Herakles Farms palm oil plantation in Cameroon has found itself on unsteady terms with the government of Cameroon, as they were temporarily ordered to suspend work on their plantation over the past two months.
On June 6th, The Minister of Forestry and Wildlife authorized the American agro industrial company Herakles Farms to resume tree felling, after Philipe Ngolle Ngwesse, had ordered a suspension of all work in late April. The Minister had ordered the company to stop cutting down trees at its SG-SOC project site in Talangaye, Nguti subdivision in the South West Region. The suspension was ordered after the Minister said that Herakles had failed to obtain two necessary permits, including a decree signed by the president to allow for a concession of such large scale.
According to Greenpeace, "There was dancing in the streets of Mundemba and Fabe when the news came two weeks ago that the Cameroonian government had suspended Herakles Farms’ forest clearing operations. Communities in this region of South West Cameroon, who had feared that they would lose their lands and their livelihoods to Herakles’ industrial palm oil plantation, now believed that their forest had been saved.... By enforcing the suspension, the Cameroonian government had shown that it was putting the interests of its own people above those of foreign companies. By reversing it, the communities who were dancing with joy only two weeks ago now feel frustrated and abandoned."
In an interview with the Cameroon Journal, Jean Robert Onana, head of the Communication unit at the forestry and wildlife ministry said the administrators of Herakles Farms were asked to strictly respect the entire governing land lease rules. He said that the American firm has been asked to reduce the area of land sought from 73,000 hectares to 20,000. It also has to work with an inter-ministerial committee put in place to ensure that the company respects all land legislation of the country. The South West regional delegate for the ministry has been tasked to follow up the activities of Herakles Farms in the region
In February, the Minister released a report resulting from a fact-finding mission that established that Herakles first 2,500 hectare plantation within the Talangaye, Ekita, Ebanga and Manyamen localities, which condemned the fact that 600 hectares of this block falls outside of Herakles proposed concession limit covered by their Environmental Social Impact Assessment (ESIA). The report also indicated that the concession overlaps into the traditional lands of neighboring villages of Badun and New Konye which are against the SG-SOC project were never consulted.
Meanwhile, incriminating evidence against Herkales was recently surfaced by our partner organization Oakland Institute, through the release of private company communications by employees at Herakles Farms, indicating company's false representations of the profitability in reports to its investors. Read the full report, "Herakles Exposed".
For more about Herkales' palm oil plantation and its violations of Indigenous People's rights, see our campaign at www.cs.org/take-action/cameroon
