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Declaration of Social Organizations and Communities to the First Latin American Meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
Agrofuels have been presented as the solution to the climate crisis and
as a "clean" alternative to fossil fuels. But in reality they are
neither "green" nor environmentally friendly, no matter how
international financial institutions (such as the World Bank and the
Inter-American Development Bank, among others) and transnational
corporations would like to promote them.
Stimulating the production of agriculturally-based fuels means that
land will no longer be devoted to food production, and thus that people
will be more dependent on large multinationals for their food. Vast
expanses of land are covered by plantations where agrofuels will be
grown; tropical rainforests are being destroyed to plant thousands of
hectares with oil palms, sugar cane and other crops.
In Colombia, oil palm plantations in indigenous, peasant and
Afro-Colombian communities have been established as a form of
large-scale sharecropping, in which land is handed over so that it may
benefit large landowners and businessmen. Such sharecropping
constitutes a sort of agrarian counter-reform, in which peasant
production is replaced by industrial monocropping that employs peasant
and indigenous labor in a manner that exhibits characteristics of
servitude.[1] In many cases, palm plantations spread onto the lands of
displaced communities.
Moreover, a model of "strategic alliances" has been established between
small farmers and big businessmen (who control the entire chain of palm
oil production, from cultivation to production, processing and
marketing[2] ), and which has resulted in indebtedness based on the
sophistry of the "peasant economy of the palm."[3] <#_ftn3> In
reality, what these entrepreneurs are looking for is a permanent supply
of raw materials, without having to be responsible for any labor
relationship with peasants and small farmers, who rent their land and
who often end up as laborers on these plantations, bearing all of the
risk in the event of infestation, disease or other agricultural
problems. Those who push for this type of agribusiness have used this
deceptive strategy in dealing with farmers, creating the illusion that
there will be a place for small farmers, but failing to say that they
will be worse off.
The impacts identified above are only some of those that exist in
Colombia. Based on them, however, we can point out the following:
WE REJECT
-
Initiatives like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which
is based on the false premise of establishing criteria for
sustainability and giving a stamp of approval to palm plantations, in
order to sell the product with social and environmental guarantees,
thus seeking to legitimize a harmful business that infringes on the
rights of indigenous, Afro-Colombian and peasant communities. At the
same time as it seriously impacts lands and natural heritage through a
strategy that seeks to facilitate the marketing of products derived
from the oil palm, the RSPO generates only higher dividends, and not
solutions to the conflicts that are created. In fact, no certification
process can guarantee such solutions.
- The
government policies and the investors´ projects that are developing the
palm oil production model, and which are, in many cases and in
different parts of the country, accompanied by the violent
expropriation of local communities´ lands.
- Adjustments
to the rural laws and policies of countries in the region that serve to
implement principles and criteria which are guided solely by the logic
of economic growth and profit, meaning a greater threat to national and
territorial sovereignty.
- The
government policy that benefits private interests through enormous tax
incentives that exclusively favor large corporations, at the expense of
promoting the rural economy.
- Disregard
for the rights of landless or displaced peasant families, and in other
cases, for the ancestral rights of the landowners originally from the
area and of Afro-Colombian communities.
- The
policy of concentrating credit, which, hand in hand with the
concentration of land ownership, promotes the displacement of thousands
of farming families and the plundering of their means of subsistence.
WE ADVOCATE FOR
Energy sovereignty and a rural policy that enables local communities to
remain on their lands and which strengthens their traditional modes of
production and their food sovereignty.
Recognition and respect for the rights of local communities to their
lands and their heritage, as well as reparations for the victims of the
agro-industrial model of oil palm production in the country.
Halt to the expansion of palm plantations and the processing of raw
materials for agro fuels on the lands of local communities, since these
fuels are intended to supply unsustainable markets and consumption, at
the cost of the sacrifice of our heritage and our lands.
[1] Mondragón, Héctor. ¿Inversiones con violencia o inversiones para la paz?, in Revista de Ciencias Sociales América Latina Hoy Vol 23. 1999
[2] Cited in Revista Semillas, No. 34-35. ”Los agrocombustibles: una receta para un desastre ambiental y el hambre en el sur.” 2007
[3] Martín, Martín. Actualidad de la cuestión agraria en el mundo: viejo problema ¿nuevos enfoques? 2005.
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2012 Carbon Trade Watch
