Rettet den Regenwald e.V. (Rainforest Rescue)

No more World Bank funding for palm oil!

Since 14.05.10 2227 people have participated in this protest action.

Please, no more of this!

Palm oil has become an important global commodity, used in food, cosmetics,
chemicals and more recently as a feedstock for agrofuel production. Palm oil is grown in a growing number of tropical countries, most of it on large-scale unsustainable industrial plantations.

In February 2009, the World Rainforest Movement and Rainforest Rescue supported
calls by communities in Oro Province, Papua New Guinea, which called on the
World Bank to either revise the conditions of a loan given to the country so as
not to finance palm oil, or else to withdraw that loan altogether. This loan has since been revised thanks to growing criticism.

World Bank finance for palm oil projects has been detrimental not only to indigenous and other forest-dependent communities but also to small producers who have found themselves ever more entrapped in a vicious cycle of debt towards large companies. Furthermore, those farmers who are not involved in the palm oil sector are being greatly prejudiced, seeing that World Bank Investment reinforces existing socio-economic problems, with major negative impacts.

Due to the growing critique relating to the unsustainability of palm oil
plantations, not just in Papua New Guinea, but also in Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Uganda, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru, amongst other
countries, the World Bank has decided to suspend finance for the entire palm oil sector and ordered and requested the IFC Ombudsman to carry out an audit.

Before resuming finance for palm oil projects, the World Bank has initiated
stakeholder consultations. On 17th and 18 May 2010, a stakeholder consultation meeting will take place in Costa Rica, which will look at World Strategies towards the production of palm oil.

However, around the world, peasant and indigenous organisations, social movements and other civil society organisations all agree that palm oil plantations can never be sustainable and that the certifications process is greenwashing.

What is really needed is to stop the expansion of palm oil monocultures. We are therefore ask you to sign a letter to the World Bank which demands “No more funding for palm oil.”

Dear Sir/Madam,

With reference to the World Bank meeting to be held in San José, Costa Rica on 17th to 18th May 2010, within the framework of a consultation process for the bank’s strategy on palm oil financing, the undersigned would like to express our concern about the possible future involvement of the World Bank in financing oil palm plantations.

Palm oil expansion for food and industrial use, cosmetics and agrofuels, has serious environmental and social impacts on local peoples, including large-scale tropical rainforest destruction, pollution of soil and water, human rights violations including the forced and often violent displacement of communities and the grabbing of land by transnational companies.

Exhaustive evidence of this has been documented in Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Laos, Uganda, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and other countries.

The World Bank Group has responded to the strong criticisms made by civil society organizations in relation to IFC funding to palm oil company Wilmar Trading/Wilmar International. The Bank took the decision to suspend all new financial investment in the palm oil sector and requested the Ombudsman to carry out an audit of IFC.

Now, however, the result is being discussed in the current stakeholder consultation with the aim of elaborating a strategy in order to continue World Bank involvement in the palm oil sector.

The evidence provided by the documented environmental and social harm caused by industrial oil palm plantations, makes it necessary to insist that those plantations are part of a model of large-scale extractivist production aimed at export, which is inherently unsustainable, in the true sense of the term, and which cannot possibly be improved.

Furthermore, this pattern of production and commercialization, while causing injustice and devastation, also requires high levels of energy input for its production and transport. At a time when the dominant development model has pushed us towards the climate change disaster, the principal actors have to accept their responsibility for this tragic course. The World Bank must not finance projects which are unacceptable for social, environmental and climate reasons, such as palm oil.

The time for change has come. Peasant and indigenous organizations, social movements and other civil society organizations all agree that oil palm plantations are not and can never be sustainable (see: http://www.regenwald.org/international/englisch/news.php?id=1070 and http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/RSPO_letter.html).

What is therefore needed is to stop the expansion of oil palm monocultures.

The World Bank must not finance oil palm plantations!

Yours faithfully,

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No more World Bank funding for palm oil!