Indonesian, Liberian and International NGOs have filed five new complaints against Indonesia’s largest palm oil company, Golden Agri Resources (GAR).

GAR, which is part of the huge Sinar Mas (Golden Rays) conglomerate run by the Widjaja family with interests ranging from palm oil and pulpwood to real estate and banking, is failing to comply with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil’s (RSPO) standards, claim the NGOs.

Both GAR and its subsidiary in Liberia – Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) – angered NGOs when they recently withdrew GVL’s membership of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), thus dodging a demand from RSPO that it should halt development of its palm oil mill on contested lands.

Mina Beyan of the Liberian NGO Social Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development (SESDev) said: “We have been helping the local communities impacted by GVL to complain about the unfair way that GVL has been acquiring their lands, since 2012. Finally, earlier this year the RSPO Complaints Panel agreed – after a detailed independent investigation – that the complaints were valid. GVL was told to stop the land grab, but they refused. And now they have walked out of the RSPO. This delinquent behaviour challenges the very fabric of RSPO. Are RSPO standards only to be observed in the breach?”

According to Liberian NGOs, GVL was pushing ahead with its development despite the refusal of the Blogbo community to cede their lands to the company, despite their complaints to the RSPO, despite their complaints being upheld by the RSPO Complaints Panel and despite the Panel upholding the stop work order it had issued, after overruling an appeal by GVL against the Panel’s decision.

“This is a blatant attempt by GVL and GAR to evade their obligations to the RSPO. They use their RSPO membership to attract investment and to market their palm oil but when their bluff is called they just walk away from their responsibilities,” said James Otto of the Monrovia-based NGO Sustainable Development Institute (SDI).

Another complaint alleges that GAR is in violation of Indonesian laws which prohibit companies and corporate groups from holding more than 100,000 hectares of land. GAR publicly admits to holding more than four times that amount. Compliance with the law is a core principle of the RSPO standard but the RSPO Complaints Panel has avoided making a ruling on this matter for more than three years.

GAR has also delayed providing promised smallholdings to local Dayak and Malay communities from whom it acquired lands in 2007-2009 in the centre of Borneo, despite being required to do so by the RSPO Complaints Panel more than three years ago after a complaint from Forest Peoples Programme (FPP).

“Indonesia says it welcomes investment in palm oil plantations to help alleviate poverty and bring development,” says Rahmawati Winarni, Executive Director of the Indonesian NGO Transformation to Justice (TUK), “but GAR is just taking peoples’ lands and then wilfully delaying compensating them for it. Why should poor landowners be forced cede their lands and then wait decades for promised smallholdings, while these huge companies reap their profits? Actually, it is the Indonesian government that should be stopping this kind of abuse not just the RSPO,” she added.

In 2013, investigations by TUK and Forest Peoples Programme had revealed that GAR was cheating people out of their lands in violation of the RSPO standards – which require members to respect customary rights and only take their lands with their free, prior and informed consent. This led to a detailed complaint to the RSPO, which the complaints panel (CP) upheld in 2015, requiring GAR to make remedy for the lands it had taken without consent. RSPO CP froze all expansion and land acquisition by GAR in all 18 of GAR’s operations that were the subject of the complaint.

“Since then GAR has refused to renegotiate these unfair land deals, despite an RSPO ruling that it must make remedy for taking lands without communities’ free, prior and informed consent,” notes Marcus Colchester, Senior Policy Advisor for Forest Peoples Programme. “‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ is an apt saying.”

The Federal High Court of Justice, sitting in Abuja on the Wednesday, August 15, 2018, struck out a suit instituted by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and 16 other civil society organisations (CSOs) against some government establishments relating to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) due to technicalities.

The Judge, in delivering his judgment, opined that although the plaintiffs have a Cause of Action in the matter, the court’s hands are however tied due to one of the objections raised by the defendants – the suit is statute barred.

According to the Judge, it is a contravention of the provisions of the Public Officers Act, which states that any action instituted against a public officer as regards his/her discharge of duties must be instituted within three months, after the said breach occurred.

The suit, with No: FHC/ABJ/C5/846/2017, was said to have been brought a year after the permits had been issued.

HOMEF, in a statement made available to EnviroNews, expressed displeasure at the judgement, describing it as “a fall back on efforts to preserve the nation’s food system from being overturned by the agricultural biotech industry”.

The registered Trustees of HOMEF and 16 other CSOs in September 2017 filed the lawsuit against the Nigerian Biosafety Management Agency (NABMA), the Minister of Environment, Monsanto Agricultural Nigeria Limited, National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), Minister of Agriculture, Attorney General of the Federation and National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) over permits granted for GMO products.

In the summons which was taken out by Ifeanyi Nwankwere of Basilea Juris Associates, the plaintiffs insisted that the 1st defendant did not comply with the provisions of the National Biosafety Management Agency Act in granting the permits to the 3rd and 4th defendants. The CSOs asserted that the procedure and issuance of the permits flouts and threatens the fundamental human rights of the people as enshrined in section 33, 34, 36 and 39 of the 1999 constitution of Nigeria as amended in 2011.

Other issues which the plaintiffs brought forward were that NABDA, said to be a part of the governing Board of NBMA, in its application did not state adequate measures put in place to prevent cross pollination with natural varieties during field trials, and that NBMA granted the permits without any public hearing regardless of the consequential issues raised in objections sent in by the Plaintiffs.

HOMEF maintained that agricultural biotechnology along with its current advances come with specific risks both immediate and long-term and require thorough safety assessments.

Nnimmo Bassey, environmental activist and Director at HOMEF, said: “Nigeria’s present regulatory architecture cannot ensure food and environmental safety as shown by the manner in which the National Biosafety Management Agency handles GMO applications. One troubling example is the case of genetically modified maize varieties which were illegally shipped into country by WACOT Nig. Ltd. in September 2017. The agency after announcing that together with the Nigerian customs service they would ensure that the illegal seeds were repatriated approved an application by this company to import these products over a period of three years, barely a month after its announcement that illegal maize should be repatriated. This action contradicts the biosafety law which requires 270 days notice before imports to allow for adequate safety assessments.”

Bassey emphasised that “the only essence of genetically modified crops is for the economic benefit of the biotechnology corporations and their counterparts and not the interest of Nigeria.  With the release of these products into the environment, the damage will be irreversible, and the current economic strength of Nigeria cannot afford that damage.”

The activist added further in the statement that the court ruling encourages “administrative rascality and constant disregard for public interest and due process”.

According to HOMEF, while the case awaited judgment, the defendants, NBMA, Monsanto and NABDA on July 26 registered and released the Bt cotton varieties (MRC 7377 BG11 and MRC 7361 BG11) along with other GM products into the Nigerian environment. These cotton varieties, the group adds, refer to the same cotton MON 15985 in the suit as evident on the website of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA).

“The health and economic welfare of all Nigerians, which constitutes our fundamental rights, are at risk if GMOs are allowed in the country. Nigerians must be aware that we are neither respected nor protected,” he warned.

But Dr Rufus Ebegba, head of the NBMA, described the judgement as a victory for Nigerians, and a manifestation of the judiciary as a beacon of hope and justice.

His words: “The NBMA is much more encouraged to continue due dilligence in ensuring that Nigerians are protected from any potential adverse effect in the regulation of modern biotechnology and its products. However, this shows that our biosafety system is working. I urge Nigerians to trust the NBMA and not be distracted by fear mongering.”

According to him, NBMA remains an umpire in the regulation of GMOs, even as he assured that, with the Agency on ground, the safety of their health and environment would continually be its number one responsibility.

Also reacting to the court ruling, Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje, lawyer and chair of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), said in the statement that it would have been in the interest of justice to grant the reliefs set out on the face of the summons as, according to her, the case represented not just consumers safety but the survival of  millions of small scale farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by the corporate takeover of food systems in the guise of agricultural biotechnology.

“We hope that when the impacts of GMOs set in, the government of Nigeria will not say ‘we were not informed or warned about the impacts of GMOs’,” she declared, adding:

“The civil society coalition is of strong conviction that this is a cause worth fighting and would continue to seek redress. The organisations pledge not to relent in pushing the case for food safety and food sovereignty in Nigeria. They have pledged to continue to resist attempts by Monsanto, its international and local partners to control our food, land, life and democracy.”

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland, the State University of New York and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre has found that new global tree growth over the past 35 years has more than offset global tree cover losses.

In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes using satellite data to track forest growth and loss over the past 35 years and what they found by doing so.

There has been a growing consensus in recent years that, because humans cut down so many trees (most particularly in the rainforests), the global tree cover is shrinking.

In this new effort, the researchers have found that not to be the case. They contend that global tree cover is actually increasing.

To track global tree cover changes, the researchers studied data from advanced and very high-resolution radiometers aboard a series of 16 weather satellites covering the years 1982 to 2016.

By comparing daily readings, the researchers were able to see small changes occurring regularly over a relatively long period of time – which added up to large changes. Over the entire span, the researchers found that new tree cover had offset tree cover loss by approximately 2.24 million square kilometres – which they note is approximately the size of Texas and Alaska combined.

The researchers report that most of the new tree cover occurred in places that had previously been barren, such as in deserts, tundra areas, on mountains, in cities and in other non-vegetated land. They further report that much of the new growth came about due to efforts by humans (such as reforestation efforts in China and parts of Africa) and because of global warming – warmer temperatures have raised timberlines in some mountainous regions and allowed forests to creep into tundra areas. Other areas of new tree growth resulted from large farm abandonments in places like Russia and the U.S.

The researchers report that their calculations showed that human activities have directly caused approximately 60 percent of new global tree growth. They suggest their technique for monitoring tree cover could be used to predict tree cover changes in the future due to global warming.