Collected bulletins, events and resources from Book Chain Project together with news links from external sources.
Conservationists attribute the improvement of the situation to an increase in monitoring efforts, as well as greater scrutiny of palm oil producers operating in the landscape by brands and buyers with zero-deforestation commitments.
A farmer from the Sakai indigenous tribe is sentenced to one year in prison with a fine of 200 million rupiah ($13,800) for cutting down 20 acacia and eucalyptus trees planted by PT Arara Abadi (AA), a subsidiary of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), near his home to plant sweet potatoes for his family.
This case is part of a long-standing land conflict between the Sakai indigenous community and AA. Activists have condemned the verdict as the Sakai tribe settled in the land decades before AA obtained its concession.
The National Forest Stewardship Standard (NFSS) for Indonesia was published recently after years of development. It applies to all types and scales of forest management, including timber, non-timber forest products and ecosystem services. It will become effective on 1 December 2020. The transition window for FSC-certified forests is twelve months and will last until 30 November 2021.
Unilever is to partner with U.S. tech company Orbital Insight on a pilot project to trace agricultural commodities sourced, especially palm oil. It claims to be using geolocation data and satellite imagery to identify the individual farms and plantations supplying the palm oil mills in its extended supply chain. The pilot project will be tested out at palm oils mills in Indonesia and soy mills in Brazil, working jointly with its established supply chain monitoring projects.
The UK is to spearhead a major global crackdown on illegal timber and deforestation, with plans to form a coalition of developing countries against the trade as part of its hosting of crunch UN climate talks this year. All countries are expected to come forward with tougher plans to reduce global emissions as part of COP 26, and experts have said this will only happen if the UK takes the lead in forming a coalition of small and big developing countries, including forested African nations and Indonesia, as well as major economies such as the US, China, India and the EU. Offering assistance to developing countries, in the form of finance and technical expertise, will be vital to that effort.
Indonesia’s environment ministry will file civil lawsuits against five companies in connection with fires that razed their concessions last year. Fire season in 2019 burned an area half the size of Belgium and released double the amount of carbon dioxide as the fires in the Amazon. Officials say they are preparing both civil lawsuits — seeking fines against the pulpwood and oil palm firms blamed for the fires — and criminal charges. However, a spate of recent cases suggests the government will have a hard time getting the money, with only a tiny fraction paid out of the $231 million awarded from nine companies in similar lawsuits.
The trend of setting up a national inventory of chemicals – already seen in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – is moving south. The Philippines and Vietnam have existing inventories, while Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia also have plans for one.
Despite regulatory hurdles that might have caused due to disparate regulations and approaches across the region, the overall trend – if slower than other regions – is a shift in focus from primarily GHS-based requirements towards more comprehensive, risk-based chemicals management regimes that mandate registration before use.
Indonesia is facing its worst annual fire season since the tragedy of 2015. Close to 700 hotspots have been identified in fire-prone regions in Sumatra, Kalimantan and the Riau islands.
Fashion designer, Stella McCartney, launched #THERESHEGROWS on Instagram to raise awareness of the endangered Leuser ecosystem in Sumatra, Indonesia.
The campaign supports Canopy’s work to conserve Leuser, the last stronghold for orangutans, rhinos, elephants and tigers to co-exist in the wild. Canopy works alongside local and international NGOs and local decision-makers to protect the 6.5 million-acres rainforest, encouraging a conservation-based economy in the region.
Palm oil producers and environmental activists alike have expressed dismay at a move by European officials to phase out palm-oil based biofuel by 2030. Officials in Indonesia and Malaysia - who together produce 85% of palm oil globally - say the move is discriminatory and have vowed a vigorous response, including lobbying EU member states, bringing the matter before the World Trade Organisation, and imposing retaliatory measures on EU goods.
Environmental activists, on the other hand, say the policy does not go far enough leaving loopholes allowing palm oil to be treated as a renewable fuel, allowing continued expansion of palm plantations into peat forests. They also criticize the policy’s failure to label soybean oil as high risk, with growing evidence that soy cultivation may have greater deforestation risks than palm oil.