BANJARMASIN, Indonesia — In October 2023 in the Indigenous Dayak village of Bangkal, Indonesian police fired on farmers demonstrating against PT Hamparan Masawit Bangun Persada (HMBP), a palm oil plantation company owned by Indonesia’s BEST Group. “Without any trigger from the protesters, the security forces shot tear gas and bullets from firearms,” Bayu Herinata, director of the Central Kalimantan provincial chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), an NGO, told Mongabay at the time. The farmers in Bangkal, located in the Central Kalimantan district of Seruyan, had taken to the streets to press the firm to release 20% of its land concession to local farmers, as many plantations are required to do by law. The demonstrators maintained that the BEST Group subsidiary had neglected to fulfill its legal obligation to smallholders under a required profit-sharing scheme known as “plasma.” One person from Bangkal, named Gijik, was shot dead during the protest, Mongabay reported last year. Now, civil society researchers worry that such conflicts, which are numerous in Indonesia, could be papered over by a proposed change to the way the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the main global body certifying palm oil as responsibly produced, assesses supply chains for compliance. Normally, the RSPO certifies palm oil produced by a single company, which can then sell it for a premium. Under the new methodology, the RSPO would vet the environmental and social credentials of an entire jurisdiction, like a province or a district, treating it as a single…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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