing and reversing the climate impacts of corporate farming through radical food systems transformation is not a priority among the COP27 negotiators.

    6 out of 10 of the worst affected countries for climate change are in Asia

    • For Asia, the urgency of the climate crisis cannot be overemphasised. Six of the ten worst affected countries by climate change in the past two decades are in Asia (i.e., Myanmar, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, and Nepal).
    • This year alone, heavy monsoon rains caused unprecedented flooding in Pakistan, affecting 33 million people and inflicting over US$ 30 billion in damages and economic losses.
    • Consecutive typhoons – Noru and Nalgae – hit the Philippines in the two months leading to COP27.
    • These disasters affected more than four million people, displaced more than 241,000, left more than 150 dead, and caused more than US$50 million in damages to agriculture alone.

    Land monopoly: an indispensable requirement of corporate farming

    Land monopoly, an indispensable requirement of corporate farming, creates favorable conditions for the climate crisis to persist and worsen. Corporate monoculture plantations, one of the most visible expressions of land monopoly since colonial times, are among the significant contributors to the existential crisis that the world faces today.

    Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): 90% of global deforestation is driven by agriculture

    Big agribusiness firms are cutting down massive swathes of forests for conversion into industrial plantations and livestock grazing. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that agricultural expansion drove almost 90 percent of global deforestation in the past two decades.

    In Asia, nearly 80 percent of deforestation during the same period is due to conversion into croplands, mainly by corporate plantations, based on the UN body’s study.

    Independent studies affirm this, such as the data compiled and analysed by the Land Matrix (a collaboration of civil society, farmers’ groups, and academic research institutions) on large-scale land acquisitions.

    These refer to lands in low and middle-income countries acquired by foreign and local investors through purchase, lease or concession for agricultural production, timber extraction, carbon trading, industry, renewable energy production, conservation, and tourism. Their 2021 report noted that 964 land deals caused the deforestation of almost two million hectares between 2000 and 2019.

    In East Asia and the Pacific, the Land Matrix reported that about 74 percent of the areas around the locations of land deals were still forested in 2000. By 2019, that number declined to 58 percent, mainly due to oil palm expansions in Malaysia and Indonesia and new agricultural frontiers in Cambodia, China, Laos, and Vietnam.

    Clearing forests releases CO2 and contributes to rising temperatures

    Clearing the forests releases the carbon dioxide (CO2) they store into the atmosphere, contributing to rising global temperatures.

    According to one study, deforestation – which has already claimed 420 million hectares of forests in the last 30 years – can also affect temperatures through its effect on various physical processes of nature. For example, cutting down trees eliminates the forests’ ability to absorb water from the soil and release it into the air as moisture and cool the atmosphere.

    Perpetuating plunder

    At COP27, the world’s largest transnational food companies led by Cargill, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland, among others, launched a roadmap to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains for soy, beef, and palm oil by 2025.

    However, these companies, which have already made similar pledges in the past only to fall short, continue to be implicated in the massive destruction of forests, like Cargill in the Amazon.

    Related: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Read more: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Even worse, they use the climate crisis to legitimise and perpetuate resource grabbing, plunder, and land monopoly. One of the supposed climate solutions that big corporations tend to rally around is planting “new forests”.

    However, the problem is that these large-scale tree-planting efforts are often a pretext to promote corporate plantations.

    Based on another estimate, 45% of oil palm plantations were built in forest areas in Southeast Asia, considered the global hotspot of palm-driven deforestation.

    Palm oil is considered the fastest-growing commodity crop worldwide, requiring an ever-expanding mass of arable lands and forests. FAO data shows that the size of land devoted to oil palm plantations in the past four decades ballooned by more than 571 percent – from 4.28 million hectares in 1980 to 28.74 million in 2020.

    Wilmar responsible for palm oil deforestation despite supposedly using “sustainable” palm oil.

    Climate justice vs. land monopoly

    Corporate plantations – motivated by profits for their investors that include the world’s wealthiest people and largest investment firms from mostly the industrialised countries – produce commodities dictated by the global market’s needs, not by the food security requirements and overall development agenda of mostly the underdeveloped countries and local communities where they are built often in violent ways. These big capitalists and finance oligarchs are oblivious to their operations’ harsh socioeconomic and environmental impacts.

    Aside from degrading or destroying the forests to establish monoculture, export-oriented industrial farms, corporate land monopolies also perpetuate the use of massive amounts of climate-warming fossil fuels by promoting harmful agrochemicals like synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and encouraging long supply chains. It is not a coincidence that as corporate plantations, agrochemicals such as pesticides have also soared by 80 percent in the past three decades.

    Agroecological, localised, and diversified food systems offer sustainable and climate-friendly alternatives, as much evidence suggests, but ultimately, decisions on how to use and manage the world’s forests and farmlands for the benefit of the greatest majority without harming the people and planet rest on the question of who effectively controls these resources.

    From colonialism to modern imperialism today, such control has been taken away from the indigenous and peasant communities, grabbed and monopolised by and for commercial interests.

    The people rising for climate justice necessitates the struggle to dismantle this corporate monopoly control over land and resources and give humanity a fighting chance to survive and reverse the climate crisis.

    Read more stories about human rights and land-grabbing in the palm oil industry and other extractive industries

    Pictured: Mushrooms on the forest floor by Wooter Penning for Pexels

    Boycott

    Greasing the Wheels of Colonialism: Palm Oil Industry in West Papua 

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Workers Expose Industry Practices Resembling Colonialism

    Read more

    Boycott

    Papua’s ‘Empty Lands’: A Dangerous Myth Displacing Indigenous Peoples

    Read more

    Boycott

    Key To Reversing Amazonia’s Mineral Demand: Indigenous Empowerment

    Read more

    Boycott

    Research: Palm Oil Plantations Threaten Indigenous Waterways

    Read more

    Boycott

    New Research: Indigenous Communities Reduce Amazon Deforestation by 83%”

    Read more

    Boycott

    Concerns Mount Over Palm Oil Expansion in Nagaland

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Is Ruining Kalangala Uganda — Locals Paying the Price

    Read more

    Boycott

    Violence for Palm Oil Against Peasant Communities in Honduras Meets Resistance

    Read more

    Load more posts

    Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

    Forests are still being bulldozed to make way for agricultural land for palm oil and beef production. Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock

    Written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    ENDS

    Here are some other ways you can help by using your wallet as a weapon and joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

    What is greenwashing?

    Read more

    Why join the #Boycott4Wildlife?

    Read more

    Greenwashing Tactic #4: Fake Labels

    Read more

    The Counterpunch: Consumer Solutions To Fight Extinction

    Read more

    Contribute to my Ko-Fi

    Did you enjoy visiting this website?

    Palm Oil Detectives is 100% self-funded

    Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.

    Say thanks on Ko-Fi

    #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Cargill #corporateSocialResponsiblity #deforestation #greenwashing #humanRights #indigenous #IndigenousActivism #indigenousRights #landRights #landgrabbing #nature #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #report #SimeDarby #SouthEastAsia #tropicalRainforest #Wilmar

  22. Land-grabbing and Climate Crisis Linked to Palm Oil

    A corporate monopoly for control over land and resources for palm oil must be dismantled immediately to give humanity, animals and our natural world a fighting chance for survival and to reverse the climate crisis. In Asia, many indigenous peoples are now joining forces and rising up to resist this corruption and ecocide. Help them to fight back and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

    Corporate monopolies 💰🔥👿 drive #landgrabbing for #palmoil. To give #indigenous peoples, animals and #nature a fighting chance, we must resist. “Sustainable” palm oil is #greenwashing! #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect 🌴🪔🧐🙊⛔️ https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    #Report by @FAO 📜 finds 90% of #deforestation is for BIG-AG by #Cargill, #Wilmar and #SimeDarby. Their monopoly drives #indigenous #landgrabbing for #palmoil 🌴💰 Take action! 🌴🪔💀🤢🚫 #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    Originally written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    Some closely following the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) say that the 27th session of its Conference of the Parties (COP27) puts more attention on food and agriculture than in previous years.

    For instance, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) noted that the climate gathering in Egypt features four pavilions and about 200 events on food and farming. But these are still outside official negotiations, where states do the actual policymaking and commitments.

    No meaningful focus at COP27 on accountability of industrial farming

    It is apparent in the discussions that matter in the COP process that there is no meaningful focus on the role and accountability of corporate farming in warming the planet.

    The industrial food system (i.e., agriculture and land use/land-use change activities plus supply chain activities like retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging) contributes about 34% to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with an estimated environmental cost of US$ 3 trillion annually.

    Yet, addressing and reversing the climate impacts of corporate farming through radical food systems transformation is not a priority among the COP27 negotiators.

    6 out of 10 of the worst affected countries for climate change are in Asia

    • For Asia, the urgency of the climate crisis cannot be overemphasised. Six of the ten worst affected countries by climate change in the past two decades are in Asia (i.e., Myanmar, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, and Nepal).
    • This year alone, heavy monsoon rains caused unprecedented flooding in Pakistan, affecting 33 million people and inflicting over US$ 30 billion in damages and economic losses.
    • Consecutive typhoons – Noru and Nalgae – hit the Philippines in the two months leading to COP27.
    • These disasters affected more than four million people, displaced more than 241,000, left more than 150 dead, and caused more than US$50 million in damages to agriculture alone.

    Land monopoly: an indispensable requirement of corporate farming

    Land monopoly, an indispensable requirement of corporate farming, creates favorable conditions for the climate crisis to persist and worsen. Corporate monoculture plantations, one of the most visible expressions of land monopoly since colonial times, are among the significant contributors to the existential crisis that the world faces today.

    Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): 90% of global deforestation is driven by agriculture

    Big agribusiness firms are cutting down massive swathes of forests for conversion into industrial plantations and livestock grazing. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that agricultural expansion drove almost 90 percent of global deforestation in the past two decades.

    In Asia, nearly 80 percent of deforestation during the same period is due to conversion into croplands, mainly by corporate plantations, based on the UN body’s study.

    Independent studies affirm this, such as the data compiled and analysed by the Land Matrix (a collaboration of civil society, farmers’ groups, and academic research institutions) on large-scale land acquisitions.

    These refer to lands in low and middle-income countries acquired by foreign and local investors through purchase, lease or concession for agricultural production, timber extraction, carbon trading, industry, renewable energy production, conservation, and tourism. Their 2021 report noted that 964 land deals caused the deforestation of almost two million hectares between 2000 and 2019.

    In East Asia and the Pacific, the Land Matrix reported that about 74 percent of the areas around the locations of land deals were still forested in 2000. By 2019, that number declined to 58 percent, mainly due to oil palm expansions in Malaysia and Indonesia and new agricultural frontiers in Cambodia, China, Laos, and Vietnam.

    Clearing forests releases CO2 and contributes to rising temperatures

    Clearing the forests releases the carbon dioxide (CO2) they store into the atmosphere, contributing to rising global temperatures.

    According to one study, deforestation – which has already claimed 420 million hectares of forests in the last 30 years – can also affect temperatures through its effect on various physical processes of nature. For example, cutting down trees eliminates the forests’ ability to absorb water from the soil and release it into the air as moisture and cool the atmosphere.

    Perpetuating plunder

    At COP27, the world’s largest transnational food companies led by Cargill, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland, among others, launched a roadmap to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains for soy, beef, and palm oil by 2025.

    However, these companies, which have already made similar pledges in the past only to fall short, continue to be implicated in the massive destruction of forests, like Cargill in the Amazon.

    Related: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Read more: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Even worse, they use the climate crisis to legitimise and perpetuate resource grabbing, plunder, and land monopoly. One of the supposed climate solutions that big corporations tend to rally around is planting “new forests”.

    However, the problem is that these large-scale tree-planting efforts are often a pretext to promote corporate plantations.

    Based on another estimate, 45% of oil palm plantations were built in forest areas in Southeast Asia, considered the global hotspot of palm-driven deforestation.

    Palm oil is considered the fastest-growing commodity crop worldwide, requiring an ever-expanding mass of arable lands and forests. FAO data shows that the size of land devoted to oil palm plantations in the past four decades ballooned by more than 571 percent – from 4.28 million hectares in 1980 to 28.74 million in 2020.

    Wilmar responsible for palm oil deforestation despite supposedly using “sustainable” palm oil.

    Climate justice vs. land monopoly

    Corporate plantations – motivated by profits for their investors that include the world’s wealthiest people and largest investment firms from mostly the industrialised countries – produce commodities dictated by the global market’s needs, not by the food security requirements and overall development agenda of mostly the underdeveloped countries and local communities where they are built often in violent ways. These big capitalists and finance oligarchs are oblivious to their operations’ harsh socioeconomic and environmental impacts.

    Aside from degrading or destroying the forests to establish monoculture, export-oriented industrial farms, corporate land monopolies also perpetuate the use of massive amounts of climate-warming fossil fuels by promoting harmful agrochemicals like synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and encouraging long supply chains. It is not a coincidence that as corporate plantations, agrochemicals such as pesticides have also soared by 80 percent in the past three decades.

    Agroecological, localised, and diversified food systems offer sustainable and climate-friendly alternatives, as much evidence suggests, but ultimately, decisions on how to use and manage the world’s forests and farmlands for the benefit of the greatest majority without harming the people and planet rest on the question of who effectively controls these resources.

    From colonialism to modern imperialism today, such control has been taken away from the indigenous and peasant communities, grabbed and monopolised by and for commercial interests.

    The people rising for climate justice necessitates the struggle to dismantle this corporate monopoly control over land and resources and give humanity a fighting chance to survive and reverse the climate crisis.

    Read more stories about human rights and land-grabbing in the palm oil industry and other extractive industries

    Pictured: Mushrooms on the forest floor by Wooter Penning for Pexels

    Boycott

    Greasing the Wheels of Colonialism: Palm Oil Industry in West Papua 

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Workers Expose Industry Practices Resembling Colonialism

    Read more

    Boycott

    Papua’s ‘Empty Lands’: A Dangerous Myth Displacing Indigenous Peoples

    Read more

    Boycott

    Key To Reversing Amazonia’s Mineral Demand: Indigenous Empowerment

    Read more

    Boycott

    Research: Palm Oil Plantations Threaten Indigenous Waterways

    Read more

    Boycott

    New Research: Indigenous Communities Reduce Amazon Deforestation by 83%”

    Read more

    Boycott

    Concerns Mount Over Palm Oil Expansion in Nagaland

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Is Ruining Kalangala Uganda — Locals Paying the Price

    Read more

    Boycott

    Violence for Palm Oil Against Peasant Communities in Honduras Meets Resistance

    Read more

    Load more posts

    Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

    Forests are still being bulldozed to make way for agricultural land for palm oil and beef production. Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock

    Written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    ENDS

    Here are some other ways you can help by using your wallet as a weapon and joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

    What is greenwashing?

    Read more

    Why join the #Boycott4Wildlife?

    Read more

    Greenwashing Tactic #4: Fake Labels

    Read more

    The Counterpunch: Consumer Solutions To Fight Extinction

    Read more

    Contribute to my Ko-Fi

    Did you enjoy visiting this website?

    Palm Oil Detectives is 100% self-funded

    Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.

    Say thanks on Ko-Fi

    #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Cargill #corporateSocialResponsiblity #deforestation #greenwashing #humanRights #indigenous #IndigenousActivism #indigenousRights #landRights #landgrabbing #nature #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #report #SimeDarby #SouthEastAsia #tropicalRainforest #Wilmar

  23. Land-grabbing and Climate Crisis Linked to Palm Oil

    A corporate monopoly for control over land and resources for palm oil must be dismantled immediately to give humanity, animals and our natural world a fighting chance for survival and to reverse the climate crisis. In Asia, many indigenous peoples are now joining forces and rising up to resist this corruption and ecocide. Help them to fight back and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

    Corporate monopolies 💰🔥👿 drive #landgrabbing for #palmoil. To give #indigenous peoples, animals and #nature a fighting chance, we must resist. “Sustainable” palm oil is #greenwashing! #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect 🌴🪔🧐🙊⛔️ https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    #Report by @FAO 📜 finds 90% of #deforestation is for BIG-AG by #Cargill, #Wilmar and #SimeDarby. Their monopoly drives #indigenous #landgrabbing for #palmoil 🌴💰 Take action! 🌴🪔💀🤢🚫 #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/11/20/land-grabbing-and-the-climate-crisis-are-strongly-linked-to-palm-oil/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    Originally written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    Some closely following the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) say that the 27th session of its Conference of the Parties (COP27) puts more attention on food and agriculture than in previous years.

    For instance, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) noted that the climate gathering in Egypt features four pavilions and about 200 events on food and farming. But these are still outside official negotiations, where states do the actual policymaking and commitments.

    No meaningful focus at COP27 on accountability of industrial farming

    It is apparent in the discussions that matter in the COP process that there is no meaningful focus on the role and accountability of corporate farming in warming the planet.

    The industrial food system (i.e., agriculture and land use/land-use change activities plus supply chain activities like retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging) contributes about 34% to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with an estimated environmental cost of US$ 3 trillion annually.

    Yet, addressing and reversing the climate impacts of corporate farming through radical food systems transformation is not a priority among the COP27 negotiators.

    6 out of 10 of the worst affected countries for climate change are in Asia

    • For Asia, the urgency of the climate crisis cannot be overemphasised. Six of the ten worst affected countries by climate change in the past two decades are in Asia (i.e., Myanmar, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, and Nepal).
    • This year alone, heavy monsoon rains caused unprecedented flooding in Pakistan, affecting 33 million people and inflicting over US$ 30 billion in damages and economic losses.
    • Consecutive typhoons – Noru and Nalgae – hit the Philippines in the two months leading to COP27.
    • These disasters affected more than four million people, displaced more than 241,000, left more than 150 dead, and caused more than US$50 million in damages to agriculture alone.

    Land monopoly: an indispensable requirement of corporate farming

    Land monopoly, an indispensable requirement of corporate farming, creates favorable conditions for the climate crisis to persist and worsen. Corporate monoculture plantations, one of the most visible expressions of land monopoly since colonial times, are among the significant contributors to the existential crisis that the world faces today.

    Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): 90% of global deforestation is driven by agriculture

    Big agribusiness firms are cutting down massive swathes of forests for conversion into industrial plantations and livestock grazing. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that agricultural expansion drove almost 90 percent of global deforestation in the past two decades.

    In Asia, nearly 80 percent of deforestation during the same period is due to conversion into croplands, mainly by corporate plantations, based on the UN body’s study.

    Independent studies affirm this, such as the data compiled and analysed by the Land Matrix (a collaboration of civil society, farmers’ groups, and academic research institutions) on large-scale land acquisitions.

    These refer to lands in low and middle-income countries acquired by foreign and local investors through purchase, lease or concession for agricultural production, timber extraction, carbon trading, industry, renewable energy production, conservation, and tourism. Their 2021 report noted that 964 land deals caused the deforestation of almost two million hectares between 2000 and 2019.

    In East Asia and the Pacific, the Land Matrix reported that about 74 percent of the areas around the locations of land deals were still forested in 2000. By 2019, that number declined to 58 percent, mainly due to oil palm expansions in Malaysia and Indonesia and new agricultural frontiers in Cambodia, China, Laos, and Vietnam.

    Clearing forests releases CO2 and contributes to rising temperatures

    Clearing the forests releases the carbon dioxide (CO2) they store into the atmosphere, contributing to rising global temperatures.

    According to one study, deforestation – which has already claimed 420 million hectares of forests in the last 30 years – can also affect temperatures through its effect on various physical processes of nature. For example, cutting down trees eliminates the forests’ ability to absorb water from the soil and release it into the air as moisture and cool the atmosphere.

    Perpetuating plunder

    At COP27, the world’s largest transnational food companies led by Cargill, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland, among others, launched a roadmap to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains for soy, beef, and palm oil by 2025.

    However, these companies, which have already made similar pledges in the past only to fall short, continue to be implicated in the massive destruction of forests, like Cargill in the Amazon.

    Related: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Read more: New research: Indirect sourcing of up to 90% of palm oil from Cargill, Wilmar, Musim Mas cannot be traced and is linked to deforestation

    Even worse, they use the climate crisis to legitimise and perpetuate resource grabbing, plunder, and land monopoly. One of the supposed climate solutions that big corporations tend to rally around is planting “new forests”.

    However, the problem is that these large-scale tree-planting efforts are often a pretext to promote corporate plantations.

    Based on another estimate, 45% of oil palm plantations were built in forest areas in Southeast Asia, considered the global hotspot of palm-driven deforestation.

    Palm oil is considered the fastest-growing commodity crop worldwide, requiring an ever-expanding mass of arable lands and forests. FAO data shows that the size of land devoted to oil palm plantations in the past four decades ballooned by more than 571 percent – from 4.28 million hectares in 1980 to 28.74 million in 2020.

    Wilmar responsible for palm oil deforestation despite supposedly using “sustainable” palm oil.

    Climate justice vs. land monopoly

    Corporate plantations – motivated by profits for their investors that include the world’s wealthiest people and largest investment firms from mostly the industrialised countries – produce commodities dictated by the global market’s needs, not by the food security requirements and overall development agenda of mostly the underdeveloped countries and local communities where they are built often in violent ways. These big capitalists and finance oligarchs are oblivious to their operations’ harsh socioeconomic and environmental impacts.

    Aside from degrading or destroying the forests to establish monoculture, export-oriented industrial farms, corporate land monopolies also perpetuate the use of massive amounts of climate-warming fossil fuels by promoting harmful agrochemicals like synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and encouraging long supply chains. It is not a coincidence that as corporate plantations, agrochemicals such as pesticides have also soared by 80 percent in the past three decades.

    Agroecological, localised, and diversified food systems offer sustainable and climate-friendly alternatives, as much evidence suggests, but ultimately, decisions on how to use and manage the world’s forests and farmlands for the benefit of the greatest majority without harming the people and planet rest on the question of who effectively controls these resources.

    From colonialism to modern imperialism today, such control has been taken away from the indigenous and peasant communities, grabbed and monopolised by and for commercial interests.

    The people rising for climate justice necessitates the struggle to dismantle this corporate monopoly control over land and resources and give humanity a fighting chance to survive and reverse the climate crisis.

    Read more stories about human rights and land-grabbing in the palm oil industry and other extractive industries

    Pictured: Mushrooms on the forest floor by Wooter Penning for Pexels

    Boycott

    Greasing the Wheels of Colonialism: Palm Oil Industry in West Papua 

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Workers Expose Industry Practices Resembling Colonialism

    Read more

    Boycott

    Papua’s ‘Empty Lands’: A Dangerous Myth Displacing Indigenous Peoples

    Read more

    Boycott

    Key To Reversing Amazonia’s Mineral Demand: Indigenous Empowerment

    Read more

    Boycott

    Research: Palm Oil Plantations Threaten Indigenous Waterways

    Read more

    Boycott

    New Research: Indigenous Communities Reduce Amazon Deforestation by 83%”

    Read more

    Boycott

    Concerns Mount Over Palm Oil Expansion in Nagaland

    Read more

    Boycott

    Palm Oil Is Ruining Kalangala Uganda — Locals Paying the Price

    Read more

    Boycott

    Violence for Palm Oil Against Peasant Communities in Honduras Meets Resistance

    Read more

    Load more posts

    Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

    Forests are still being bulldozed to make way for agricultural land for palm oil and beef production. Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock

    Written by Arnold Padilla for Bulatlat.com as ‘Land Monopoly and Climate Crisis: A Look at Asia’. Read the original article. Published November 17, 2022. Arnold Padilla is the coordinator of the Food Sovereignty Program of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its “No Land, No Life” campaign against land grabbing.

    ENDS

    Here are some other ways you can help by using your wallet as a weapon and joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

    What is greenwashing?

    Read more

    Why join the #Boycott4Wildlife?

    Read more

    Greenwashing Tactic #4: Fake Labels

    Read more

    The Counterpunch: Consumer Solutions To Fight Extinction

    Read more

    Contribute to my Ko-Fi

    Did you enjoy visiting this website?

    Palm Oil Detectives is 100% self-funded

    Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.

    Say thanks on Ko-Fi

    #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Cargill #corporateSocialResponsiblity #deforestation #greenwashing #humanRights #indigenous #IndigenousActivism #indigenousRights #landRights #landgrabbing #nature #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #report #SimeDarby #SouthEastAsia #tropicalRainforest #Wilmar

  24. Deforestation Raises Temperatures Up To 4.5℃

    Forests directly cool the planet, like natural evaporative air conditioners. So what happens when you cut them down? In tropical countries such as #Indonesia, #Brazil and the #Congo, rapid #deforestation may have accounted for up to 75% of the observed surface #climatechange and warming between 1950 and 2010. Our new research took a closer look at this phenomenon.

    Forests cool the planet 🆒🌳🍃 like natural #aircon. What happens when you cut them down? #Deforestation heats local areas as much as 4.5℃. Keep #forests intact for people and rare animals. #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/03/06/deforestation-can-raise-local-temperatures-by-up-to-4-5%e2%84%83-and-heat-untouched-areas-6km-away/

    Share to BlueSky Share to Twitter

    Using satellite data over Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, we found deforestation can heat a local area by as much as 4.5℃, and can even raise temperatures in undisturbed forests up to 6km away.

    More than 40% of the world’s population live in the tropics and, under climate change, rising heat and humidity could push them into lethal conditions. Keeping forests intact is vital to protect those who live in and around them as the planet warms.

    Deforestation hot spots

    Deforestation in Borneo, Shutterstock

    At the recent climate change summit in Glasgow, world leaders representing 85% of Earth’s remaining forests committed to ending, and reversing, deforestation by 2030.

    This is a crucial measure in our fight to stop the planet warming beyond the internationally agreed limit of 1.5℃, because forests store vast amounts of carbon. Deforestation releases this carbon – approximately 5.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year – back into the atmosphere. This accounts for nearly 10% of the global emissions from 2009-2016.

    Deforestation is particularly prevalent in Southeast Asia. We calculate that between 2000 and 2019, Indonesia lost 17% of its forested area (26.8 million hectares of land), and Malaysia 28% of its forest cover (8.12 million hectares). Others in the region, such as Papua New Guinea, are considered “deforestation hot spots”, as they’re at high risk of losing their forest cover in the coming decade.

    Forests in this region are cut down for a variety of reasons, including for expanding palm oil and timber plantations, logging, mining and small-scale farms. And these new types of land uses produce different spatial patterns of forest loss, which we can see and measure using satellites.

    What we found

    We already know forests cool the climate directly, and losing forest causes local temperatures to rise. But we wanted to learn whether the different patterns of forest loss influenced how much temperatures increased by, and how far warming spread from the deforested site into neighbouring, unchanged areas.

    To find out, we used satellite images that measure the temperature of the land surface. As the illustration below shows, we measured this by averaging forest loss in rings of different widths and radius, and looking at the average temperature change of the forest inside the ring.

    How forest clearing near an unchanged area causes temperatures to rise.

    For example, if you consider a circle of forest that’s 4km wide, and there’s a completely deforested, 2km-wide ring around it, the inner circle would warm on average by 1.2℃.

    The closer the forest loss, the higher the warming. If the ring was 1-2km away, the circle would warm by 3.1℃, while at 4-6km away, it’s 0.75℃.

    These might not sound like big increases in temperature, but global studies show for each 1℃ increase in temperature, yields of major crops would decline by around 3-7%. Retaining forest within 1km of agricultural land in Southeast Asia could therefore avoid crop losses of 10-20%.

    These estimates are conservative, because we only measured the effect of forest loss on average yearly temperatures. But another important factor is that higher average temperatures usually create higher temperature extremes, like those during heatwaves. And those really high temperatures in heatwaves are what put people and crops at most risk.

    Of course, forests aren’t normally cut down in rings. This analysis was designed to exclude other causes of temperature change, putting the effect of non-local forest loss in focus.

    Why is this happening?

    Forests cool the land because trees draw water from the soil to their leaves, where it then evaporates. The energy needed to evaporate the water comes from sunshine and heat in the air, the same reason you feel colder when you get out of a pool with water on your skin.

    A single tree in a tropical forest can cause local surface cooling equivalent to 70 kilowatt hours for every 100 litres of water used from the soil — as much cooling as two household air conditioners.

    Forests are particularly good at cooling the land because their canopies have large surface area, which can evaporate a lot of water. When forests in tropical regions are cut down, this evaporative cooling stops, and the land surface warms up.

    This is not news to the people of Borneo. In 2018, researchers surveyed people in 477 villages, and found they’re well aware nearby forest loss has caused them to live with hotter temperatures. When asked why forests were important to their health and the health of their families, the ability for trees to regulate temperature was the most frequent response.

    A logging road in East Kalimantan, Bornea: logged forest on the left, virgin/primary forest on the right. Aidenvironment, 2005/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    A climate change double whammy

    In many parts of the world, including the tropics and Australia, expanding farmland is a major reason for cutting down forest. But given hotter temperatures also reduce the productivity of farms, conserving forests might prove a better strategy for food security and for the livelihoods of farmers.

    If forests must be removed, there may be ways to avoid the worst possible temperature increases. For example, we found that keeping at least 10% of forest cover helped reduce the associated warming by an average of 0.2℃.

    Similarly, temperatures did not increase as much when the area of forest loss was smaller. This means if deforestation occurs in smaller, discontinuous blocks rather than uniformly, then the temperature impacts will be less severe.

    To help share these findings, we’ve built a web mapping tool that lets users explore the effects of different patterns and areas of forest loss on local temperatures in maritime South East Asia. It helps show why protecting forests in the tropics offers a climate change double whammy – lowering carbon dioxide emissions and local temperatures together.

    Sally Thompson, Associate professor, The University of Western Australia; Débora Corrêa, Research fellow, The University of Western Australia; John Duncan, Research fellow, The University of Western Australia, and Octavia Crompton, Postdoctoral researcher, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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    Join the #Boycott4Wildlife

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  25. Deforestation Raises Temperatures Up To 4.5℃

    Forests directly cool the planet, like natural evaporative air conditioners. So what happens when you cut them down? In tropical countries such as #Indonesia, #Brazil and the #Congo, rapid #deforestation may have accounted for up to 75% of the observed surface #climatechange and warming between 1950 and 2010. Our new research took a closer look at this phenomenon.

    Forests cool the planet 🆒🌳🍃 like natural #aircon. What happens when you cut them down? #Deforestation heats local areas as much as 4.5℃. Keep #forests intact for people and rare animals. #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/03/06/deforestation-can-raise-local-temperatures-by-up-to-4-5%e2%84%83-and-heat-untouched-areas-6km-away/

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    Using satellite data over Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, we found deforestation can heat a local area by as much as 4.5℃, and can even raise temperatures in undisturbed forests up to 6km away.

    More than 40% of the world’s population live in the tropics and, under climate change, rising heat and humidity could push them into lethal conditions. Keeping forests intact is vital to protect those who live in and around them as the planet warms.

    Deforestation hot spots

    Deforestation in Borneo, Shutterstock

    At the recent climate change summit in Glasgow, world leaders representing 85% of Earth’s remaining forests committed to ending, and reversing, deforestation by 2030.

    This is a crucial measure in our fight to stop the planet warming beyond the internationally agreed limit of 1.5℃, because forests store vast amounts of carbon. Deforestation releases this carbon – approximately 5.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year – back into the atmosphere. This accounts for nearly 10% of the global emissions from 2009-2016.

    Deforestation is particularly prevalent in Southeast Asia. We calculate that between 2000 and 2019, Indonesia lost 17% of its forested area (26.8 million hectares of land), and Malaysia 28% of its forest cover (8.12 million hectares). Others in the region, such as Papua New Guinea, are considered “deforestation hot spots”, as they’re at high risk of losing their forest cover in the coming decade.

    Forests in this region are cut down for a variety of reasons, including for expanding palm oil and timber plantations, logging, mining and small-scale farms. And these new types of land uses produce different spatial patterns of forest loss, which we can see and measure using satellites.

    What we found

    We already know forests cool the climate directly, and losing forest causes local temperatures to rise. But we wanted to learn whether the different patterns of forest loss influenced how much temperatures increased by, and how far warming spread from the deforested site into neighbouring, unchanged areas.

    To find out, we used satellite images that measure the temperature of the land surface. As the illustration below shows, we measured this by averaging forest loss in rings of different widths and radius, and looking at the average temperature change of the forest inside the ring.

    How forest clearing near an unchanged area causes temperatures to rise.

    For example, if you consider a circle of forest that’s 4km wide, and there’s a completely deforested, 2km-wide ring around it, the inner circle would warm on average by 1.2℃.

    The closer the forest loss, the higher the warming. If the ring was 1-2km away, the circle would warm by 3.1℃, while at 4-6km away, it’s 0.75℃.

    These might not sound like big increases in temperature, but global studies show for each 1℃ increase in temperature, yields of major crops would decline by around 3-7%. Retaining forest within 1km of agricultural land in Southeast Asia could therefore avoid crop losses of 10-20%.

    These estimates are conservative, because we only measured the effect of forest loss on average yearly temperatures. But another important factor is that higher average temperatures usually create higher temperature extremes, like those during heatwaves. And those really high temperatures in heatwaves are what put people and crops at most risk.

    Of course, forests aren’t normally cut down in rings. This analysis was designed to exclude other causes of temperature change, putting the effect of non-local forest loss in focus.

    Why is this happening?

    Forests cool the land because trees draw water from the soil to their leaves, where it then evaporates. The energy needed to evaporate the water comes from sunshine and heat in the air, the same reason you feel colder when you get out of a pool with water on your skin.

    A single tree in a tropical forest can cause local surface cooling equivalent to 70 kilowatt hours for every 100 litres of water used from the soil — as much cooling as two household air conditioners.

    Forests are particularly good at cooling the land because their canopies have large surface area, which can evaporate a lot of water. When forests in tropical regions are cut down, this evaporative cooling stops, and the land surface warms up.

    This is not news to the people of Borneo. In 2018, researchers surveyed people in 477 villages, and found they’re well aware nearby forest loss has caused them to live with hotter temperatures. When asked why forests were important to their health and the health of their families, the ability for trees to regulate temperature was the most frequent response.

    A logging road in East Kalimantan, Bornea: logged forest on the left, virgin/primary forest on the right. Aidenvironment, 2005/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    A climate change double whammy

    In many parts of the world, including the tropics and Australia, expanding farmland is a major reason for cutting down forest. But given hotter temperatures also reduce the productivity of farms, conserving forests might prove a better strategy for food security and for the livelihoods of farmers.

    If forests must be removed, there may be ways to avoid the worst possible temperature increases. For example, we found that keeping at least 10% of forest cover helped reduce the associated warming by an average of 0.2℃.

    Similarly, temperatures did not increase as much when the area of forest loss was smaller. This means if deforestation occurs in smaller, discontinuous blocks rather than uniformly, then the temperature impacts will be less severe.

    To help share these findings, we’ve built a web mapping tool that lets users explore the effects of different patterns and areas of forest loss on local temperatures in maritime South East Asia. It helps show why protecting forests in the tropics offers a climate change double whammy – lowering carbon dioxide emissions and local temperatures together.

    Sally Thompson, Associate professor, The University of Western Australia; Débora Corrêa, Research fellow, The University of Western Australia; John Duncan, Research fellow, The University of Western Australia, and Octavia Crompton, Postdoctoral researcher, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    Boycott the brands causing deforestation for palm oil, soy and meat by joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

    Join the #Boycott4Wildlife

    #aircon #AmazonRainforest #animalExtinction #animals #Boycott4wildlife #Boycott4WildlifeTweet #BoycottPalmOil #Brazil #Climate #climateChange #climatechange #Congo #deforestation #forests #Indonesia #News #palmOilDeforestation #rainforest #rainforestConservation #tropicalRainforest