Protect Forests From Palm Oil: Activists Make Their Stand

{Protect Forests from Palm Oil – Earth and Leaf editorial}

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Locals try to Protect Forests from Palm Oil

Indigenous activists from the Indonesian province of West Papua have held traditional ceremonies outside the country’s Supreme Court in Jakarta calling for their traditional land and forests to be protected from palm oil plantations.

Representatives of the Awyu and Moi communities held prayers and performed dances in front of the Supreme Court building on Monday as the court was reviewing an appeal in relation to their efforts to revoke permits for four palm oil companies whose proposed plantations threaten their customary forests. Indonesia began legally recognising customary forests in 2016.

“We have taken the long, difficult and expensive path from Tanah Papua [Papua homeland] to end up here in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, asking the Supreme Court to restore our rights, and the land that was snatched from us when these palm oil companies were issued permits over it,” said Hendrikus “Franky” Woro, an Awyu Indigenous man.

Woro filed an environmental and land rights lawsuit in the Papuan capital of Jayapura challenging the plan by a Malaysian-owned palm oil company to clear tens of thousands of hectares of previously untouched West Papuan forest, including traditional Indigenous land.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said the potential emissions from clearing the 26,326 hectares (65,053 acres) of primary forest in its concession would amount to about 23 million tonnes of CO2, equivalent to 5 percent of Indonesia’s annual carbon emissions expected in 2030.