‘Journalist of the Year’ award for palm oil article

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A journalist from the UK’s Independent newspaper has won the Foreign Press Association’s prestigious ‘Journalist of the Year’ award for an article about the devastation of rainforests for palm oil.

Martin Hickman’s article, ‘The guilty secrets of palm oil’, quotes Matu, the headman of a Penan village in Borneo: ‘When the logging started in the Nineties, we thought we had a big problem. But when oil palm arrived [in 2005], logging was relegated to problem No 2. Our land and our forests have been taken by force.

‘Our fruit trees are gone, our hunting grounds are very limited, and the rivers are polluted, so the fish are dying. Before, there were lots of wild boar around here. Now, we only find one every two or three months. In the documents, all of our land has been given to the company.’

Another Penan is quoted in the article: ‘There were no discussions. The company just put up signs saying the government had given them permission to plant oil palm on our land.’

The Penan live in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo. They are desperately trying to stop logging, oil palm plantations and hydroelectric dams destroying the forests they depend on.

Palm oil is found in many foods, cosmetics and cleaning products, and is also being used as ‘biofuel’.

Following a complaint by Friends of the Earth, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority recently banned a magazine advert placed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. It ruled that the ad’s claims that Malaysian palm oil was ‘sustainable’ and contributed to ‘the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst rural populations’ were misleading and could not be substantiated.