The Matsés indigenous people are fighting back to stop Pacific Rubiales Energy, a Canadian oil and gas company, from destroying their territory and endangering their lives and forests. One of the company’s exploration blocks, on the Brazilian border, is in an area proposed for designation as a national reserve, theoretically to protect the Matsés. Another block overlaps with land officially demarcated as the territory of this indigenous people. But the Matsés are standing up against the company.
Bulletin articles
While Malaysia and Indonesia produce over 85% of the world’s palm oil, India is its largest importer. To boost palm cultivation, the Ministry of Agriculture introduced a Special Program on “Oil Palm Area Expansion” in 2011-12 aimed at increasing oil palm production in the 12 states from 50,000 to 300,000 metric tons in the next five. This plantations expansion falls within the government’s New Land Use Policy (NLUP) to wean farmers away from their traditional practice of subsistence farming.
A problem peasant women face is invisibility in the feminist and women’s movements. A second problem is the weakness with which the food sovereignty concept has dealt with the challenges of feminism. Food sovereignty is based on the conviction that each people has the right to make decisions about its own food systems: about its own eating habits; about its production, marketing, distribution, exchange, and sharing; and about keeping food and seeds in the public sphere.
On 31 July 2014, the ‘Forestry Master Plan’ (FMP) was issued by Thailand’s Internal Security Operations Command and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. There was no consultation with the public or civil society before the drafting of this plan, nor was there any kind of referendum or public consultation after the plan was finalized.
This year, 2014, seems to have reached a new ‘record’ of international declarations in which the signatories commit to drastically reducing, or even halting, deforestation. It is noteworthy that all of them are supported by large transnational corporations linked to the tree plantations for pulp and paper industry and the oil palm plantations industrial processing, as well as institutions linked to financial capital. Besides, some NGOs are also always involved.
Deforestation in Indonesia is not only about the loss of forest areas, it is a much more serious matter. A whole living system that evolved into one of extraordinary wealth of biodiversity is threatened with destruction.