Indonesia’s pro-corporate land use system has caused decades of devastating deforestation, mostly in Borneo and Sumatra, as corporations claim millions of hectares of land for plantations and extractive industries.

This has pushed many Indigenous and local communities off their land, the vast majority of whom don’t have land rights—just 13.8% of Indigenous lands have formal recognition, despite the Indonesian government’s 2013 promise to hand over Indigenous forests.

The people of Long Isun almost became another casualty of this historic land grab in 2014 when they awoke to an invasion of workers and heavy machinery into their ancestral forests, deep in the heart of Borneo.

Community members managed to peacefully convince the workers to leave, but in response, police arrested and jailed a prominent community member for 109 days without trial. Thus began a decade-long struggle against Harita.

Long Isun successfully barred Harita from a small part of their territory in 2018, but their bid to gain formal land rights stalled out. It was only when they turned to an international audience that they started to make real progress.

In 2023, we told the story of Long Isun to our supporters and the general public, exposing Harita’s connections to major household brands like Oreo and Head & Shoulders. After a while, Harita came to its senses, committing to never return to Long Isun, stating that the community had not consented to logging inside their territory.

This highlights the power of corporate pressure campaigns—Harita couldn’t face the prospect of losing some of its biggest corporate clients were they to buckle under rising consumer pressure.

But the fight isn’t over: Harita still owns the timber concession overlapping Long Isun. The struggle for property rights in Long Isun continues, this time in earnest—but the tide is hopefully turning for good.

The post A playbook for combating corporate land theft emerges in Borneo appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

Back in 2012, our allies in Indonesia came to us with an urgent plea: Palm oil developers were deliberately setting fires to clear land in a lush, orangutan-filled rainforest in Sumatra called the Leuser Ecosystem.

We investigated the case, and found that dozens of producers, multinational corporations, and bank financiers were connected to this destruction, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Mars.

We mobilized the support of thousands of consumers both online and through direct protests at corporate headquarters. High-profile media coverage brought the Leuser into public consciousness, and hundreds of major brands and banks began to adopt No Deforestation, No Peatlands, and No Exploitation (NDPE) policies.

Deforestation rates began to decline as public pressure and behind-the-scenes work among civil society groups, government officials, and the private sector sought to put a halt to this ecological carnage. Yet, to this day, deforestation persists.

Recently, we used ultra-high resolution satellite imagery to expose palm oil-related deforestation in a highly sensitive part of the Leuser Ecosystem called the Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve, also known as the “orangutan capital of the world.” Deforestation in the Reserve has increased at a rapid rate since 2020, much of it at the hands of local elites running small, corporate-style plantations. This illegally produced palm oil is making it into the supply chains of major corporations.

These small plantations are delivering the Leuser a “death by a thousand cuts,” and there’s a real chance that the people running them could avoid accountability due to loopholes in one of the most important anti-deforestation regulations in many years, the European Union Deforestation Regulations (EUDR), as well as persistent weakness in the implementation of corporate palm oil sourcing policies.

Consumer pressure remains critical to ensuring that loopholes in official laws and private sector policies are slammed shut. Additionally, we must strengthen the land rights of Indigenous peoples who have stewarded rainforests for millennia, and enforce environmental laws to protect areas under attack from illegal palm oil development.

For all of our successes over the last 12 years, the Leuser Ecosystem remains at a crossroads. It will only be through continued vigilance, private and public policy reform, and credible corporate accountability systems that we can ensure it remains intact for future generations.

The post The Leuser Ecosystem has come a long way, but its future is still uncertain appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

This is a massive win for the fishing communities of Cameron Parish, Louisiana whose lives, health, and livelihoods have been deeply impacted by methane (aka liquefied “natural” gas or LNG) production. But Calcasieu Pass LNG isn’t the only LNG terminal in the area – we must keep the pressure on Chubb to walk away from Cameron LNG before that policy renews on June 1st.

Community resistance and public pressure continues to move Chubb

From exposing the insurers secretly backing Gulf methane, to disrupting their signature golf tournament, to over 130,000 emails in their Board of Directors’ inboxes, full page newspaper ads in their neighborhoods, to fisherfolk sending dozens of personal letters and holiday cards — Chubb has felt the public pressure.

This, coupled with listening to the concerns of community members, it looks to us like resulted in Chubb no longer insuring Calcasieu Pass LNG, in what appears to be a positive pattern for them: after public pressure campaigns Chubb also cut ties with the planned Rio Grande LNG, dozens of oil and gas clients, and ruled out insuring the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). But Chubb is still one of the largest fossil fuel insurers in the world, and a top backer of Gulf methane, which is why keeping up the momentum against the neighboring Cameron LNG, Freeport LNG, and all planned and existing methane terminals across the Gulf South is crucial.

Talk is cheap. We need Chubb to take us seriously and stop insuring the methane terminals that make it impossible for fisherfolk like myself to make a living.” – Solomon Williams, Jr., Louisiana oyster fisherman.

Fisherfolk fight back!

Methane terminals pose a direct threat to fisherfolk livelihoods by driving away sea life, polluting the community and making their families sick, and endangering their personal safety when methane tankers sink their boats.

The painful irony is that many fishing families can’t afford insurance to cover these real risks because insurers are withdrawing from climate vulnerable communities while insuring methane terminals next door.

Fishing families have been stewards of the Gulf’s coastal waters for hundreds of years, and are deeply rooted to its preservation. Fishermen Involved in Sustaining Our Heritage (FISH) and over 100 fishing families have been organizing against methane terminals in their bayous and across the Gulf Coast. They’re documenting regulatory violations, filing lawsuits, connecting with the corporations threatening communities, and raising awareness on the massive impacts of LNG. These are our shared demands for Chubb:

1. Stop insuring Calcasieu Pass LNG, Cameron LNG, and all methane projects
2. Stop insuring fossil fuel expansion
3. Work with their fossil fuel clients to transition off of dirty energy

Where to go from here

Right now is a critical time for insurers to stop insuring methane expansion as global LNG markets are disrupted, regulators rubber stamp risks, and losses mount from super powered climate storms.

Recently, the Trump administration fast-tracked permits for methane projects like CP2 LNG, a massive proposed terminal next to Calcasieu Pass LNG, that would be the emissions equivalent of 27 coal fired power plants.

Climate disasters are costing the insurance industry – it’s past time for these so-called “risk experts” to seriously consider the countless risks of methane gas: including to their bottom line. Last summer, US home insurers suffered the worst loss this century due to climate disasters. In the last 20 years, over a third of weather-related insured losses are because of climate change, totaling approximately $600 billion in losses. To put it simply: dropping methane isn’t just good for people and planet, it’s also good for business. Chubb distancing themselves from Calcasieu Pass LNG sends the message to its other insurers AIG, Allianz, Liberty Mutual, Swiss Re, AXA, Toikio Marine, Sompo, Munich Re, and Scor, that this project is not worth the risk.

Remember: these terminals can’t operate without insurance, which is why cutting off their coverage is so vital.

Our collective pressure is working. Help keep the energy up on Chubb’s leadership and take action in solidarity with fisherfolk: demand Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg and Board Directors Frances Townsend and David Sidwell be true climate leaders and drop Cameron LNG before the policy renews this June.

The post Big Win: Chubb No Longer Insures Calcasieu Pass LNG! appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

One case in point is Mondelēz International, the $87 billion snacking giant behind Oreo cookies. Mondelēz has a glossy human rights policy, yet it routinely receives the lowest scores on our yearly deforestation and human rights scorecard.

In part, it’s because Mondelēz lacks a zero-tolerance policy safeguarding human rights defenders—the activists fighting to make human rights a reality around the world.

Defenders are an integral part of advancing human rights globally, especially in places that lack strong enforcement mechanisms. They’re a diverse group of people combating discrimination, labor abuses, environmental exploitation, and more.

Sadly, they’re the frequent target of attacks. Land and environmental defenders face heavy persecution, in particular: In 2023, three people were killed every week for speaking out against things like pollution, deforestation, and extractive industries.

Agribusinesses, including soy, cacao, and palm oil producers—major Mondelēz snack ingredients—are among the top culprits behind these attacks against defenders.

Unfortunately, Mondelēz hasn’t committed to a zero-tolerance policy against such attacks. A truly unconscionable choice as the assault on human rights intensifies, both at home and abroad.

The post The maker of Oreos is not taking its human rights responsibilities seriously appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

Much has been written about the direct impacts of animal agriculture on global greenhouse gas emissions, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss and deforestation. The same can be said for palm oil and its impacts on rainforests.

But the increasing use of palm oil in animal feed has deepened an unholy alliance between two planet-destroying industries, with the potential to dramatically accelerate tropical deforestation.

RAN’s analysis found that palm-oil based feed has become the number one palm oil product category imported into the United States. This feed is at high risk of association with deforestation and rights abuses, as most importers lack “no deforestation” policies, which means they’re not paying attention to where the palm oil comes from, or if it was produced at the expense of rainforests.

Snack companies are also not paying attention: Danone, Ferrero, Mars, Nestlé and Unilever claim to have nearly or fully deforestation-free supply chains, because they only source “deforestation free” palm oil as an ingredient to add to their products. Yet the dairy they use comes from animals that are quite literally gobbling up rainforests.

To date, only Swedish dairy giant Arla has made “zero deforestation” commitments about animal feed in their milk supply chains. The others continue to pretend that their cows aren’t turning our rainforests into one big pile of cud.

The post Animal feed is the new, silent planetary killer appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

The new law is an attempt to keep deforestation-linked products out of Europe, but palm oil lobbyists are fighting back, saying its monitoring and tracing requirements could financially harm small farmers.

In part due to these concerns, the EU is giving all importers until 2026 to get up to speed on compliance. But now, lobbyists are pushing the EU to grant smallholders exemptions from the EUDR—a potential death knell for some of Indonesia’s last standing rainforests.

The term “smallholder” is very ambiguous in Indonesia. Some smallholders run impoverished family farms. Others are local elites who abuse their influence to create mini corporate plantations in protected areas, a growing problem for the orangutan capital of the world.

Those elites are a major source of deforestation in Indonesia, but lobbyists want to have the EU pre-label entire geographic regions as being at “minimal risk” for smallholder deforestation, essentially giving them a pass on EUDR requirements.

While the EU does a poor job of articulating how it will help smallholders meet EUDR requirements, it shouldn’t create major loopholes for small, rogue operators. Instead, it should help smallholders reach full compliance.

If not, the EUDR will become just another paper tiger in a dense overgrowth of hollowed-out “zero deforestation” promises.

The post Palm oil lobbyists water down Europe’s anti-deforestation law appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

Smallholders grow about 40% of Indonesia’s oil palm, but they’re not all the same. Some cultivate on customary croplands, are poor, and face many hurdles in Indonesia’s pro-corporate system. Others are local elites who run their plots like mini corporate plantations, complete with managers and heavy machinery.

The latter are largely responsible for increases in Indonesia’s smallholder-driven deforestation. They’re also why the orangutan capital of the world is disappearing, according to our latest investigation.

Using high-resolution satellite imagery, we spied on five pint-sized plantations run by local elites in Sumatra’s Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve, two of which are already supplying major global brands with illegal palm oil, including Chips Ahoy! and Head & Shoulders-makers Mondelēz and Procter & Gamble.

The “smallholder” label affords these rogue operators a level of sympathy that they don’t deserve. They’re not smallholders in the sense of family-run farms. Rather, they’re land speculators with large cumulative landholdings who abuse their influence to clear standing rainforests.

The oil palm lobby is ginning up sympathy for smallholders to sell the EU on blanket exemptions that could shield these and other small, rogue operators—a terrible development for the Singkil and its famous orange inhabitants, should it come to pass.

The post Elites posing as small farmers destroy critical rainforests in Indonesia appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

Far from the grainy Landsat 5 and 7 satellite images of the past—which were nonetheless essential to saving the Amazon from total destruction in the late 90s—modern satellites can basically spy on orangutans from space.

But our latest investigation doesn’t zoom in on orangutans as they forage for lychee or use simple tools. Instead, we get up close and personal with illegal oil palm producers in Indonesia’s Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve, the orangutan capital of the world.

The high level of detail in these images helps us show that these oil palm producers are cutting down forests within time periods that corporations and even the E.U. care about, which we can determine based on the age of individual oil palms.

The following ultra-high resolution images, provided by the Airbus Pléiades Neo, are the first of their kind for the Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve, and can be found in full on Nusantara Atlas.

• Before and after images show differences in forest cover between 2016 and 2024 in a small boundary section of the Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve, a process happening across the park’s periphery. These images helped us determine that 1,915 hectares of forest clearing happened after key regulatory cut off dates.

• The zoomed-in tile at the bottom of this image shows an oil palm plantation with an “open canopy,” meaning its oil palms are young, between .5 and 3 meters in diameter, and not yet producing fruit. We discovered 652 hectares of active oil palm plantations inside the reserve.

• A nearby plot shows oil palms with a “semi-closed canopy,” which are about 3-years-old, 4-6 meters in diameter, and starting to bear fruit. We determined that there are 453 hectares of productive plantations in the reserve—a sign that illegal oil palm is already entering global supply chains.

• Zooming in even more, the satellite captures an excavator next to an illegal canal. Excavators dig canals to drain peatlands, creating drier conditions for planting oil palms—a practice that releases high concentrations of trapped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Previous satellites could not achieve this level of resolution.

Images like these are not just cool, they’re essential to exposing the elites tearing down standing rainforests in remote parts of Indonesia—often illegally, and always with a sense of impunity that comes from anonymity.

Credits: Imagery provided by Airbus DS Pléiades Neo (July 2024) and Triple Satellites @21 (June 2016)

The post How to catch illegal deforestation in the act appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

RAN’s latest satellite investigation found illegal oil palm plantations inside a protected area on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia that’s famous for its orangutans. This area, the Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve, locks away gigatons of carbon in its swampy peat forests.

Since 2014, RAN has documented illegal oil palm expansion in the reserve and its encompassing Leuser Ecosystem—a jewel in the crown of Sumatra’s last standing rainforests and home to the only coexisting rhinos, elephants, orangutans, and tigers in the wild.

Oil palm has felled over half of Sumatra’s rainforests in just a few decades as producers keep pace with global demand for consumer goods, including snack foods and cosmetics. But the vast and remote Leuser Ecosystem has resisted deforestation—until recently.

This deforestation is increasing at a rapid pace, even as “zero deforestation” pledges become the norm among the world’s biggest palm oil traders, consumer goods companies, and banks.

Oreo-maker Mondelēz and Top Ramen-maker Nissin Foods could make a significant dent in this illicit trade by simply enforcing their own zero deforestation policies.

If only they could be reached for comment.

The post Multinationals silent on destruction of prime orangutan habitat appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

2024 was no different. Last year, RAN distributed over $850,000 in Community Action Grants (CAG), with over 80 grants in 15 countries across five continents. CAG grants supported land rights strategies in Asia, BIPOC communities in the U.S. Gulf South, Amazonian and coastal communities in Peru, Afro-descendent and Indigenous communities in Colombia, and broad alliances in Brazil. 2024 showed that the struggles that unite communities can overcome the barriers put in place by those in power to divide them, a theme that will continue to inform our strategy in 2025.

The #NoFerrogrão Alliance in Brazil is a prime example of how RAN’s Community Action Grants unite communities around a common goal: protecting our environment. The Alliance, which brings together various organizations, including the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB), the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), the Munduruku Pariri Association, and the Kayapo Kabu Institute, seeks to stop the construction of the EF-170 railway project, also known as the Ferrogrão. The project, which would connect to Cargill’s Abaetetuba port, would cut 600 miles through the Amazon and lead to 1,200 square miles of deforestation in 16 Indigenous territories, causing insurmountable damage to the rainforest and Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods and traditions in the area.

In March 2024, with funding from RAN’s Community Action Grants program, the Alliance was able to organize a week-long tour of the communities impacted by the project, conducting workshops on the adverse effects of the project on the community. The tour also included a strategic planning assembly, where 80 members of the organizations came up with ideas for coalition building, advocacy, and strategy to put political pressure on those behind the railway.

On the other side of the Amazon in Peru, RAN’s Community Action Grants program, in collaboration with the Global Greengrants Fund, supported the MarAmazonia Alliance. MarAmazonia brings together fishing communities from the Northern Coast impacted by offshore oil drilling with three Indigenous nations from the Amazon, the Wampís, Achuar, and the Chapra nations, whose lands are affected by oil exploration. In 2024, with the support of RAN’s CAG program, the Alliance was able to take part in a delegation pressuring banks to end new funding for PetroPerú, the Peruvian state oil company, create community-based economic initiatives, and critical gatherings on Human Rights and a Just Energy Transition. Due to MarAmazonia’s delegation and a report released in collaboration with Amazon Watch, PetroPerú’s expansion was stopped, the company was downgraded by three credit agencies, a one billion dollar bond was held up, and the company’s board resigned in September, showing how critical Community Action Grants can be for frontline organizations advancing their strategies.

RAN also supported the Vessel Project in organizing a similar delegation, bringing BIPOC activists to New York in the summer of 2024. The organization, a BIPOC-led grassroots mutual aid, disaster relief, and environmental justice organization, organizes in communities affected by methane and petrochemical industries in Southwest Louisiana. Vessel Project brought activists to New York to pressure banks on their turf, organizing multiple protests in what they dubbed the Summer of Heat, a play on words that evoked the consequences of the banks’ actions. The action was an excellent way to build a multiracial, multigenerational, cross-class movement of sustained action demanding that Wall Street stop investing in, financing, and insuring fossil fuels while showing the banks that they can’t continue to be unaccountable to the consequences of the projects that they finance. CAG grants also ensured that momentum from the Summer of the Heat continued into Climate Week by supporting the travel costs of The Vessel Project’s Director, Roishetta Sibley Ozane, to attend Climate Week and participate in an event on finance and the Paris Agreement that RAN and Parliamentarians for a Fossil Free Future co-hosted.

RAN’s Community Action Grants program also served as a lifeline to activists attending the COP16 Conference on Biodiversity in Cali, Colombia. One of the organizations RAN supported was CENPAZ, an umbrella organization of Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and Peasant organizations. In anticipation of the COP in October, CENPAZ organized a gathering to honor Phanor Guazaquillo Peña, an Indigenous land defender murdered in December 2023, and create a magazine that highlights the connection between peace and biodiversity in Colombia that was circulated among attendees at the COP. The magazine informed conference attendees about the unique challenges that Afro-Colombian and Indigenous peoples face in Colombia when protecting the environment and their territories. RAN’s CAG program also supported a delegation of activists from Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities throughout Colombia to attend COP16, providing critical opportunities for learning and networking with activists worldwide.

In 2024, RAN continued its ongoing solidarity with the Ceibo Alliance through our CAGs. Ceibo Alliance is an organization that brings together the Siona, A’i Kofan, Siekopai, and Waorani Indigenous nations in the Ecuadorian Amazon to work together to defend their territory and cultural autonomy while building solutions-based alternatives to rainforest destruction. RAN’s grants provided the Alliance with the resources to expand their territorial defense strategies through community-based monitoring, mapping, and governance efforts, protecting nearly 960,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest in addition to support for conferences and leadership development opportunities for the Alliance’s members. RAN also provided much-needed support for the Alliance’s political advocacy, securing a historic legal victory that lays the groundwork to give Indigenous land titles to 3.5 million hectares of Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. Additionally, CAG contributed to expanding community-led education models that balance Western technical subjects with the reintegration of Indigenous language, worldview, and ways of learning. The work of the Alliance shows that despite the attempts of the Ecuadorian government and elites to nullify the historic achievements of the country’s Indigenous movements by continuing to extract the Amazon, there is strength in a united alliance to protect the Amazon.

Despite the many threats that 2024 posed to democracy and the environment, RAN’s Community Action Grants program shows that significant victories can be achieved through broad alliances in the Global South and the periphery of the Global North. From the Brazilian Amazon to the Gulf South, community organizations are showing that they can unite those most affected by climate chaos, challenge corporate power, and resist the tide of climate change. As we enter into uncertain times in 2025, RAN’s Community Action Grants will be a key tool for grassroots organizations around the world to build strong alliances that can stand up to the rise of the far-right and those who seek to use the global crisis to profit off of the destruction of our environment and further our descent into climate chaos. CAG reminds us that those who are most affected by climate change will be the ones who lead the struggle to stop it. 

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