Documents and Downloads

Territories of Life - Facilitators Guide

This booklet is for community facilitators who are using the Territories of Life Video series. The booklet covers information about each video in the series as well as tips on hosting screenings, discussions and action planning sessions with communities.

• Territories of Life - Facilitators Guide (pdf - 6 MB)

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Oil Dependency and the Peruvian Amazon: How Oil Companies Have Exploited the Rainforest of Loreto

For more than 40 years, oil activity has brought destruction to the ecosystems and the indigenous people of four river basins, all major tributaries to the Amazon, which gives life to the biggest rainforest on Earth. The operator responsible for this human and environmental disaster, Pluspetrol Norte S.A., has evaded any responsibility. The company’s contract expires on August 29, 2015, but now a new oil lot, 192, has been created and put up for sale. Three big oil companies have shown an interest, including Pluspetrol Norte S.A, but the indigenous people of the River Tigre have stated they will not permit this operator to stay one day longer on their territories. Read their testimonies and more about the impact of oil exploitation in this report (Chaikuni Institute, 2015).

• Oil Dependency and the Peruvian Amazon (pdf - 3 MB)

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Exploitation and empty promises: Wilmar’s Nigerian landgrab

This document uses first-person testimonies, satellite maps, and Wilmar’s own filings with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to demonstrate that the company failed to gain the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of communities directly affected by its operations; failed to produce adequate Environmental and Social Impact Assessments; and failed to live up to promises of infrastructure development and benefit sharing, despite these promises being a primary incentive for local communities to allow the company to operate in Cross River State. (foei.org, 2015)

• Exploitation and empty promises: Wilmar’s Nigerian landgrab, (pdf - 3 MB)

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The Great Land Heist

Over recent years, a global land rush has resulted in a massive rise in the number of people in developing countries being evicted or denied access to their own land – sometimes in violent confrontation with the authorities – as big business moves in. . Offered little in the way of compensation or alternative livelihoods, millions are being forced into increased poverty, hunger and dispossession. (ActionAid, 2014)

• The Great Land Heist (pdf - 4 MB)

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The New Snake Oil? Violence, threats & false promises driving rapid palm oil expansion in Liberia

As Liberia emerges as a new frontier market for the world’s cheapest, most popular vegetable oil, The New Snake Oil details how state officials are said to be helping the palm oil company Golden Veroleum (GVL) harass communities into signing away their land and crush dissent. The report also documents the huge foreign investment, state-sanctioned violence, and regulatory black holes that are making this possible. Global Witness reveals how GVL (whose parent company is the Indonesian Golden Agri-Resources) accelerated its operations at the peak of Liberia’s 2014 Ebola outbreak. This report comes at a point when ten percent of Liberia has been designated for agricultural plantations, despite the lack of a legal framework to regulate how companies acquire contracts, operate and remain accountable for their activities (www.globalwitness.org, 2015).

• The New Snake Oil: Rapid Palm Oil Expansion in Liberia (pdf - 2 MB)

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West Papua Oil Palm Atlas

The West Papua Oil Palm Atlas portrays a frontier region's early encounters with a crop that has come to dominate the Sumatran and Bornean landscapes.

• The West Papua Oil Palm Atlas (pdf - 23 MB)

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Communities as Counterparties

An analysis of almost 73,000 concessions in eight tropical forested countries, more than 93% of these developments were found to involve land inhabited by Indigenous Peoples and local communities. This report, prepared by The Munden Project, highlights the alarming amount of land that governments have handed over to the private sector for mining, logging, agriculture, oil and gas, including 40% of all land in Peru and 30% in Indonesia. (RRI 2014)

• Communities as Counterparties - RRI (pdf - 782 KB)

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Planet palm oil

Expanding production of cheap palm oil comes at a high price. Destruction of rainforests, labour exploitation, and brutal land grabbing: these are just a few of the nasty consequences that come with today's oil palm plantations. With palm oil companies finding lands in Indonesia and Malaysia more difficult to acquire, attention is shifting to Africa. Over the past fifteen years, foreign companies have signed over 60 deals covering nearly 4 million hectares in central and western Africa for the development of oil palm plantations. The land grabs are already generating violent conflicts in several African countries. (GRAIN, 2014)

• Planet palm oil (pdf - 9 MB)

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