Palm Oil

The oil palm tree is native to West Africa. It is an important tree for forest-dependent communities, their cultures and their economies. However, large-scale oil palm monocultures for industrial production (oil and agrofuels) have been driving deforestation and land grabbing in Southeast Asia. More recently, oil palm monocultures are also driving destruction in Africa and Latin America.

Bulletin articles 22 August 2024

The destructive character of the bioeconomy and the struggle of the Virgílio Serrão Sacramento community for their territory in Pará state, Brazil

Peasant families are threatened with eviction by Brasil Bio Fuels (BBF) oil palm plantation company, with the complicity of the state government. This article shows that the much spoken of ‘bioeconomy’ is not ‘sustainable’ and even less ‘clean’. What it does is destroy communities’ territories, just like fossil fuel-based extractive industries have been doing for a long time.

Bulletin articles 27 February 2024

How different forms of ‘green’ extractivism are causing the destruction of the Amazon forest

The Amazon region is one of the final frontiers of resistance to capital expansion. This is epitomized by the struggles of social activists such as Chico Mendes, as well as by the presence of most of the earth’s remaining indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation. However, different forms of ‘green’ extractivism are currently and increasingly advancing on this territory.

Bulletin articles 26 February 2024

The struggle for land in the Brazilian Amazon region against palm oil and mining corporations

In the Acará Valley, Pará state, the Tembé and Turiwara indigenous peoples, and quilombola and peasant communities are fighting to take back part of the living spaces they traditionally occupied. It is not just a struggle for territory, but one to reverse a history of oppression and injustice. Today, they are denouncing structural violence and state omission.

Bulletin articles 16 June 2022

Green Deserts: The Advance of Oil Palm Plantations in the Amazonian State of Pará

In Brazil, oil palm plantations are expanding rapidly, mainly in the Amazonian state of Pará. BBF (Brasil BioFuels), the largest oil palm company in Brazil, stands accused of environmental crimes and violence against indigenous, quilombola and peasant communities such as Virgílio Serrão Sacramento, a community linked to the Small Farmers’ Movement (MPA).

Bulletin articles 23 March 2022

Forest Concessions, Colonial Concept

What a certain historiography terms civilizational expansion or capital’s expansion has in fact been the invasion and de-territorialization of peoples and communities using much epistemic and territorial violence. Concessions have been granted in areas that are not demographic voids, a colonial concept that ignores the fact that they have been populated for millennia.

Bulletin articles 17 November 2020

Development: Understandings from the Ground

WRM spoke with close allies from Brazil, Gabon, India, Mexico and Mozambique, to hear from them and learn about their understandings of development.

Bulletin articles 14 May 2019

Green discourses and deforestation

While the destruction of forest territories continues, more pledges, agreements and programs are being implemented in the name of ‘addressing deforestation and climate change’.

Bulletin articles 15 November 2018

Certification promotes land concentration, violence and destruction

Certification schemes for tree plantations initially generated many expectations, promising a true transformation. Yet after all these years, we can definitely conclude that what the RSPO and FSC also have in common is that they will not meet those expectations.

Bulletin articles 15 November 2018

Are FSC and RSPO accomplices in crime? Jari Florestal and Agropalma's Unresolved Land Question in the Brazilian Amazon

For years, WRM has been warning many certified monoculture plantations in Brazil have been established on land for which titles were obtained fraudulently. This article discusses the case of two companies that operate in the Brazilian Amazon: Agropalma and Jari Florestal.

Bulletin articles 13 October 2015