Movies

Local voices in the global palm oil boom. Kalimantan, Indonesia

The expansion and intensification of palm oil monocultures remains a topical and important issue. Palm oil is grown exclusively in the world's tropical rainforests. The cultivation areas for palm oil have expanded faster than those for other vegetable oils such as soybeans, coconuts and others. Some experts speak of a vegetable oil revolution. The rapid conversion of forest land into palm oil monocultures, such as in the South Asian countries of Indonesia and Malaysia, has resulted in serious environmental impacts in terms of biodiversity, water scarcity and soil degradation. The use of palm oil as a commodity has led to an explosion in demand as it has become a basic material for use in various industries. In West Africa and Latin America, new areas are being sought for the expansion of palm oil cultivation, with the major issue of sustainability in environmental and social terms. Colombia, Ecuador and Honduras are three important producers in Latin America.

This project aims to gain new insights and perspectives on local people affected by palm oil monocultures by collecting the life stories of the people featured in the video. This video material each represents a socio-cultural narrative that reveals the particularities and meanings of the affected communities in specific locations the tropical regions of Colombia and Indonesia. The videos present local narratives on sustainability, governance and resilience mechanisms in relation to the resulting socio-environmental impacts of palm oil monocultures.

These videos follow a bottom-up approach, specifically an emic approach that gathers insider perspectives through narratives, perceptions and meanings of individuals and families from local communities.

Why it is relevant?

The relevance of the emic approach is, on the one hand, to be able to gain new information about the impacts and, to some extent, the transformation of livelihoods caused by palm oil production. On the other hand, it is about the specificities of the respective regions and the extent of the impacts, which are context-dependent. In the case of palm oil cultivation in tropical regions, the impacts are closely linked to the social, economic and political histories of the population.  In this context, it is of great importance to be able to formulate the local specificities and corresponding scenarios of sustainable action. 

Indonesia

Palm oil cultivation in Indonesia dates back to the early 20th century; since 1911, oil palms have been cultivated commercially on the east coast of Sumatra under Dutch administration. In the late 1960s, palm oil cultivation was organized into large state farms. In 1970, the Indonesian regime, with the support of the World Bank, introduced a new model for small farmers in the form of Nucleus Estates. The first plasma programs or operations were state-run, linking the small farmers to state plantation companies through outgrower programs. From 1980 onwards, cultivation increased six-fold over the next two decades. The regions of Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Sumatra and West Papua have established themselves as target areas for new palm oil plantations. At this point, both domestic consumption and export rates increased exponentially, with exports reaching almost 70% of total production.

Land rights

Filming takes place in people (Dayak) in Kalimantan, specifically in Simpang Hulu district, Ketapang regency, West Kalimantan Kalimantan is a region populated by Dayak Communities, an indigenous people. During the New Order regime, large areas were designated as "state forest". These were areas used in the villages also with "customary" land rights and in "traditional" Dayak farming.

In some core districts of Kalimantan, oil palm plantations have been established in recent decades, sometimes with success. Through leadership and collective action, some villages were able to negotiate a 50:50 division of land between the company and the plantation at the time the new plantation was established. Recently, due to the possibilities of the new partnership model, the land distribution between the plantations and the local landowners has been changed. The Company elected an 80:20 land split in favor of the Company.

Ecosystem Functions

The conversion of rainforests into OP plantations has negative consequences for ecosystem functions, e.g. B. for carbon storage, soil fertility and biodiversity. In the video, Sonta, one of the rapporteurs, clearly points out the changes she is witnessing in relation to the cultivation of traditional crops in her region. These changes also have an immediate impact on medicinal uses, daily consumption and on the knowledge of the population about the forest in which they live.

Ecosystem services

Based on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which distinguishes three categories: provision, culture and support, a study was conducted in East Kalimantan to examine the population's perception of ecosystem services. The results show that communities have acknowledged the decline in utility services such as water, which has significantly impacted their activities to meet their water and river water quality needs. Oil palm cultivation severely disrupts the traditional farming system of the communities as a plot is farmed continuously for 25 years and therefore fertilizers are required to maintain soil fertility.

Working conditions

In the case of Kalimantan in particular, the women of the Dayak community address labor conditions, land rights, land management and crop conversion. As for working conditions, the local stories in the video show that there is a dimension of women's work on the plantations that has been neglected. Fertilizer work and exposure to chemicals without proper protection are part of the testimonies of Zuly in Colombia and the Dayak women in Indonesia. The precariousness of the work is related to the expansion of cultivation on land previously owned by the Dayak and the disadvantages of partnership and land governance.

Local voices in the global palm oil boom. Orinoquia, Colombia

The expansion and intensification of palm oil monocultures remains a topical and important issue. Palm oil is grown exclusively in the world's tropical rainforests. The cultivation areas for palm oil have expanded faster than those for other vegetable oils such as soybeans, coconuts and others. Some experts speak of a vegetable oil revolution. The rapid conversion of forest land into palm oil monocultures, such as in the South Asian countries of Indonesia and Malaysia, has resulted in serious environmental impacts in terms of biodiversity, water scarcity and soil degradation. The use of palm oil as a commodity has led to an explosion in demand as it has become a basic material for use in various industries. In West Africa and Latin America, new areas are being sought for the expansion of palm oil cultivation, with the major issue of sustainability in environmental and social terms. Colombia, Ecuador and Honduras are three important producers in Latin America.

This project aims to gain new insights and perspectives on local people affected by palm oil monocultures by collecting the life stories of the people featured in the video. This video material each represents a socio-cultural narrative that reveals the particularities and meanings of the affected communities in specific locations the tropical regions of Colombia and Indonesia. The videos present local narratives on sustainability, governance and resilience mechanisms in relation to the resulting socio-environmental impacts of palm oil monocultures.

These videos follow a bottom-up approach, specifically an emic approach that gathers insider perspectives through narratives, perceptions and meanings of individuals and families from local communities.

Why it is relevant?

The relevance of the emic approach is, on the one hand, to be able to gain new information about the impacts and, to some extent, the transformation of livelihoods caused by palm oil production. On the other hand, it is about the specificities of the respective regions and the extent of the impacts, which are context-dependent. In the case of palm oil cultivation in tropical regions, the impacts are closely linked to the social, economic and political histories of the population.  In this context, it is of great importance to be able to formulate the local specificities and corresponding scenarios of sustainable action. 

Colombia

In Colombia the palm oil industry started to develop in the second half of the 20th century and grew steadily over the last decades until it expanded to cover the whole country in the early 1990s. While in the 1960s the area under cultivation was about 18,000 hectares, in 2018 about 541 thousand hectares were planted with oil palm (Statista, 2020). The government and Fedepalma, the Colombian palm oil trade group, are working together to increase production rates and expand the number of cultivated hectares covering four national regions: North, Central, East and Southwest.

Land use change

Palm cultivation is mainly concentrated in the eastern area where the shooting took place. According to some studies, the environmental impact is not directly related to deforestation, as secondary forests tend to dominate in the region. Apparently, the change in land use is more decisive. Large areas of land used for palm oil production were previously used for rice cultivation or livestock farming.

Monocultures of oil palm have encroached on land previously used for rice cultivation, a staple in the Colombian diet. This situation has affected the behaviour of the agricultural sector, as the country has gone from being an exporter of rice to an importer of this product. An important but under-studied aspect is the impact of the replacement of smallholder agriculture by large-scale plantations on food consumption and food security in the palm oil producing region itself (Azhar et al. 2017). Nevertheless, significant environmental changes occur as many plant species are endemic and have a different type of vegetation that has been replaced by oil palm.

Migration

Zuly and Alvaro's story and narratives once again highlight two issues that challenge the socio-ecological sustainability of the regions where monocultures are grown. One is migration, the other is working conditions. The structure of the slave economy in which the palm oil industry operates encourages inter-regional migration flows to provide labour. In the case of Colombia, displacement is directly related to land rights. Many of the migrants employed by palm oil companies are often not from the region. Many of the workers in the vast monocultures are more likely to be day labourers who, like Zuly, the woman in the video, move from region to region in search of better living conditions. Both migration and forced displacement are often linked to conflicts over land. In some cases the impact is direct, in others indirect. Recent studies show that in the eastern region, in the departments of Meta and Casanare, there are settlements of Afro-Colombian communities who have migrated from the Pacific and Atlantic regions because they were displaced by violence and unemployment.

Working conditions

The situation of women in plantation labour is an issue that Zuly, the reporter, describes as her own experience of exploitation. While Fedepalma's narrative presents the dignity of labour as one of its maxims, Zuly's experience shows the other side. This is not an isolated case when it comes to precarious working conditions in employment in palm oil producing companies. In 2018, one of the unions at a company in the Atlantic zone of Colombia achieved the formalisation of labour contracts after denouncing violent persecution for demanding their dignified labour rights, as for decades more than a thousand people worked at the company without a contract, without the right to health insurance and without a fixed salary.