Geen categorie Archieven - Sustainable Palm Oil Choice

A new study by Etifor and the University of Padua shows that oil palm cultivation can significantly reduce its environmental impact when embedded in controlled, traceable and sustainability-driven supply chains. The findings challenge the simplistic narrative of palm oil as the sole driver of deforestation, shifting the debate toward scientific evidence, innovation, certification and supply chain accountability.

Key Messages

Sustainable palm oil is no longer just a commodity: it is becoming one of the world’s most traceable, transparent and closely monitored supply chains.
The real challenge is not to demonize sustainable palm oil, but to accelerate supply chain transformation: more traceability, more accountability, more sustainability. That is the key message emerging from the Etifor and University of Padua study.
Deforestation risk linked to palm oil in Italian consumption is declining: the Etifor and University of Padua study points to a real shift. What matters are the trends in the data, not simplified narratives.

Global Deforestation is Slowing Down

Global deforestation is slowing down. And today, this is no longer just a hope, it is a data-driven trend.

According to the recent “Deforestation Made in Italy” study by Etifor and the University of Padua, the global annual rate of forest loss declined from 17.6 million hectares per year between 1990 and 2000 to 10.9 million hectares between 2015 and 2025.

Italy is also showing encouraging signs, with a progressive reduction in deforestation risk embedded in national consumption. This trend is further confirmed by a report from Global Forest Watch and the University of Maryland’s GLAD laboratory, which found that primary tropical rainforest loss declined by 36% in 2025 compared to the previous year.

Against this backdrop, the debate around sustainable palm oil is also evolving. For years, palm oil was portrayed as the “perfect villain” of globalization, shaped by alarmist campaigns, “palm oil-free” labels and the belief that removing a single ingredient could save tropical forests.

Yet behind this shift are years of investment, stronger public policies, greater supply chain traceability and growing pressure on governments and companies. Sustainability is no longer just about communication: it is increasingly becoming an industrial and competitive factor.

Sustainable Palm Oil: From Deforestation Villain to Supply Chain Transformation

This is where the Etifor study challenges one of the most established narratives of the past decade.

Palm oil is still widely perceived as a symbol of global deforestation. But the data tells a more nuanced story: the supply chain most criticized, monitored and regulated over the last twenty years is also becoming one of the fastest-transforming.

According to researchers from the University of Padua, the deforestation risk associated with sustainable palm oil consumption in Italy has shown “a marked decline over the years.” And this is the data point that changes the conversation.

Between 2005 and 2023, palm oil still represented the commodity with the highest embedded deforestation risk in Italian consumption, an estimated 201,800 hectares, equal to 34% of the total. But the key point is not the static snapshot: it is the direction of change. The trend is declining.

In other words, supply chains under pressure are reacting. Certifications, stronger traceability, tighter controls, investments and new international regulations are driving a tangible transformation across the sector.

The EUDR is Accelerating a Transformation Already Underway

The EUDR does not emerge in a regulatory vacuum: it is accelerating a transformation already underway across many global supply chains.

For years, major producing countries have been strengthening environmental standards, controls and traceability systems, driven by international pressure, ESG investments and the need to maintain access to Western markets.

And the most emblematic example is sustainable palm oil itself. The supply chain most demonized over the past twenty years is now also one of the most prepared to meet EUDR requirements, following more than a decade of scrutiny from NGOs, investors and international institutions.

The Etifor and University of Padua study highlights a key shift: more and more companies are treating deforestation risk as an industrial and strategic issue, adopting concrete tools to strengthen traceability, supply chain oversight and environmental policies.

Sustainability is no longer just a reputational lever. It is becoming economic infrastructure, a market requirement and a competitive advantage across global supply chains.

Beyond the Slogans: Sustainability Is Measured by Data

For years, the debate was trapped in slogans, “palm oil yes or no”, growth versus forests, economy versus environment. But today, the data tells a different story: the real challenge is not eliminating a commodity, but transforming supply chains.

That is the paradigm shift highlighted by the Etifor study: less ideology, more traceability, transparency and accountability. Sustainability is no longer just communication, it is becoming an industrial issue shaped by rules, innovation and measurable supply chain responsibility.

The data shows that agricultural production, economic growth and forest protection can evolve together. The challenge today is not stopping development, but making it sustainable.

(Reproduced with permission from Competere. Read the original article here, or in Italian here. Spanish version can be read here.)

A new roadmap for meaningful engagement in global food supply chains centers the voices, knowledge, and agency of those most affected—workers, farmers, and communities.

Across the world, people who plant, harvest, process, and live alongside our food systems carry knowledge companies will never find in audits or distant reports. Yet too often, those people remain unheard. Workers facing unsafe conditions, communities protecting land and water, women and migrant workers confronting daily discrimination. Their lived experience rarely makes it into the rooms where decisions are made.

Seven organizations came together to shift that reality. Primarily written by Oxfam and co-created together with AIM-Progress, amfori, Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), Ethical Trade Sweden, the Fair Labor Association (FLA), and the Food Network for Ethical Trade (FNET) , we developed Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement: Practical Guidance for Companies in the Agriculture and Food Manufacturing Sector, a practical tool to help companies engage stakeholders in ways that are safe, respectful, and enable them to genuinely influence the decisions that affect their lives. The guidance focuses on rightsholders including workers, smallholder farmers, communities, and their legitimate representatives. It was created through a consultative process that reflects the principles of stakeholder engagement it promotes, including dialogue with companies, civil society organizations, trade unions, and rightsholders. This process and collaboration itself signal something essential: meaningful engagement is not a solo effort. It requires dialogue, negotiation, and shared purpose.

The reality we must confront

Companies across agriculture and food manufacturing are under growing pressure to identify and address human rights and environmental risks. Many recognize the need for stronger engagement but struggle with how to do it meaningfully, particularly in complex, often opaque and multi-tiered supply chains. Evidence shows that rightsholders are rarely consulted in risk assessments and even less frequently involved in shaping solutions (WBA, Social Benchmark, January 2026). This means people facing the greatest risks remain the least likely to be heard.

Meanwhile, communities speak to the realities they face. As a member of the Barro Branco community in Jaqueira, Brazil told us:
“The company has no relationship with the community. The only relationship is conflict.”

When rightsholders’ voices are missing, companies miss critical signals and harms that could have been prevented continue unchecked.

Companies see this too. One representative captured the gap clearly:

“As a buyer we are 1–2 steps removed from the rightsholder. Understanding who can speak on their behalf, who is the right representative or channel, and making sure they can speak openly is key.”

This guidance was created to help bridge that divide between those who make decisions and those who experience their consequences.

Why meaningful stakeholder engagement is urgently needed

The agriculture and food sector is the world’s largest labor sector, but also one of the most unequal and high‑risk. And yet, meaningful engagement with workers and communities remains rare. Based on rightsholder testimony, Oxfam’s field experience, and global evidence, five realities make MSE indispensable:

Hidden risks in long, often opaque and high‑risk supply chains
Many impacts are invisible to audits or desk‑based assessments. Only direct, respectful engagement can reveal how risks actually show up in people’s lives.
Intersecting and compounding forms of inequalities among rightsholders
Women, migrant workers, Indigenous peoples, and children in smallholder households often experience multiple, intersecting and compounding forms of inequalities – including gender, age, migration status, ethnicity, race, income level, and disability. Without deliberate engagement, their concerns remain unheard — even when they make up most of the workforce.
Interlinked social and environmental harms
Low wages, unsafe conditions, heat stress, land conflicts, water scarcity, discrimination, and gender‑based violence compound each other. Understanding these dynamics requires listening to those directly affected.
Power imbalances silence voices
Concentrated buyer power and thin margins limit the ability of farmers, suppliers, and workers to speak up safely. MSE helps create trusted channels for honest dialogue.
Companies are struggling — and the consequences are visible
Many companies are still struggling to operationalize human rights due diligence social inclusion and living incomes. Without meaningful engagement, early warning signs are missed—and harms persist.

These realities shape why this guidance is needed: people closest to risk must be central to identifying, preventing, and remedying harm.

How does this guidance help companies conduct meaningful engagement?

The guidance is grounded in something simple but transformative: rightsholders must be able to shape the decisions that affect their lives. Not symbolically, not as an afterthought, but as cocreators of solutions. To support this, the guidance offers:

Clear actionable steps on who to engage, how to engage, and when across due diligence processes.
Practical tools and templates including stakeholders mapping approaches, engagement planning frameworks, and methods for collecting and using input safely
Real examples from agricultural and food manufacturing supply chains.
Guidance for implementation, designed for use by procurement, sustainability, and human rights team

Designed for real-world use, companies can integrate these tools directly into existing risk management and due diligence systems.

Why meaningful engagement changes outcomes

When rightsholders influence decisions, companies:

Identify risks earlier and more accurately
Prevent harm before it escalates
Strengthen human right due diligence processes
Build trust that makes supply chains more resilient, and grounded in reality.

This is not only a social imperative—it is a business one. Better engagement leads to better information, stronger decisions, and reduced exposure to operational, legal, and reputational risk.

For rightsholders, meaningful engagement is about recognition, agency and safety. It creates space for people to speak without fear, influence decisions, and claim a role in processes that have long excluded them.

This guidance aims to support a shift away from extractive consultation and towards engagement that redistributes voice, influence, and dignity.

A collective invitation

This is not a one-size-fits-all model. It is a roadmap for companies ready to engage differently, ready to center workers and communities, listen deeply, and build decisions with those most affected.

We invite companies and investors

Download and use the guidance
Adapt it to your context and operations
Integrate it into due diligence and risk management processes
Share feedback on the guidance here

Because engagement should not be symbolic. It should be transformative.

[Reprinted with permission from Oxfam America.]

A new scientific paper published in Media Konservasi finds that consumer boycotts of palm oil have not played a significant role in reducing deforestation in Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer. Instead, recent declines in forest loss are linked to stricter land‑use regulation, policy enforcement and wider sustainability efforts, reinforcing the case for supporting sustainable palm oil rather than shunning the commodity altogether.

Indonesia’s primary forest loss significantly decreased after 2016

The study, “Exploring the Elephant in the Room: Do Oil Palm Boycotts Reduce Tropical Deforestation?”, reviews more than sixty academic publications alongside official statistics, satellite data and online trends for three high‑profile calls‑to‑action: ‘ban palm oil’, ‘boycott palm oil’ and ‘sustainable palm oil’, including the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil, #ProtectPongo and #SaveOrangutans. Its conclusion is clear: commodity boycotts have not significantly influenced Indonesia’s deforestation trajectory.

“Consumers deserve honest, science‑based guidance,” said Bart W van Assen, lead author, and advisor at Orangutan Land Trust. “This research confirms what many experts have been saying for years: boycotting palm oil is a blunt tool that does little to address deforestation, and can even shift demand to less‑efficient oils that need more land.”

Meridian Foods claimed palm oil equals deforestation to promote its products

Between 2003 and 2016, Indonesia’s annual forest loss fluctuated between about one and two million hectares, driven by a combination of large‑scale and smallholder agriculture, logging, mining, fires and other land‑use changes. Since 2016, multiple independent datasets show a marked reduction in deforestation, bringing losses to historic lows, though some recent upticks in 2022–2023 highlight the need for continued vigilance. The study notes that these shifts align with tighter permitting, moratoria on new concessions and other governance measures, not social‑media boycott campaigns.

Key findings:

• No significant link between boycott campaigns and deforestation trends: Despite decades of activism targeting tropical timber, paper and pulp and palm oil, there is little evidence that boycotts have driven meaningful reductions in forest loss.

• Sustainability narratives resonate more than boycotts: Google Trends analysis shows that searches for ‘sustainable palm oil’ dwarfed those for ‘ban palm oil’ and ‘boycott palm oil’ on the Web by more than fifteen‑fold over the 2018–2023 period.

• Complex drivers require holistic solutions: Major causes of deforestation – from agricultural expansion and weak law enforcement to poverty and demographic pressure – cannot be solved by consumer purchasing decisions alone.

• Commodity boycsotts can backfire: Previous research cited in the paper warns that blanket boycotts often fail to support sustainable resource management and can inadvertently increase pressures on forests.

“For companies and policy‑makers, the implication is straightforward,” Bart continued. “The most effective way to reduce deforestation is to invest in strong standards, transparent supply chains and jurisdictional initiatives – not to walk away from palm oil.”

Our recommedations:

The Sustainable Palm Oil Choice urges brands, retailers and public authorities to:
• Prioritise certified sustainable palm oil that meets credible, independently verified standards.

• Support smallholders and producing countries in meeting these standards, rather than penalising them through blanket exclusions.

• Champion accurate communication about deforestation data, avoiding oversimplified maps or imagery that misclassify agricultural land as intact forest.

The Sustainable Palm Oil Choice welcomes the new study as an important evidence base for European and global debates on due diligence, deforestation‑free supply chains and responsible sourcing of vegetable oils.

The full paper can be read here: Van Assen 2026 Exploring The Elephant In The Room Do Oil Palm Boycotts Reduce Tropical Deforestation

Indonesia has the largest area of oil palm plantations in the world — around 16 million hectares of industrial and smallholder plantations in 2024 — contributing 60% of global palm oil production. The rapid expansion of oil palm during the 1990s and early 2000s, however, has left a growing share of plantations past their productive prime. Today, around 2.4 million hectares of smallholder oil palm are older than 25 years. Based on the oil palm yield curve, replanting at 25 years maximizes long-run productivity at the landscape level. To accelerate replanting, the Indonesian government launched a subsidy program in 2016, most recently doubling it to 60 million rupiah (~$3,631) per hectare in 2024. However, as of 2026, only 384,000 hectares of smallholder plantations received the replanting subsidies.

Our new research, published in npj Sustainable Agriculture, examines why the subsidy has not accelerated smallholder replanting, and what barriers prevent farmers from accessing it. We evaluate the long-run economic impacts of different replanting strategies using scenario analysis. We found that smallholder farmers often delay replanting because it provides greater economic stability and comparable long-term returns in the absence of access to replanting subsidies and certified seedlings. While subsidies can improve long-term profitability (by 30% when replanting at age 25), the 7–8 year income recovery period remains a major deterrent. Without support, that gap stretches to 8–12 years. For a smallholder family with little savings, delayed replanting is not irrational — it is economic survival.

Beyond economics, several structural barriers prevent smallholders from accessing the subsidy. Many farmers lack formal land certificates, which are required for eligibility. The program also requires farmers to belong to a group collectively managing at least 50 hectares. In Riau province alone, 44% of smallholder plantations overlap with state forest zones — making legal land ownership, and therefore subsidy access, impossible without government reclassification of those lands.

Subsidies alone are therefore not enough. They must be paired with income support during the unproductive transition years — through mechanisms such as low-interest loans, mill partnerships, increased market access for intercropping products, or direct income assistance. Resolving the legal barriers around land tenure and streamlining the application process are equally important to unlock replanting across the millions of hectares of aging smallholder oil palm in Indonesia.

Zhao, J., Elmore, A.J., Lee, J.S.H., Numata, I., Zhang, X. and Cochrane, M.A., 2023. Replanting and yield increase strategies for alleviating the potential decline in palm oil production in Indonesia. Agricultural Systems, 210, p.103714.

Zhao, J., Cochrane, M.A., Lee, J.S.H., Zhang, X. and Chalil, D., 2026. Indonesia’s new replanting subsidy is insufficient to empower smallholder farmers to replant aging oil palms. npj Sustainable Agriculture, 4(1), p.32.

https://www.thejakartapost.com/adv-longform/2024/02/07/from-smallholder-to-global-contributorcultivating-prosperity-in-rural-indonesia.html

https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/792384

When people hear about palm oil, they often immediately think of orangutans, but the conversion of tropical rainforest to oil palm plantations affects many other iconic Southeast Asian species whose stories are less well known to both the general public and scientists. One of these ‘forgotten’ species is the sun bear (Helarctos malayanus). Like all bear species, sun bears need large patches of intact habitat to thrive, so the conversion of primary rainforest to oil palm plantations is a major conservation issue for this species. Sun bears may enter oil palm plantations to search for food, where they are vulnerable to snaring and poaching. Yet despite these risks, we still don’t have a range-wide understanding of how this species will respond to the expansion of oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia.

In a recent study published in the journal Integrative Conservation, my colleagues in the Ecological Cascades Lab at the University of Queensland and I examined multiscale habitat association of the sun bear across its range. We compiled camera trap detections of sun bears from both new and previously published studies and assessed how the number of detections changed in relation to habitat covariates such as forest size, human population, and extent of oil palm plantations. We found that sun bears were most regularly detected in large forests, but also in forests that neighbour humans and their infrastructure. These findings support earlier studies that found that sun bears require large intact forests, but also suggest that they are perhaps more resilient than previously realised and can persist in somewhat degraded habitat. A possible explanation for this adaptability is the sun bear’s dietary flexibility and its ability to shift to an insectivorous diet in degraded habitat.

In regards to oil palm, we found that sun bear abundance decreased as the extent of oil palm in a landscape increased. Although sun bears may gain some benefit from feeding in oil palm plantations, they still require intact forest to retreat to, and the benefits of foraging in plantations are likely outweighed by the risks of snaring and poaching. Therefore, for sun bears and sustainable palm oil plantations to coexist in Southeast Asia it is essential that as much intact forest is conserved as possible and that semi-degraded areas are also protected, as these regions can still have conservation value for sun bears. We also recommend enforcement of poaching regulations. Finally, we recommend future studies on sun bears focus on their diet, to assess both their use of oil palm plantations for foraging and the hypothesis that dietary flexibility is the key to their adaptability. The sun bear’s plight may not be as visible as that of the orangutan, but with protection of key habitat and further research we can ensure the continued existence of this species and many others into the future.

Find out more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/inc3.70071

Designing effective policy responses to tropical deforestation requires an understanding of the reasons behind it, commonly called deforestation drivers. In the tropics, over 90% of deforestation is driven by agriculture [1], but the specific commodities differ substantially across regions. For example, palm oil has been the most prominent deforestation driver in Indonesia, while it is pasture in Brazil and small scale, shifting agriculture in Central Africa [1,2]. Drivers also change in time because of new policies, economic shifts or changes in agricultural practices. Therefore, to enable targeted measures, it is necessary to attribute each new deforestation event to a specific driver.

In a recent study published in ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Pišl et al. [3] propose a new approach to map deforestation drivers across the tropics. They train a deep learning model to recognize eleven land use classes, including the seven forest-risk commodities: cattle, oil palm, soy, rubber, cocoa, coffee, and timber. The model uses time series of satellite images as primary input, complemented by two additional data modalities: geographic coordinates and national statistics on the production of forest-risk commodities. Deforestation drivers are strongly clustered in space, and therefore providing the model a notion of location and regional trends can improve its performance in cases where satellite imagery alone is not enough.

Figure caption: The deep learning model architecture proposed in the study

When evaluated on a held-out dataset sampled across the tropics, the model achieves 87% accuracy across all classes, with the additional modalities bringing a 10% improvement. An analysis of the model’s behaviour shows that it uses the additional modalities to recognize classes strongly associated with spatial patterns, such as palm oil or rubber. To recognize drivers that can be found anywhere in the tropics, such as mining, the model mostly relies on the satellite imagery. The dataset used to train the model, compiled from free and public sources, is made available online [4].

The study provides an automatic, scalable and repeatable method to attribute deforestation to specific drivers. Independent of national governments and other stakeholders, it can support a wide range of use cases with objective data. For example, it can be used to detect areas where forest-risk commodities are produced on recently deforested land, indicating non-compliance with regulations such as the EU Deforestation Regulation. It can also improve the quantification of carbon emissions from deforestation, which depend on the specific land use that follows deforestation [5]. Overall, it demonstrates how modern machine learning can support evidence-based actions to conserve and protect tropical forests.

[1] Pendrill, Florence, et al. “Disentangling the numbers behind agriculture-driven tropical deforestation.” Science 377.6611 (2022): eabm9267.

[2] Singh, Chandrakant, and U. Martin Persson. “Global patterns of commodity-driven deforestation and associated carbon emissions.” (2024).

[3] Pišl, Jan, et al. “Mapping land uses following tropical deforestation with location-aware deep learning.” ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 232 (2026): 578-593.

[4] Pišl, Jan, et al. “Post-deforestation Land Use in the Tropics (PLUTo).” Version 2, Zenodo, 2025, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17831353.

[5] Don, Axel, Jens Schumacher, and Annette Freibauer. “Impact of tropical land‐use change on soil organic carbon stocks–a meta‐analysis.” Global Change Biology 17.4 (2011): 1658-1670.

A difficult task – balancing food production and biodiversity

It is well understood that the oil palm industry has had profound ecological, social and economic impacts across the world. Land clearing has reduced wildlife habitats, led to biodiversity loss, and contributed to outbreaks of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. At the same time, the oil palm industry is integral for supporting local farmer’s livelihoods and is crucial to the economy of many countries.

Oil palm trees are highly versatile, producing both palm oil from the fruit and palm kernel oil for uses ranging from food and biodiesel to cosmetics and industrial products, making oil palm the most land-efficient oil crop. Balancing food production and biodiversity conservation requires managing agricultural landscapes to serve both goals.

To support this, a team of researchers from UniSC in Australia, and Wild Asia, a Malaysian-based not-for-profit, examined how animal distribution in an oil palm plantation is influenced by both habitat features on the ground, and the surrounding landscape.

Our research

To understand how agricultural production can be sustained while promoting biodiversity, we studied animal distributions across an active oil palm plantation in Johor, Malaysia, a region projected to see continued agricultural growth. We used acoustic recorders called Audiomoths (attached to the tree in the picture below) to record the vocalising species (e.g. frogs, toads, birds, mammals) on the plantation during dawn and dusk.

We analysed over 280 hours of recordings from 35 blocks across the planation, detecting 75 birds, 12 amphibians (frogs and toads), and two mammals, including several threatened species. We then combined this acoustic data with information on the surrounding landscape, on-the-ground habitat features, and oil palm yields.

We found that species richness (the number of species in a location) was highest in plantation blocks with taller trees, lower levels of frond stacking (stacking dead palm fronds under trees as a natural fertiliser), and at blocks closer to water sources and disturbed forests. Disturbed forests included abandoned plantations that had been passively restored, or areas of natural land altered by human activity, such as selective logging. Our results suggested that over the duration of this study, birds, including fruit eating birds, did not have an observable impact on yield.

Recommendations for planation managers

Based on our findings, here are key recommendations for oil palm plantations that aim to enhance the biodiversity of amphibian, bird and mammal species.

Promote connectivity with disturbed or restored forests. Due to the nature of oil palm farming, blocks may be left abandoned due to them having low yields and being difficult to maintain. Plantations should endeavour to restore these abandoned blocks by planting a range of native tree species with varied heights and canopy cover to help enhance biodiversity.
Conserve tall remnant trees and plant additional tall trees.Since it is not realistic to increase the height of the oil palm trees themselves, conserving existing tall trees and introducing native tall trees can provide valuable habitat. Additionally, as trees take years to grow tall, platforms or “tree islands” (as discussed by Tohiran et al., 2024) can also be installed.
Protect water bodies. Rivers, swamps, ponds, and drainage trenches are vital for many species. Keeping these areas clean and free from rubbish, sediment, fertiliser, and pesticide runoff helps reduce harm to non-target species, maintain biodiversity, and preserve ecosystem function.
Limit frond stacking. Keeping frond stacking to under 50% of the ground cover within blocks ensures open areas remain, supporting both agricultural and environmental benefits.

More information:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10531-026-03259-2

[Feature Image by Wild Asia team member Khoo M. S. (konexer.org/khooms)]

When we think about colonialism, we often imagine it as a closed chapter—something that ended in 1945. But in Indonesia’s countryside, especially in areas dominated by palm oil plantations, colonial rule is not a distant memory. It is embedded in the law itself.

This became clear to me while researching land conflicts between palm oil companies and rural communities across Indonesia. As I tried to show in the documentary Colonial Debris, what appear to be contemporary disputes over development and investment turn out to be something deeper: the afterlife of a colonial legal system designed not to protect citizens, but to control them and extract their resources.

That insight matters well beyond academia. It helps explain why palm oil expansion causes so many conflicts why they so often turn violent, and why they are so difficult to resolve.

Law built for extraction

Dutch colonial law in Indonesia was never intended to serve the indigenous population. It was designed to secure land, labor, and natural resources for colonial profit while suppressing resistance. Courts, police, and administrative rules worked together to ensure plantations could operate cheaply and smoothly—even if this meant dispossessing communities or criminalizing protest.

One colonial provision is especially important: the domain declaration of 1870. It stated that all land not held under proven ownership belonged to the state. In practice, this erased customary land rights and allowed the colonial government to hand vast areas to plantation companies at minimal cost. Tobacco, sugar, tea, and later palm oil plantations expanded rapidly under this legal cover.

Indonesia gained independence, but it never fully dismantled this legal architecture. Instead, much of it was inherited and repurposed in the postcolonial era.

Palm oil conflicts everywhere

Today, Indonesia is the world’s largest palm oil producer. Alongside that growth has come a staggering number of land conflicts. NGOs have documented thousands of disputes between companies and communities over the past decade alone. These conflicts are not marginal or exceptional—they are structural.

In a collaborative research project and our book Rightless Resistance, my colleagues and I documented 150 palm oil conflicts across four provinces: Riau, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, and West Sumatra. The patterns were strikingly similar everywhere.

Most conflicts began with land acquisition. Communities reported losing land without meaningful consent or fair compensation. Others revolved around broken promises of profit-sharing schemes, known as plasma, which are supposed to give communities a stake in plantations built on their land. On paper these schemes appear generous; in practice they often produce tiny, opaque payouts after years of waiting.

What communities experienced was not simply bad corporate behavior. It was legal vulnerability—what we came to describe as rightlessness. People technically had rights, but those rights were so weak, poorly enforced, and easily bypassed that they offered little real protection.

Colonial debris in modern law

This rightlessness has deep historical roots. Indonesia’s constitution and land laws formally recognize citizens’ rights, but they also give the state sweeping control over land. Today, around 63 percent of Indonesia’s territory is classified as state forest estate. Much of this land is not forest in any ecological sense; it is an administrative category that prevents private or communal ownership.

The consequence is paradoxical. Rural Indonesians struggle to obtain legal titles to land they have lived on for generations, while companies can gain control over that same land through state-issued concessions. Once a concession is granted, companies acquire strong legal backing—even if communities are displaced in the process.

This system closely mirrors the colonial logic of the domain declaration. It is colonial debris: an old legal idea that continues to structure present-day injustice.

Why conflicts rarely end well

One might expect courts, mediation, or government intervention to resolve these disputes. In practice, they rarely do. In our study, nearly 70 percent of conflicts ended with communities achieving little or nothing. Many dragged on for a decade or more. Even when companies violated regulations, sanctions were rare, while arrests of protesters were common.

A key reason is collusion between business and state authorities. Palm oil companies are deeply entangled with political elites. Politicians sit on company boards, own plantations, or rely on industry funding for election campaigns. At the local level, companies routinely provide informal payments to officials, police, and military units.

This collusion has concrete effects. Authorities tend to side with companies during conflicts. Police are deployed to suppress protests, and community leaders are criminalized—sometimes on flimsy or fabricated charges. Here again, the colonial past matters. Laws used today to criminalize plantation protests can be traced back to colonial-era regulations designed to discipline plantation laborers. The logic is unchanged: disrupting plantation operations is treated as a crime, while dispossession is treated as development.

A colonial mindset that endures

Colonial legacies are not only legal; they are also ideological. During our fieldwork, officials often justified siding with companies by portraying villagers as backward or unproductive, while companies were framed as engines of development.

This narrative echoes a colonial mindset: the idea that “natives” are lazy and need outside capital to make land productive. It is a myth—and a damaging one. Research increasingly shows that smallholder agriculture can generate broader local benefits than large plantations, whose profits often flow out of the region. Yet the myth persists because it serves powerful interests, legitimizing dispossession and the concentration of land in elite hands.

Decolonization unfinished

Indonesia recently replaced its colonial-era criminal code with a new KUHP, a move presented as legal decolonization. But replacing old laws is not enough. Colonialism survives not only in statutes, but in how law is structured, interpreted, and enforced. As long as the state maintains outsized control over land, treats protest as a threat, and aligns itself with corporate interests over citizen rights, colonial patterns will endure.

The uncomfortable truth is that Indonesia’s political and economic elites benefit from these arrangements. Like their colonial predecessors, they profit from controlling land and allocating concessions. That is why reform has been slow.

Land conflicts are not just local disputes; they are symptoms of a deeper problem in Indonesia’s democracy and legal system. A state that cannot protect its citizens’ land rights, but readily protecting corporate claims, undermines its own legitimacy.

Decolonizing law means confronting this history honestly. It requires dismantling legal doctrines that prioritize extraction over justice, reforming land governance, and abandoning colonial assumptions about who deserves rights and who does not. Academics, journalists, and civil society all have a role to play in making these legacies visible, because political will rarely emerges on its own—especially when powerful actors benefit from the status quo.

Colonialism did not end in Indonesia when the Dutch left. It lingered in laws, institutions, and ideas. Until those are addressed, independence remains incomplete.

Prof. Dr. Ward Berenschot is professor of Political Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Together with Watchdoc he produced a documentary on palm oil conflicts, which can be watched on Youtube. In Indonesian: Tanah Moyangku

The book Rightless Resistance: Postcolonial Citizenship, Palm Oil, and Land Grabs in Indonesia will be published by Cornell University Press in May 2026.

The world is facing a biodiversity crisis, and we can no longer afford to invest in ineffective conservation strategies.

Between 1999 and 2019, approximately USD 1 billion was invested in orangutan conservation. One might expect that their remaining distribution, population size, and trends would now be well understood.

Surprisingly, major knowledge gaps persist. Orangutans are inherently difficult to count: their densities are low, making direct surveys logistically challenging, and indirect methods, such as nest counts, often yield wide confidence intervals.

Optimising conservation requires a lot of data, yet such data are difficult to obtain using traditional, time-bound biodiversity monitoring approaches. Although widely used, these conventional approaches cannot deliver real-time metrics — a critical limitation when wildlife populations and their threats are changing rapidly.

KehatiKu: A Community-Driven Model for Outcome-based Conservation

Borneo Futures’ citizen science programme, KehatiKu, offers an alternative by working with the communities who live alongside orangutans and other wildlife. In Indonesian Borneo, Borneo Futures is among the first to generate near real-time updates on wildlife status in tropical forests, a necessity for outcome-based conservation.

Traditional biodiversity monitoring is often expert-driven and slow to respond to ecological change. By engaging people who encounter wildlife in their daily lives, continuous population data can be generated by those who know the environment best, while simultaneously creating direct financial incentives for conservation.

Through the KehatiKu programme, Borneo Futures collaborates with local communities who receive payments for verified wildlife observations. This creates a positive feedback loop: individuals receive immediate rewards for documenting wildlife, strengthening incentives to protect rather than exploit the rainforest, while contributing to an expanding dataset that supports evidence-based investment and adaptive management.

Real-Time Data for Adaptive Conservation

Between April and October 2025, nearly 500 community members from four remote villages submitted more than 70,000 verified wildlife observations. This dataset enables statistically robust estimates of wildlife occupancy. Occupancy is the likelihood of a species occurring in a particular site.

The programme’s wildlife index integrates occupancy data for eight species, weighted by IUCN Red List status, CITES listings, Indonesian legal protection, and species range. Together, these metrics provide a transparent and actionable snapshot of conservation status designed to guide adaptive management and targeted investment.

Opportunistic wildlife encounters are recorded through a mobile phone application and feed into a growing database of occupancy metrics. Within fewer than eight months of programme implementation, sufficient data had been collected to support statistical occupancy analyses.

Borneo Futures has now released the first wildlife index from the KehatiKu programme — a milestone for outcome-based conservation in tropical forests.

Recent analysis estimates mean orangutan occupancy at 0.42 (SE = 0.05) across 522 1 × 1 km grid cells. This estimate is based on 129 confirmed orangutan sightings, alongside 12,858 observations of other wildlife used to generate non-detections. Clear relationships are observed between orangutan occupancy, forest proximity, and elevation. Some drivers are likely ecological, while others reflect historical pressures.

In collaboration with partner organisations, Wildlife Futures and The Arcus Foundation, Borneo Futures aims to stabilise and ultimately increase orangutan populations — a long-term effort given the species’ slow reproductive rate.

Achieving this depends on strong support from local communities, who increasingly recognise orangutans as a valuable asset worth protecting and are empowered to reject developments that convert orangutan habitat.

[The images in this article were all taken by KehatiKu citizen scientists.]

Birth of the Rimba

Sometime during 2019, I was listening to the radio. I have no idea what the program was or who the speakers were, but there was a feature about deforestation and the Dr Seuss book, The Lorax, was referenced.

I had never read it, but it prompted me to buy a copy.

As I read it, I realised that its strong message also resonated with the destruction of rainforests because of palm oil. Of course, rainforests are destroyed for other things as well, but it was palm oil I was focussing on, in helping Newquay Zoo to become a Sustainable Palm Oil Community; following in the footsteps of Chester Zoo.

The easy rhymes of The Lorax and its lyrical timbre lend itself well to children as well as adults and it gave me food for thought.

Using it as my inspiration, I wove a story around an elderly female orangutan becoming the spiritual guardian of the rainforest – a mystical protective being that teaches, advises and cares.

Michelle Desilets of Orangutan Land Trust was also a source of inspiration, helping to not only name The Rimba, but also advising on content , as well as helping with the editing and Mark Harrison from Borneo Nature Foundation told me about a wonderful artist and orangutan researcher, Emma Lokuciejewski. After a couple of phone calls, she was in and the beautiful artwork of The Rimba was created.

Neither of us wanted any profits from the book, determined that any proceeds should go to orangutan conservation, however getting it published proved difficult and for a long while the Rimba stayed on the back burner.

Fast forward to 2025 and a determined Emma decided that we were going to self publish. Thanks to her, we now have ‘The Rimba’ published. Sir David Attenborough has a copy and the book is already beginning to raise funds for orangutans.

Several people have said they want to use it to teach their children more – so the message about sustainable palm oil is spreading. Barnaby Patchett – One Nine Nine – kindly reviewed the book and wrote: “ The very existence of the book, reflects the changing nature of the palm oil conversation – I simply can’t imagine something like this being released 5 years ago”.

He’s right. In 2018 when Greenpeace showed their Ran Tan advert, it was all about the devastation palm oil caused; the retail store, Iceland, vowed to remove all palm oil from its products and, as a consumer, it made me want to avoid it all together too. Iceland was unable to keep its pledge and after a lot of research I realised that a boycott was not only a knee-jerk reaction, it was a damaging one too. Palm oil is not a bad oil, but the way it is grown and produced can be. It is a high yielding oil, far better than many other oils that if grown as an alternative, would cause more deforestation, not less.

Consumers play an important part in helping to drive change; and this is the underlying message of ‘The Rimba.” By choosing sustainable palm oil and making informed choices, we are showing that the solution is not to boycott, but simply to use wisely, ask questions and choose better. It is the most effective way of protecting rainforests, wildlife and livelihoods.

Find out more about The Rimba, download free educational materials and purchase the book HERE.

100% of profits support orangutan conservation.

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