Not on our land!

21 April 2005

Not on our land!

As Non Government Organizations it is our opinion that :

• There is nothing sustainable about Oil Palm estates and they alienate people from their land.

• Oil palm inevitably causes social disharmony and environmental pollution. It deprives local people of the right to use their land for their own economic and social development.

• The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil tries to deflect attention from the social and environmental damage caused by oil palm. It does not deal with the fundamental problems.

• International conservation organizations should abandon their ‘Forest Conversion Initiatives’. Instead they should stand with the people of Papua New Guinea and reject outright any expansion of our oil palm estates and further industrial logging.

• The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has been created to ensure expansion of oil palm plantations while ignoring local people. The Roundtable is not genuinely concerned for sustainable livelihoods or environmental protection and it undermines local people and organizations.

We call on WWF and other ‘BINGOs’ to distance themselves from these initiatives that deprive our people of their land and impose failed western models of so-called ‘development’ WWF should support the people of PNG rather than initiating international forums to greenwash foreign industries

ENDS

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