“Dammed by Greenpeace” – my opening statement to the press at a conference held in the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club yesterday. Palm Oil companies are mowing down peatland forests in the Riau district of Sumatra. They are selling the good wood (a lot of maranti) and then plowing the profits back into the land with bulldozers digging drainage channels to soak away the bog. Then they are setting fire to it. And it burns. Peatland forest fires can only be extinguished by massive injection of water – it takes a monsoon to put out the fire. And all the time the smoke. Emmy, ED of Greenpeace South East Asia opened the press conference with a reminder about the haze. Every journalist head nodded in recognition, mine did too. I have transited the Malacca straits many times in the past 22 years. The haze is consuming.
Greenpeace has a forest defenders camp in Riau. That’s where the damming team operates from – damming the canals and re-flooding the peat. Everything is illegal. What Greenpeace does is illegal, what the oil company does is illegal. Duta Palma, one such company, has been burning peat forest where the peat is over eight meters deep (that is illegal – maximum depth is meant to be two). Duta Palma are cutting the trees, digging canals, setting fire… and then planting palm – for oil. For who?
Unilever, Nestle and Procter & Gamble are lapping it up, they can’t get enough. So pause 2 seconds before you spread your toast with KRAFT Philadelphia cream cheese or snap off a stick of kit-kat at your next break. The statistics are horrible and it is completely out of hand. There has to be a moratorium. No more destruction until we get manageable regulations.
Rainbow Warrior is in Singapore and she wants to tell the world what is happening. Please listen. We ARE running out of time.
