Notes

companies operating in the global south and their financiers are still freely allowed to police themselves.
The weaknesses evident on island of Kalangala, situated in the heart of Lake Victoria, Uganda.
farming community is in the process of taking a consortium of palm oil giants to court: they claim they have been evicted from their land with little or no compensation.
Financed by the Uganda government, the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), and run as a joint venture between palm oil giants Wilmar and the Kenyan company Bidco, the project was agreed on as a means of creating jobs and growth on the island, + reduce Uganda’s dependence on palm oil imports.
Wilmar, has a clear, voluntary, No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation Policy.
Friends of the Earth and NAPE/Friends of the Earth Uganda report in 2013 the issue discussed in the Dutch and European parliaments and brought to the attention of Wilmar’s international financiers – including many European and US banks. Additionally Friends of the Earth groups from the EU, US, Indonesia and Uganda met with Wilmar in 2014 to outline their concerns in person.
Yet, to-date, community claims that they still have not received adequate compensation.
A spokeswoman for Wilmar has said: “No one had been evicted for the Opul project. Where it was not possible for the occupants to leave the land in question, the specific area was set aside and no oil palm development took place. We believe we have developed one of the best oil palm plantations in Africa in Kalangala and the local people have benefited tremendously from the project.”
requirement to profit will almost inevitably result in the needs of affected communities being treated as a lesser concern, however much the business concerned likes to think otherwise. When it comes to self-regulation and voluntary mechanisms it is nearly always a case of mitigation after the fact with the company asking; “how do we make it hurt less”. Very rarely is it a case of “we shouldn’t do that,” or “we should stop what we are doing immediately”.
John’s story is by no means unique to Uganda. From Indonesia to Nigeria and Paraguay to Malaysia Friends of the Earth groups work with communities who have had their land taken to pave the way for ‘development’ projects.
Here in the west we cannot shirk our responsibility; much of this global expansion of palm oil and agriculture is driven by developed-world consumption and financed both directly and indirectly by our investors, banks and pension funds. US and EU financiers have a total of €371m of shares and around €1bn of loans outstanding to Wilmar alone.
It is for this reason that here in Europe, Friends of the Earth are calling for strict regulation of banks, investors and pension funds that provide financial services to these palm oil, land and agricultural businesses operating in the global south. It has become increasingly evident that, despite many businesses and financiers having a sustainability policy in place, voluntary mechanisms have failed. Therefore we are calling on European institutions as well as national parliaments to install measures to regulate the financiers directly.
Laissez-faire has failed. It has failed us here in the west and it continues to fail communities across the globe. It’s high time our rules and regulations were amended to reflect that.