RSPO Grievance - SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund

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Development was organized in 4th August 2011 to inform all BIMA tribes about theplantation. According to the former BIMA-Chairman Moli Ibeku 10 over 314 peopleattended this meeting and all Ndian tribes, journalists, national and international NGOswere present. However despite being invited SGSOC or any other official representativefrom the company was totally absent to this meeting. See the Attachment“SAVE_Meeting-Report.pdf” and “SAVE_Meeting-Report-Attachment.pdf” for detailsabout the meeting.Furthermore: The SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund never participated in any officialmeeting between villagers and SGSOC. This is a false claim!We have the minuted interviews from the public consultations for the ESIA at hand 11 . TheNGO consultations were held very far away in the Charlot Hotel in Buea in 27th ofSeptember 2010. A travel to such a far destination could only be afforded by very fewindividuals and therefore not many people(35) attended these meetings. The publicconsultations in Nguti 12 were disrupted by many people and chiefs who feel deceived.These participants raised attention that “During the months of October and November weare used to harvesting and eating fish. River Bakube has plenty of fish and if SGSOCinvades this area, it will dry the river and there will be no more fish.” (page 117) andasked questions like “I have farms of palm oil and cacao, what will SGSOC do about myfarmland?”(page 117). These and many more problems were not addressed or answered;instead the meeting was obviously closed by the discussion holder.The “socio-economic” study mentioned was conducted by the local NGO NatureCameroon (page 114). Nature Cameroon representative moan that the draft of the reportwas never send to any village and that SGSOC threats the draft-paper as full and completeversion. This shows that this “study” was far from being a consent study and far frombeing transparent and open to everybody. As for the ESIA's Surveys: In the official ESIAby H&B Consulting 13 it was noticed (page 4-121) that for their surveys they (1) traveledwith armed guards which obviously were meant to influence oppositional forces in thevillages, (2) several village chiefs didn't want to talk to the visitors and were somehowagainst the project, others weren't even invited or took notice that SGSOC was visiting inthese few hours, (3) that the surveys were hindered by logistical and time constraints(visited each village only few hours). Based on these surveys it is very hard to say thatevery local resident and all responsible decision makers were adequately informed.The Memorandi of Understanding (MoU) were signed with very few individuals and notall villages. Malle Adolf, a barrister active against this plantation from the very start waspresent in most of the earlier meetings. He reported 14 that these MoU 15 were not the result10 Report by Moli Ibeku of the enlarged Stake-Holder Meeting on the Implantation of large-scale Oil PalmPlantations in Mundemba and Toko sub divisions held on Thursday, 4th August 2011 at the MundembaCouncil Chambers11 Minuted Interviews from the public Consultations of SGSOCs ESIA –http://heraklesfarms.com/docs/Cameroon/ESIA/Final%20SGSOC%20ESIA%20Combined%20Annexes.pdfpage 109-11112 Minuted Interviews from the public Consultations of SGSOCs ESIA –http://heraklesfarms.com/docs/Cameroon/ESIA/Final%20SGSOC%20ESIA%20Combined%20Annexes.pdfpage 112-11713 http://heraklesfarms.com/docs/SGSOC-ESIA.pdf14 Report by Malle Adolf as a response to a Herakles article. Downloadable here: http://www.savewildlife.com/downloads/save_the_forest/Letter_Malle_Adolf.pdf15 http://cameroonveritas.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/sgsoc-memorandum-of-understanding/
of a comprehensive and open discussion with local people, but rather consist of signaturesof few handpicked individuals who don't speak for anybody. Furthermore no official ofSGSOC signed the documents which are required by Cameroon law.Whenever Herakles representatives were confronted 16 about the actual state of the ESIA'sthey appeased and told us that the ESIA will be finished soon and that they value anycomments and suggestions for improvement. Rather than telling us when the ESIA andHCV-Assessments are released they quietly submitted a short summarized version to theRSPO 17 and obviously hoped that the deadline for comments fades away before anybodynotice.The subsequent studies, such as RSPO should know, were only publishes as summary.The publication has been requested several times by us. We have got always theinformation, that we will be informed about the publication. On the 28th February 2012we get the information that Herakles wanted to check the status of the publication. Inreality the publication has long been published by Herakles and they hoped that SAVE isseen it after the deadline on the RSPO 15th March 2012. Then SAVE is having nopossibility to give an opinion. Herakles has consciously tried to betray and deceive gobehind the participants (Attatchment Herakles email).SGSOC Response 4:(1) The presented ESIA 18 is totally insufficient for a palm oil concession in thisproblematic location as only 0.003% of the area was surveyed for the ESIA. This wasconfirmed by many renowned scientists from Cameroon and abroad 19 20 . While it isnoteworthy that Herakles finally released all documents, this was definitely not the casewhen the first loggings were conducted. Additionally it was many times noted that theESIAs and the HCV assessments are very poor done. Whenever SAVE confrontedSGSOC with these allegations they just answered that additional studies will be conductedin the future 21 . But during this time more and more forest is cleared in the process ofplanting palm oil.SGSOC Response 5:Cameroon law → 100 ha before ESIAThe Court Cases haven't been dismissed; rather they also mentioned that SGSOC shouldstop the project as long as all documents aren't ready. We have information that the projectis still going as usual. (Attachment Malle Adolf )16 Personal Communication with SAVE17 http://www.rspo.org/sites/default/files/SGSOC-%20Summary%20Report%20of%20Planning%20%20Management%20SG%20Sustainable%20Oils%20Cameroon.pdf18 http://heraklesfarms.com/docs/SGSOC-ESIA.pdf19 Combined letter by concerned scientists: http://www.savewildlife.com/downloads/save_the_forest/scientists_letter_herakles_farms.pdf20 Letter from Thomas Struthsaker to SGSOC: http://www.savewildlife.com/downloads/save_the_forest/Response_to_SG_Sustainable_Oil.pdf21 Personal communication between Herakles and SAVE
Page 1 and 2: RSPO GrievanceSG Sustainable Oils C
Page 3 and 4: Generally:In their introduction the
Page 5: Response to Herakles bold comments:
Page 9 and 10: project and even confronted caterpi
Page 11 and 12: In the other hand, the report is re
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Page 15 and 16: Attachment 2:Blurry map taken from
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Page 38 and 39: 30 April 2012RESPONSE TO SGSOC RESP
Page 40 and 41: organizations from around the world
Page 42 and 43: Attachment 1: Location of FMU 11007
Page 44: on Sustainable Palm Oil. This lette

RSPO Grievance - SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund

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