The “Heart” of the Rainforest
In 2009, Herakles Farms, operating through its subsidiary, SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon, Ltd. (SGSOC), signed a convention with the Cameroonian government leasing almost 75,000 ha (~180,500 acres) to develop a large industrial palm oil plantation and refinery. Problematically, the project is situated in the middle of five different protected areas, including the renowned Korup National Park, Bakossi National Park, Banyang Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary, Nta Ali Forest Reserve and Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve. A measure of the incredible biodiversity of the region, Korup National Park alone is home to:
...more than 600 species of trees, nearly 200 species of reptiles and amphibians, an estimated 1,000 butterfly species, 400 bird species, and 160 mammal species, including one of the richest assemblages of primates in the world. Korup contains 14 different types of primates, including such threatened or endangered species as red-eared guenon, Preuss’s red colobus, the drill, and the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, the most imperiled of the world's chimpanzee subspecies. Leopards, bushpigs, duikers, brush-tailed porcupines, and forest buffalo roam the lowland rainforest as well. (Yale Environment 360)
Thomas Struhsaker, a Duke University professor and expert on rainforest ecology and Afircan primates, calls the area of rainforest intended for the oil palm plantation the region's "heart". Its unique location in the middle of all of these parks provides migration corridors for wildlife to move between the different parks, similar to a heart moving blood around a body. Cutting out the heart will isolate animals within each of the five protected areas, stopping wildlife circulation between the parks and further endangering the unique and threatened species that live within and around the concession.
The Impact on Indigenous Peoples
The government of Cameroon, in granting the oil palm concession to Herakles Farms, has disregarded the reality that the proposed plantation’s area is located on the hereditary homelands of many indigenous groups, including the Oroko, Bakossi, and Upper Bayang peoples. Cultural Survival, an indigenous rights organizations, says the plantation “will have major impacts on approximately 52,000 indigenous peoples in 88 villages who are dependent on the forest for their livelihoods and way of life.” The logging concession also gives Herakles Farms the power to “search, apprehend, detain, exclude and evict” anyone who trespasses on the concession’s leased area. The leased area, though, is the ancestral homeland of ancient indigenous groups. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, all documents to which Cameroon is a signee, guarantee these indigenous groups the right to free movement on their ancestral lands. The concession clearly violates this right, along with the right to “free, prior and informed consent” ensured in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to which Cameroon is also a signee.
Population Pressure Leading to Further Degradation
Herakles Farms estimates that the SGSOC plantation will provide 7,000 to 8,000 jobs. As outside workers flow into the region seeking these jobs, they will increase the demand for bushmeat, which is already significantly high due to current local pressure. In an open letter to [xxxxxxx], [#] scientists state, “[Herakles Farms has] very little experience working in West and Central Africa,” and, “[they] have failed to provide a sufficient mitigation plan to control the hunting, consumption and trade of illegal bushmeat within their concession.” The company states that the plantation will solve the problem of illegal bushmeat, rather than intensifying it, by providing jobs and money to local and indigenous peoples. A conservationist working in the area (speaking anonymously with mongabay.com) disagreed with this analysis, however, instead predicting:
[a]nimals will be wiped out and the current conservation infrastructure is ill-equipped to do anything about it. So, unless Herakles plans on hiring and training (and supporting over their 99-year lease) hundreds of ecoguards in each protected area, protecting HCV forest outside protected areas, funding environmental education programs throughout the plantation area, restricting immigration in to the area, and providing non-bushmeat alternative protein to its employees and the surrounding residents, Korup is in big trouble.
Clearly, Herakles Farms is underestimating the problem, believing that distracting the villagers from hunting and promising higher incomes is a simple solution to an actually complex, culturally and societally pervasive problem.
“An outpouring of support from the community…”?
Herakles Farms states that the plantation will provide many benefits to the local communities, who they claim “enthusiastically support the development.” “The plantation will deliver a whole range of benefits for the local population, including jobs, housing, health clinics, clean water and schools…” Bruce Wrobel, the former CEO of Herakles, said in one press statement. And in another, a representative of the company claimed that, “[t]he communities in these areas would like to generate a better life, economic development and sustained incomes on what land remains, and Herakles Farms is working with them to help make this happen in a sustainable way.” However, these statements seem to be far from the truth of the situation. Many sources have portrayed a lack of support for the plantation. In their open letter, the scientists write:
"Letters from villages and local cultural organizations, representing hundreds to thousands of individuals, have decried the activities of [Herakles Farms]…They cite an alarming lack of transparency; a lack of free, prior, and informed consent of local communities; the illegal demarcation and clearing of land; and the biological, economic and cultural importance of the forests as reasons for opposing the proposed project.”
In addition to the open letter, a statement from SAVE, a German conservation NGO, mentions how locals believe the plantation will further restrict their use of ancestral lands already significantly restricted by conservation areas:
"Many people in these villages are against this because it would mean losing their forests, and either being surrounded by oil palms or being forced to relocate. Most of these villagers rely heavily on farming to feed their families and earn an income. They also rely heavily on the non-timber forest products surrounding the village."
Letters from impacted communities have been pouring in as well, voicing their concern and opposition to the project. Signed by various local chiefs, officials and a youth organization from the village of Fabe, the letters are an indicator of the peoples’ fear of losing their land, their only source of livelihood and the only possession to which they can lay claim.
False Claims of Conservation and Greenwashing
Herakles Farms is attempting to hide this land-grab behind a partnership with ‘All for Africa’, an NGO charity that claims to support development programs across Africa. The CEO of ‘All for Africa,’ however, is Bruce Wrobel, the former CEO of Herakles Farms. The NGO, which will control a portion of the plantation to support its programs, claims that the oil palm trees it will plant are part of a climate mitigation scheme. This is not supported by scientific fact.
Palm oil plantations store less than one tenth of the carbon than is stored in an intact rainforest. The proposed palm oil plantation will inevitably mean increased carbon dioxide emissions. If the oil palms were planted over a strip mall, the plan might have merit, but the reality is that a mostly untouched forest will be cut down to plant oil palm. This is not conservation. It is ruthless exploitation masquerading as conservation.
Misrepresenting the Value of the Forest
To justify its development, the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment submitted by Herakles Farms to the Cameroonian government describes the concession area as “secondary and degraded forest” due to previous logging. In an open letter written by 11 concerned scientists, they offer an opposing evaluation of the area. A significant portion of the region has never seen logging, they argue, and almost three-fourths of the concession has at least 70 percent of its natural tree cover, a proportion approximately equal to the renowned Korup National Park. This evaluation is obviously quite different from the description of the area as “secondary and degraded.” As to the source of the inaccurate assessment, the scientists point to the faulty sampling techniques used by Herakles to assess the area. Only 0.003 percent of the concession was surveyed, and only over the short period of 22 days during the rainy season, when spotting animals is most difficult. The important aspect to understand here is that Herakles Farms is attempting to hide the ecological value of the region, in an attempt to dispel any misgivings about the plantation.
Violation of Cameroonian law
The company submitted its Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) on June 15, 2011, and released a statement on September 14, 2011, announcing the beginning of the plantation’s development. Prior to submitting its ESIA, however, Herakles Farms was already clearing three different sections of forest between January and June 2011 in order to begin developing oil palm nurseries. Not only is this a different version of events than publicly announced, but it is also a violation of Cameroonian law, which requires the ESIA to be submitted before work begins. Two Cameroonian courts have also ordered Herakles Farms to halt its development process after local conservation groups won suits against them, but Herakles Farms has largely ignored these injunctions and continued their operations. According to an Oakland Institute analysis of the second decision, given on February 27, 2012 by the High Court of Ndian Judicial Division, SGSOC is prohibited from continuing development until:
- A proper environmental impact assessment [is] conducted to evaluate the impact of the project on the natural and human environment and the company establish all measures to avert them;
- The company compensates those directly affected (farms and village settlements);
- The company compensates those whose ancestral lands are impacted;
- The company reaches a clear understanding with the indigenous peoples by way of a Memorandum of Understanding for the project.
To date, none of these actions have been taken by Herakles Farms.
Violation of RSPO Sustainability Guidelines
Bruce Wrobel, the former CEO of Herakles Farms, says in Herakles Farm’s September 2011 press release that the company will be “safeguarding the incredible biodiversity of this region” by living up to the highest environmental standards and abiding by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) guidelines. The RSPO is a global non-profit that connects stakeholders in the palm oil industry through unified standards for sustainable palm oil development. To obtain membership in the RSPO, and thus be certified as sustainable by the organization, companies must conform to the RSPO sustainability guidelines. This includes a High Conservation Value Forest (HCVF) assessment that companies must conduct and submit to the RSPO before beginning operations. Not surprisingly, Herakles Farms began clearing forest prior to a HCVF assessment, and is therefore also in violation of RSPO guidelines.
SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund, a German NGO working in Cameroon, noted that SGSOC approached a reputable British organization in July 2010 to contract a HCVF assessment for the concession. The organization, Proforest, refused, “on the grounds that the maps provided by Herakles showed that the proposed development was essentially located in primary forest and part of the wider forest landscape of Korup National Park.” Additionally, Proforest informed Herakles Farms that, “the oil palm development would not comply with several principals of the RSPO.”
On August 24, 2012, Herakles Farms withdrew from the RSPO due to the criticism it was receiving over its faulty ESIA and HCVF assessment. The criticisms were delivered to the RSPO, which is obliged to consider them before granting sustainability certification to the company. In a publicly available letter to the RSPO Herakles Farms said the delays were “preventing the company from moving forward during a critical and time-sensitive period…” Consequently, Herakles Farms is no longer bound by any environmentally sustainable guidelines except their own sustainability standards. This is alarming, given their poor environmental assessments.
Why here?
The vulnerability of the region and its ecological importance in the wider rainforest landscape raises an important question: why are Herakles Farms and SGSOC putting a plantation here? In Cameroon there are more than two billion hectares of land that, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI), are “in some sense degraded, open for improved use [and] improved productivity, according to [the] latest analysis”. None of this “degraded” land supports crucial ecological capacities, provides land and livelihood to thousands of people, or is the ancestral homeland of many indigenous groups. So why does Herakles Farm continue to develop its plantation in what is mostly virgin rainforest? Dr. Nigel Sizer, director of WRI’s Global Forests Initiative, met with Herakles Farms to discuss the many concerns that have arisen over its development in the region. “Given the versatility of oil palm and so much degraded, deforested land across the tropics, surely there are better places to make this kind of investment,” Sizer said. Despite these arguments, Herakles Farms is determined to proceed, ignoring many signals from villagers, conservation groups, and scientists, to slow down or halt the plantation.
