Result: forest destroyer Duta Palma kicked out of sustainable palm oil group

Posted by Richardg — 13 May 2013 at 12:24pm - Comments
by-nc. Credit: Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace

Duta Palma is a notorious palm oil company with an inglorious history of trashing the rainforest. This morning, it became the first company to be kicked out of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Last month we released our latest crime file on Duta Palma, one of Indonesia's largest palm oil companies. 800 acres of forest right next to Duta Palma's PT Palma Satu plantation had been cleared illegally - apparently by DP employees.

This carbon-rich peatland is specifically protected by the Indonesian government's deforestation moratorium. (That temporary ban is up for renewal this month, and many larger palm oil companies want it scrapped because it limits how much of the forest they can destroy. Word on the street is that they've failed: the ban will be extended.)

We called on the RSPO to take swift and firm action against Duta Palma - but it already had Duta Palma under investigation. The company had been caught converting deep peatland into a palm oil plantation, clearing forest without assessing whether it was of high conservation value and using fires to clear land.

Duta Palma kept trying to fob the RSPO off and refused to take their complaint seriously. After several months of trying they finally gave up and decided to kick DP out - making it the first company to have been thrown out since the RSPO was set up a decade ago.

This is a great start - but it won't stop Duta Palma from destroying the rainforest. Now the onus is on the Indonesian government to strengthen the deforestation ban and review the existing concessions, so that rogue operators like Duta Palma can’t get away with their environmental crimes.

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