Robin Wood Protest at Unilever’s General Assembly

12 May 2010

Fol­low­ing protests in Rot­ter­dam and Ham­burg yes­ter­day,  ROBIN WOOD activists protest­ed today dur­ing Unilever’s gen­er­al assem­bly in Lon­don against trop­i­cal rain­for­est destruc­tion for palm oil. A ban­ner with the mes­sage “Unscrupu­lous Destruc­tion of Rain­for­est and Com­mu­ni­ty for Palm Oil” was unfurled in front of the entrance to the Queen Eliz­a­beth Con­fer­ence Cen­tre. The activists addi­tion­al­ly dis­trib­uted infor­ma­tion to the share­hold­ers and demand­ed that they not absolve the board of direc­tors of their eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties con­cern­ing com­pa­ny pur­chas­es.

The Dutch-British com­pa­ny Unilever is the largest pur­chas­er of palm oil world­wide, most com­ing from plan­ta­tions in Indone­sia. This cheap fat is an ingre­di­ent in prod­ucts from Unilever brands such as Rama, Lang­nese and Knorr. Approx­i­mate­ly 9.4 mil­lion hectares of land have already been trans­formed into palm oil plan­ta­tions in Indone­sia and this area is increased every year by approx­i­mate­ly 600,000 hectares. The palm oil boom has dras­tic con­se­quences due to the destruc­tion of trop­i­cal rain­forests which are irre­place­able for bio­di­ver­si­ty and the world­wide cli­mate.

Addi­tion­al­ly, land­grab for giant mono­cul­tur­al plan­ta­tions threat­ens the liveli­hoods of mil­lions of peo­ple. “We want to put a stop to the palm oil boom. Unilever is the largest pur­chas­er of palm oil world­wide and there­fore a key play­er” said Peter Ger­hardt, ROBIN WOOD’s rain­for­est cam­paign­er. “For this rea­son in an open let­ter to CEO Paul Pol­man we demand­ed that Unilever require its sup­pli­ers to imme­di­ate­ly cease expan­sion of their palm oil plan­ta­tions. Oth­er­wise the com­pa­ny will remain com­plic­it in envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, cli­mate change, and human rights vio­la­tions.”

One of Unilever’s largest sup­pli­ers of palm oil is Wilmar Intl. Wilmar Intl. owns huge palm oil plan­ta­tions in Indone­sia, plans to expand fur­ther, and does­n’t shy away from the use of vio­lence in order to suc­ceed in their expan­sion plans. “Dur­ing our research trip to the Indone­sian province of Jam­bi in 2009, local vil­lagers told us of instances where Wilmar’s hench­men threat­ened them with weapons in order to get them to give up their land for new palm oil plan­ta­tions,” reports Ger­hardt. These are not iso­lat­ed instances. The World Bank dis­con­tin­ued fund­ing of palm oil plan­ta­tions in part due to mas­sive land con­flicts between local vil­lagers and Wilmar Intl. “We demand a ban on the estab­lish­ment of new palm oil plan­ta­tions,” said Nordin, an Indone­sian envi­ron­men­tal activist work­ing togeth­er with ROBIN WOOD. “We are depen­dent on the for­est for pro­tec­tion against flood­ing, ecosys­tem sta­bil­i­ty, and for our own liveli­hoods and food.”

Unilever attempts to appease its crit­ics and cus­tomers with a promise to buy more RSPO-cer­ti­fied palm oil. Palm oil would be cer­ti­fied by the RSPO (Round­table for Sus­tain­able Palm Oil) when it is alleged­ly pro­duced in a sus­tain­able man­ner. How­ev­er, the stan­dards required to receive RSPO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion are uncon­vinc­ing­ly lenient. For exam­ple, log­ging of rain­for­est for the estab­lish­ment of new plan­ta­tions is even allowed. Most palm oil com­pa­nies which are involved with the RSPO fol­low an aggres­sive course of expan­sion to the detri­ment of unique nat­ur­al ecosys­tems.

(The open let­ter to Unilever’s CEO and ROBIN WOOD’s report from the research trip to Indone­sia can be found at http://www.robinwood.de/tropenwald)

Con­tact email: presse@robinwood.de