Project Update

fpp STORYMAP: Illegal land grabs, deforestation and the corporate actors behind them.

august 2021

Check out an innovative storymap that Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) recently published, as part of the work that they, Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL), and the Federation of Native Communities of Ucayali (FECONAU) have been doing with the Shipibo-Konibo community of Santa Clara de Uchunya in Peru to defend their territories from invasion by palm oil plantations.  The storymap uses satellite imagery to show, over time, the deforestation of the land that the community has traditionally owned and occupied.  It also connects the dots to the corporations and investors in New York, Bermuda and elsewhere that have caused or contributed to the destruction in the Peruvian Amazon.  Despite the community's attempts to put an end to the palm oil operations -- using a variety of strategies from national legal action to complaints at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the companies still operate with impunity.  

FPP has also published a related investigation that links palm oil produced on Santa Clara de Uchunya territory with the Dutch agricultural commodity trader, Louis Dreyfus Company.  The community has recently issued a public statement, rejecting the presence of palm oil company, Ocho Sur, on its lands.  

Since 2018, the SAGE Fund has supported FPP, IDL and FECONAU to work with the Santa Clara de Uchunya communities to enforce an injunction halting large-scale illegal land grabs and deforestation of indigenous territories in the Peruvian Amazon while creating space for needed policy reform to defend indigenous land tenure and hold palm oil companies accountable through a complementary and powerful interlinking of judicial and non-judicial strategies. The project is part of a round of grants piloting enforcement strategies to ensure full implementation of landmark legal decisions in key corporate accountability cases: strengthening protection for affected communities, ensuring court-ordered remedy and building accountability for economic actors.