Palm oil is a cheap industrial commodity and is used in food products of every type including margarine, ice cream, biscuits and washing powder. And increasingly it is found in "biodiesel" fuel made from palm oil, to run our cars and for heating stations. In particular, the rainforests are falling victim to rapidly expanding palm oil plantations in Indonesia. The Orangutans are losing their habitat. Activists from the environmental group Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) in Kalimantan (Borneo) are risking their life to save Orangutans and organize resistance against the destruction of the rainforest by oil palm.
Even the indigenous Dayak rainforest is being destroyed. Once tribal peoples have lost the rainforests, their source of life, they often sink into poverty or drudgery as plantation workers on the land that once was their proud property. The creators of the rainforest destruction wear pinstripe suits and sit in fine offices in Jakarta, Singapore, Rotterdam and Hamburg. Consumer goods companies like Unilever, Nestle and Henkel are among the largest consumers of palm oil. On the packaging of their products, it is commonly declared as "vegetable oils and fats".
Environmentalists from the Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) are moving from village to village in the Indonesian rainforest. They educate the people on how the government assigns new logging concessions and palm oil contracts, how the companies grab the land legally and illegally with virtually no control, how they appropriate the land and its resources and destroy the foundations of human life, and the rights and opportunities people have to defend against these activities. In order to do so, they hold meetings in the villages, go into schools, speak with police and forest officials, carry out reforestation, research and document on the ground, and raise awareness through newspapers and television.
Dozens of orangutans were saved from the plantations and from cages in backyards from COP. Several large pieces of rainforest, a total of 63,000 hectares, which were already designated for clearing by palm oil companies, were saved in the last minute through the work of COP. Thus, the residents were able to keep their land and about 1,500 orangutans to keep their habitat.
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