SUNGGUH JUTAWAN Sawit
CPO ended higher on Friday at 3015lvl with low volume traded. Likely bears may tests 2850-2900 if CPO can sustain below 2950lvl. Otherwise it may continue for correction. Upside tone may develops if open >3020 and close >3050. CPO may downside bias if open <3005 and close <2990. I'm expecting CPO may play 3050-3000 today. Please take your position nicely...
The Indonesian Palm Oil Conference & Price Outlook is an annual forum for the palm oil industry, organized by the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (also known as GAPKI). This event will provide detailed information on palm oil price forecasts, market dynamics, as well as discussions on the latest issues in the industry. Moreover, with attendance of more than a thousand people from around the world, this conference also provides an excellent opportunity to build up a business network within the international palm oil industry. This year marks our seventh conference, which will be held in Bali, Indonesia from 30 November - 2 December 2011. For more detailed information about the event, feel free to browse the website.
OIL PALM, known as “Sawit” in Indonesia, is an increasing problem for people and the environment in that country, and a massive problem for the international community because of the enormous amounts of CO2 that are released in deforesting and clearing virgin forest.
In May 1998, the Minister of Forestry and Plantation Estates stated that the government had allocated 30 million hectares of forest for oil palm plantations. Indonesia already had 3.2 million hectares of oil palm plantations, mainly located in Sumatra (1 million hectares).
In November 2008, the country’s Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said only 6.3 million hectares have been planted with oil palms, but data from Sawit Watch shows that in addition to the land already planted, another 18 million hectares have been cleared for the sole purpose of planting oil palm, much of it in the name of foreign investors.
The creation of Sawit Watch
Many Indonesian NGOs are very concerned about this trend and have conducted activities to empower indigenous and local people to fight for their rights in their respective regions. Given the need to work and develop plans together for strengthening efforts at local, national and international levels, several Indonesian NGOs formed Sawit Watch in 1998 and since then several more have joined the initiative.
Sawit Watch has three main goals:
1). To support local and indigenous peoples’ struggle against large-scale oil palm plantation companies;
2) To campaign against the IMF/World Bank’s Sectoral Adjustment Loan for liberalizing oil palm plantation;
3) To raise public awareness at local, national and international levels on the social and environmental impacts of oil palm plantations.
To achieve these goals, Sawit Watch carries out activities such as:
1. Supporting local and indigenous peoples’ struggle against large scale oil palm plantation companies:
Advocacy and empowerment activities to help local people reclaim their expropriated land. More than 10,000 people were helped to regain control over about 10,000 hectares of land in North Sumatra that had been given to the Indonesian military and bureaucrats.
Reclaiming activities by indigenous and local peoples in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Java over large-scale plantations and forest concessions, ranging from taking to court land right cases to the direct occupation of lands. Sawit Watch’s support consists of providing legal advice, putting political pressure on provincial governments and the military, and litigation at court. Compensation for environmental destruction is also being demanded from the companies.
People are poor and don’t have funds to cultivate their land after reclaiming and therefore fund-raising activities are also carried out to support, for instance, the purchase of seeds. People are encouraged to cultivate alternative crops, so in the future they are not dependent on one crop (oil palm), to develop mixed crops and to increase biodiversity. People-based management of the forest that was once destroyed by large-scale oil palm plantations, could therefore be developed again.
2. Campaign against IMF/World Bank’s Sectoral Adjustment Loan for liberalizing oil palm plantations.
The Indonesian government stopped new foreign investment in oil palm plantation in early 1997, because 1.5 million hectares of land had already been allocated for oil palm plantation to Malaysian and other foreign investors.
The IMF/World Bank’s 50-point programme package for Indonesia to counter the economic crisis of 1997 was conditional on the liberalization of oil palm plantation. but was not based on any social or environmental studies carried out by the World Bank.
3. Raise public awareness at the local, national and international levels on the social and environmental impacts of oil palm plantations by implementing activities such as:
Policy study on oil palm plantation in Indonesia. The aim of the policy study is to draw a picture of the whole “sawit” complex for monitoring, campaigning and advocacy purposes, and also to predict its trends in the future.
The policy study includes a number of aspects such as the ecology (analysis of biodiversity loss, soil erosion, pollution, etc.); social and economic aspects (analysis of impacts of oil palm plantation to the social and economic condition of people at the local, regional and national levels); legal and policy aspects (analysis of regulations on oil palm plantations, the trend of policy adopted by government in relation to the intervention of institutions such as the IMF/World Bank and other multilateral banks); political aspect (analysis of main actors –e.g. government and private sector, multilateral banks– and respective interests); supply-demand analysis in relation with consumer patterns and foreign trade.
Compiling investigated data/facts from local level. Many NGOs have conducted investigations in oil palm plantation areas that affected the lives of indigenous and local people. For the purpose of raising public awareness, all data and facts have been compiled by Sawit Watch as evidence of the negative impacts of oil palm plantation, in different formats such as slide packages (in Indonesian and English) and video films.
Providing data and facts (newsletters, fact sheets, slides, video films and online information in Indonesian and English) on social, economic and environmental impacts of oil palm plantations.
The negative impacts of oil palm plantations
Oil palm plantations have resulted in numerous negative impacts on the environment, on indigenous peoples, on people’s livelihoods, on the national economy, and have resulted in the concentration of land in the hands of just a few companies.
Negative impacts on the environment are a consequence of this being a large-scale industrial monocrop which therefore reduces biodiversity. At the same time, it implies high levels of agrochemical inputs - fertilizers and insecticides - that have polluted many rivers, and have directly and indirectly caused deforestation and forest fires.
Much of the land allocated to oil palm plantations is not even technically appropriate for planting oil palm.
According to a study carried out by JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) and BAPENAS (National Development Planning Board), only 15 percent of the 3.2 million hectares of land earmarked for that purpose in 1998 by the provincial government of West Kalimantan are suitable for planting oil palm.
Plantation projects ignore the existence of indigenous peoples and expropriate their lands. For example, in West Kalimantan oil palm plantations are developed in the productive gardens of Dayak people, which include rubber trees and fruit trees.
The government of Indonesia has encouraged companies to cut down hundreds of thousands of trees in Dayaks’ gardens and to replace them with oil palm. As a result, local peoples’ economy, based on local resources has been destroyed.
As a result of millions of hectares of land being converted to oil palm plantation, the regional and peoples’ economy has become dependent on a single commodity that is subject to international price fluctuations.
At the same time the economy of indigenous people, which is based on non -timber forest products such as honey, medicinal plants, fruit and fish, has been destroyed by the expropriating process.
Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics (1996) noted that 457 large oil palm companies controlled more than 3.2 million hectares of land. Since then the figures have changed to 650 companies in control of 30 million hectares.
As a result of the high concentration of land ownership among industrialists, many of them quoted on the stock exchanges of Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, thousands of indigenous people have become landless and have been pushed into dire poverty.
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