Category: London

Lon­don

Oil execs gather — we besiege ( + video link)

As oil exec­u­tives gath­ered at a Lon­don hotel for their annu­al strate­gis­ing con­fer­ence on Mon­day 21st June, up to 200 cli­mate activists crossed the riv­er from BP-spon­sored Tate Mod­ern to con­verge on the front entrance with a sam­ba band and a giant p

Drum it Out 1Drum it Out 2As oil exec­u­tives gath­ered at a Lon­don hotel for their annu­al strate­gis­ing con­fer­ence on Mon­day 21st June, up to 200 cli­mate activists crossed the riv­er from BP-spon­sored Tate Mod­ern to con­verge on the front entrance with a sam­ba band and a giant paper-mache oil-cov­ered seabird.

Titled “Drum It Out”, the protest also put the indus­try on tri­al before a Peo­ple’s Court which loud­ly found it guilty of crimes of pol­lu­tion, war crimes, cli­mate crime, and more.

The court heard live tes­ti­mo­ny by wit­ness­es not only from the Gulf, but from Nige­ria, Ghana, Colom­bia, Peru, from Iraq which has suf­fered the dev­as­ta­tion of a war for oil, from Cana­da where indige­nous peo­ple are resist­ing the Tar Sands oil project destroy­ing a land as large as Eng­land, and from Kenya and Chi­na which are suf­fer­ing droughts as a result of the chang­ing cli­mate. “The Gulf of Mex­i­co is not the only dis­as­ter,” the pro­test­ers said — “in fact it’s not even the largest, and in some places this destruc­tion of life has been going on for decades. The oil indus­try is not sus­tain­able. They think they rule the world, but they are fac­ing resis­tance every­where. They can­not come to this hotel and think they will car­ry on busi­ness as usu­al”.

A dead fish award was pre­sent­ed to Bloody Oil in its var­i­ous com­pa­ny guis­es, and a “fish” was deliv­ered to the hotel to be passed on to Con­gress del­e­gates.

Fol­low­ing the tri­al, the main and back entrance were besieged by the drum­ming crowd, with no injuries and no arrests. Two activists who had suc­ceed­ed in pen­e­trat­ing the build­ing were uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly eject­ed. The Drum Out will be fol­lowed this Sat­ur­day by a Teach In, at the School of Ori­en­tal and African Stud­ies, where cam­paign­ers will learn more about the ongo­ing resis­tance by work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties in oil regions, will link-up live with organ­is­ers in Ghana, and will dis­cuss how to work togeth­er to bring the indus­try down. One pro­test­er com­ment­ed, “If even half the mon­ey invest­ed in sub­si­dis­ing oil, clean­ing up its dis­as­ters and fund­ing its wars were devot­ed to alter­na­tive forms of ener­gy, peo­ple would­n’t be suf­fer­ing these out­rages, and the plan­et would be safe.”

london[at]climatecamp.org.uk

Watch the Video http://www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/bloody-oil-drum-em-out/

Kew Bridge Eco Village was EVICTED this morning at 8am

27.05.2010
Hel­lo!!

I am sor­ry to tell you all that the bailiffs came and evict­ed us from Kew Bridge Eco Vil­lage this morn­ing at 8am! It was fair­ly peace­ful and we man­aged to resist for a good 3 hours whilst Sev sat on top of one of the struc­tures and refused to come down! Check youtube for videos soon!

27.05.2010
Hel­lo!!

I am sor­ry to tell you all that the bailiffs came and evict­ed us from Kew Bridge Eco Vil­lage this morn­ing at 8am! It was fair­ly peace­ful and we man­aged to resist for a good 3 hours whilst Sev sat on top of one of the struc­tures and refused to come down! Check youtube for videos soon!

But don’t wor­ry! We will have a few weeks break and then we shall open up a new, big­ger and bet­ter site! In the mean­time get down the Houn­slow Com­mu­niy Gar­den and sup­port Democ­ra­cy Vil­lage on par­lia­ment square!

I’d just like to say a big thanky­ou to all of those who have sup­port­ed us in this last year, to all the local com­mu­ni­ty, the artists, pho­tog­ra­phers, and film mak­ers who have seen us, those who have stayed over or just passed through — we would not have been as great with­out all of you!

We will con­tin­ue to send you news about our move­ments, but check out growyourownvillage.blogspot.com for the lat­est info.

If you want to get involved in star­ing a new vil­lage then get in touch!

Peace and Love, See you soon

Your eco vil­lage fam­i­ly!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The new Action Update — full of of action news and analysis

In the new sum­mer edi­tion of the EF! Action Update, read about coal trains block­ad­ed, peat bogs defend­ed, and gas ter­mi­nals shut down. Find out about the dan­gers of nan­otech, cur­rent state of nuclear GM tri­als in the UK, Tesco upris­ings, golf course trash­ing, tar sands action and much more.

Newcastle flotilla blockadeIn the new sum­mer edi­tion of the EF! Action Update, read about coal trains block­ad­ed, peat bogs defend­ed, and gas ter­mi­nals shut down. Find out about the dan­gers of nan­otech, cur­rent state of nuclear GM tri­als in the UK, Tesco upris­ings, golf course trash­ing, tar sands action and much more.

Be inspired by our protest camp fea­ture and the recent Tit­nore vic­to­ry. And from across the seas, read about our broth­ers and sis­ters strug­gling against whal­ing ship sab­o­tage, coal port pirates, riots in Zagreb, min­ing firm occu­pa­tions in Bolivia, dam resis­tance in Brazil and much more.

“We are going to inher­it the earth . There is not the slight­est doubt about that. We Are not afraid of ruins. We car­ry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is grow­ing this minute.” — Dur­ru­ti

To down­load the lat­est EF!AU for print­ing, go to http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/efau/actionupdate_summer10print.pdf

To read the lat­est EF!AU online, go to http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/efau/actionupdate_summer10.pdf

Eviction Threat to Kew Bridge Eco Village

Kew Bridge Eco Vil­lage faces an evic­tion threat, start­ing from this Fri­day, 21st of May, 2010. It is like­ly that they will evict on the fri­day, or the mon­day after or at some oth­er date that suits their pur­pos­es.

Kew Eco VillageKew Bridge Eco Vil­lage faces an evic­tion threat, start­ing from this Fri­day, 21st of May, 2010. It is like­ly that they will evict on the fri­day, or the mon­day after or at some oth­er date that suits their pur­pos­es. If you want to help pro­tect the eco vil­lage, then come down and lend a hand.

The eco vil­lage is pri­mar­i­ly a place for beings of dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, expe­ri­ences, ideals and aims to come togeth­er to cre­ate sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties, wher­ev­er they might exist. The site is set to be turned into a mon­strous devel­op­ment of expen­sive flats and more pubs and shops, in an area with two near­by shop­ping cen­ters, and with 3 pubs in the imme­di­ate area, and copi­ous amounts of dis­used prop­er­ties stand­ing emp­ty as the num­bers of home­less con­tin­ue to rise. Kew Bridge Eco Vil­lage stands in the way of this redicu­lous devel­op­ment and against all unsus­tain­able prac­tices every­where.

So if you want to pro­tect the eco vil­lage, whether you con­sid­er your­self to be class­war, eco, fem­i­nist, hip­py, hard­core, non-vio­lent, sur­vival­ist, what­ev­er: come on down and sup­port the vil­lage! There are plen­ty of sleep­ing spaces, and you even have the option of set­ting up a tent.

See you at the bar­ri­cades!!!!

See a map?

Note: click­ing the map link will load data from Open­streetmap’s exter­nal serv­er.

Nuclear Power Conferences in London Hit by Protests

Tues­day, 18 May 2010 — CAMPAIGNERS from Lon­don and SE Eng­land Stop Nuclear Pow­er [1] protest­ed out­side the Financ­ing Nuclear Pow­er and Nuclear Inter­im Stor­age con­fer­ences in cen­tral Lon­don today. They invit­ed del­e­gates to invest in a green future instead of nuclear ener­gy and demand­ed an end to nuclear waste pro­duc­tion.

Nuclear conferences protestsTues­day, 18 May 2010 — CAMPAIGNERS from Lon­don and SE Eng­land Stop Nuclear Pow­er [1] protest­ed out­side the Financ­ing Nuclear Pow­er and Nuclear Inter­im Stor­age con­fer­ences in cen­tral Lon­don today. They invit­ed del­e­gates to invest in a green future instead of nuclear ener­gy and demand­ed an end to nuclear waste pro­duc­tion.

The first port of call for the three pro­test­ers, two of whom were dressed in white over­alls, was the Financ­ing Nuclear Pow­er con­fer­ence at the plush Crowne Plaza hotel near St James’s Park. They held up a ban­ner that read “Green Solu­tions Not Nuclear Green­wash” and leaflet­ed del­e­gates and pass­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic out­side the main entrance to the hotel for over an hour and a half, close­ly watched by hotel secu­ri­ty staff through­out.

Two of them then moved on to the Nuclear Inter­im Stor­age con­fer­ence, which was tak­ing place at Dex­ter House at Roy­al Mint Court, adja­cent to Tow­er Bridge. Stand­ing in the court­yard out­side the entrance/exit to the build­ing host­ing the con­fer­ence, they held up a larg­er ban­ner that read “Green Our Future, No to Nuclear” and exchanged ban­ter with del­e­gates and oth­er users of the build­ing on their lunch break. Secu­ri­ty guards were called and the pro­test­ers were told they were on pri­vate prop­er­ty and had to leave, but the pro­test­ers stood their ground. A Police Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Offi­cer then appeared and also tried to get the pro­test­ers to leave, but they refused. Fur­ther back up was called, but the pro­test­ers left before it arrived, hav­ing been there for an hour.

The incom­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive-Lib­er­al Demo­c­rat coali­tion gov­ern­ment has said it will con­tin­ue with the Labour gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of allow­ing ten new nuclear pow­er sta­tions to be built in Eng­land and Wales. Min­is­ters have said that no direct pub­lic sub­si­dies will be offered for new nuclear build, although a car­bon floor price is pro­posed. Nowhere in the world has a nuclear pow­er sta­tion ever been built with­out pub­lic sub­sidy.

For five decades, the nuclear indus­try has failed to find a per­ma­nent solu­tion for its radioac­tive waste, which remains dan­ger­ous for tens of thou­sands of years. [2] With cur­rent waste stor­age facil­i­ties at Sizewell B in Suf­folk near­ly full, plans are in place to build a new “tem­po­rary” store where waste from the reac­tor will be kept indef­i­nite­ly in the absence of a per­ma­nent solu­tion. This is before con­sid­er­ing the waste from any new reactor(s), which would be more radioac­tive and remain too hot to trans­port for 160+ years.

Cam­paign­er Daniel Vies­nik, 35, from Lon­don, says: “Con­trary to the non­sense that you hear from the nuclear spin doc­tors and their polit­i­cal mouth­pieces, nuclear pow­er is a dirty, dan­ger­ous and expen­sive tech­nol­o­gy that diverts essen­tial invest­ment from gen­uine green alter­na­tives like ener­gy effi­cien­cy and renew­able and decen­tralised ener­gy. It car­ries the risks of nuclear weapons pro­lif­er­a­tion, nuclear ter­ror­ism and a Cher­nobyl-type cat­a­stro­phe [3,4]. Why waste mon­ey on nuclear white ele­phants and dump more nuclear waste on local com­mu­ni­ties when we could build a gen­uine­ly sus­tain­able, nuclear-free, zero car­bon future?”

All images may be repro­duced free of charge for non-com­mer­cial use if cred­it­ed to D. Vies­nik. Please e‑mail for high res ver­sions.

Notes:

1. Lon­don and SE Eng­land Stop Nuclear Pow­er is part of the Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work, a UK-based non-hier­ar­chi­cal grass­roots net­work of activists tak­ing action against nuclear pow­er and sup­port­ing sus­tain­able alter­na­tives.
http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net
network[at]stopnuclearpoweruk.net

2. Nuclear Decom­mis­sion­ing Author­i­ty’s Oxide Fuel Top­ic Strat­e­gy (2010) indi­cates that seri­ous ques­tions remain with­in the nuclear indus­try itself over whether any solu­tion for per­ma­nent dis­pos­al of radioac­tive waste will ever be found.
http://www.nda.gov.uk/documents/upload/draft-oxide-fuel-topic-strategy-gate‑0.pdf

3. EDF nuclear reac­tor car­ries ‘Cher­nobyl-size’ explo­sion risk — Guardian, 7 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/07/edf-nuclear-reactor-chernobyl-risk

4. Aca­d­e­mics demand inde­pen­dent inquiry into new nuclear reac­tors – Guardian, 11 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/11/independent-inquiry-nuclear-power-stations

vd2012-imc [at] yahoo.co.uk
http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net

Hounslow squatted community land project

New land project occu­pied

New land project occu­pied

Come and get stuck in at squat­ted Houn­slow Com­mu­ni­ty Land Project, on the Han­worth rd nxt to Gur­d­wara tem­ple, ideas so far are allot­ments, sus­tain­able liv­ing, cre­ative work­shops, recy­cled sculp­ture gar­den, spir­i­tu­al space, sports pitch­es, adven­ture play­ground and nature trail! Come and be part of this! site phone kat on 07812 774110 or just turn up betwn 12 and dusk any day.

TATE MODERN 10TH BIRTHDAY SEES ACTION AGAINST SLICK BP SPONSORSHIP

DEAD FISH AND OIL-DRENCHED BIRDS HANG FROM TURBINE HALL

Tate Mod­ern was forced to close down parts of its No Soul For Sale tenth anniver­sary exhi­bi­tion on Sat­ur­day (15 May) while it strug­gled to remove dozens of dead fish and oil-soaked birds (1) hang­ing from huge black bal­loons let loose in the Tur­bine Hall.

DEAD FISH AND OIL-DRENCHED BIRDS HANG FROM TURBINE HALL

Tate Mod­ern was forced to close down parts of its No Soul For Sale tenth anniver­sary exhi­bi­tion on Sat­ur­day (15 May) while it strug­gled to remove dozens of dead fish and oil-soaked birds (1) hang­ing from huge black bal­loons let loose in the Tur­bine Hall.

Art activists from LIBERATE TATE, a grow­ing net­work ded­i­cat­ed to ensur­ing the muse­um drop its spon­sor­ship deal with BP, infil­trat­ed Tate Mod­ern’s Tur­bine Hall and released dozens of heli­um-filled black bal­loons with dead ani­mals attached. Crowds of tourists and art lovers gath­ered to watch the bal­loons rise up in the air until they filled the ceil­ing of the Tur­bine Hall.

Josephine Buoys, who took part in the art action, said: “We took this action whilst Tate spon­sor BP is cre­at­ing the largest oil paint­ing in the world. Across the Gulf of Mex­i­co ecosys­tems and liveli­hoods are being dev­as­tat­ed by their oil spill. Every day Tate scrubs clean BP’s pub­lic image with the deter­gent of cool pro­gres­sive art. Yet there is noth­ing
cool about a cor­po­ra­tion that cares more about its prof­its than life or the future of our frag­ile world.”

By late after­noon Tate staff had burst some the oil bub­ble-like black bal­loons by climb­ing onto a high gantry, but many remained out of reach and the rot­ting fish and seabirds hov­ered above the evening’s cel­e­bra­tions head­lined by Thurston Moore of Son­ic Youth. Rumours cir­cu­lat­ed that Tate would com­mis­sion a marks­man to shoot the remain­ing bal­loons down from the top of the for­mer pow­er sta­tion.

LIBERATE TATE said: “Every time we step inside the muse­um Tate makes us com­plic­it with acts that are harm­ing peo­ple and cre­at­ing envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and cli­mate change, acts that will one day seem as archa­ic as the slave trade. We call on Tate to become a respon­si­ble, eth­i­cal and tru­ly sus­tain­able organ­i­sa­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry and drop its
spon­sor­ship by oil com­pa­nies. As a pub­lic insti­tu­tion the Tate’s Trustees, chaired as they are by an ex-CEO of BP, must aban­don its asso­ci­a­tion with BP. All vis­i­tors to the Tate must be able to enjoy great art with a clear con­science about the impact of the muse­um on soci­ety and the envi­ron­ment.”

LIBERATE TATE dis­trib­uted a com­mu­niqué (online here http://bit.ly/9RFfxJ) through­out the Tate Mod­ern 10th anniver­sary promis­ing fur­ther actions to ‘free art from oil’ by artists and activists across Britain until Tate ends its asso­ci­a­tion with BP.

LIBERATE TATE have issued an open invi­ta­tion for artists, activists, art lovers and oth­er con­cerned mem­bers of the pub­lic to act to ensure that Tate ends its oil spon­sor­ship by the end of 2011 ahead of Tate Mod­ern’s expan­sion into its cleaned-out under­ground oil tanks.

LIBERATE TATE con­tact details:
web: www.twitter.com/liberatetate email: liberatetate@gmail.com

(1) — the ‘seabirds’ were made by mem­bers of Lib­er­ate Tate

Coal Action Network website relaunched!

Check out http://coalaction.org.uk/ for the updat­ed and re-vamped Coal Action Net­work web­site and detailed coal maps of the UK. It is hoped that this web­site will be a use­ful resource to any­one tak­ing action – or think­ing of tak­ing action – to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties, envi­ron­ments and the cli­mate sys­tem from coal projects.

Check out http://coalaction.org.uk/ for the updat­ed and re-vamped Coal Action Net­work web­site and detailed coal maps of the UK. It is hoped that this web­site will be a use­ful resource to any­one tak­ing action – or think­ing of tak­ing action – to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties, envi­ron­ments and the cli­mate sys­tem from coal projects.

The CAN web­site will be kept up-to-date with recent news from cam­paigns and the indus­try. Have a look at The Coal Maps – map­ping coal across the UK, con­tacts page for cam­paigns and groups active on coal, use­ful resources for cam­paign groups, argu­ments against new coal, upcom­ing events and links to infor­ma­tion and oth­er issues. You can get in touch to con­tribute updates and infor­ma­tion and sign up to the CAN email list.

Through this web­site we aim to help link com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles and arm our­selves with the infor­ma­tion we need to resist new open cast coal mines and coal-fired pow­er sta­tions.

party at the pumps

15 May 2010
The shell garage on upper street in isling­ton was closed for sev­er­al hours this after­noon by more than a hun­dred pro­tes­tors.

Shell garage closedShell pumps15 May 2010
The shell garage on upper street in isling­ton was closed for sev­er­al hours this after­noon by more than a hun­dred pro­tes­tors.

at lunchtime around 50 peo­ple gath­ered at oxford cir­cus, watched by quite a large police pres­ence with sev­er­al van-loads on stand-by. the sta­tion was briefly closed ‘due to sheer weight of num­bers’ but re-opened after ten min­utes, and they set off for high­bury and isling­ton.

mean­while, around 40 cyclists met at mar­ble arch and, fol­lowed by a cou­ple of police vans, they took a cir­cuitous route through hyde park, down past buck house, and then for a tri­umphal lap round par­lia­ment square, shout­ing out sup­port over the mobile sound sys­tem to the democ­ra­cy vil­lage and to the decade-long protest by bri­an haw.

the mass then car­ried on up to angel, and then along upper street to the shell garage, which had already been well and tru­ly closed down by the foot-sol­diers and by the rhythms of resis­tance sam­ba band (most­ly deputised by soas mem­bers).

the shell garage looked great! sev­er­al peo­ple held a huge “dan­ger — keep out” ban­ner across one access. a sim­ple “closed” ban­ner was strung across the oth­er. above, anoth­er ban­ner declared “stop shel­l’s tar sands hell”, and some activists found a route up to the roof to drop anoth­er “stop tar sands” ban­ner from there.

a head-count num­bered 125 at one point. an excel­lent turn-out on a day with when there were sev­er­al oth­er protests in town, and most encour­ag­ing, there were many new faces, keep­ing the fit team and police pho­tog­ra­ph­er, neil, busy.

police-wise, there were about a dozen offi­cers around mak­ing notes, and one FIT team. down the road were anoth­er ser­i­al wait­ing in a van, and anoth­er van of TSG fur­ther out of sight.

activists hand­ed out hun­dreds of fliers, and pub­lic response was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive.

More pho­tos

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.

Unilever12 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