Stop the palm oil industry’s assault on the Amazon
▻https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/mailalert/933/stop-the-palm-oil-industry-s-assault-on-the-amazon#more
In 2000, the Peruvian government declared oil palm plantations in the Amazon region to be in the national interest. Melka’s plantation companies are said to have already purchased 60,000 hectares of primary rainforest from the government in the Loreto region alone and requested a concession to clear more than 100,000 hectares of virgin forest in Loreto and in the neighboring region of Ucayali.
The responsible politicians and officials now claim to have been unaware of the deforestation by Melka’s plantation companies. Since Peru prohibits the clear-cutting of primary forest for oil palm plantations, the companies first clear the land without a permit and then offer to reforest it with oil palms.
In recent months (...) life in Peru’s Amazonian lowlands has been marked by fear and turmoil. Foreign speculators have begun with large-scale clear-cutting – initially in secret. Promises, threats and blackmail have prompted farmers to sell their rainforest plots to the plantation companies at well below their value.
#huile_de_palme #Amazonie #Perou #deforestation #surveillance #satellites