Greenpeace featured Burger King in our Pulping the Planet report and sent them a copy, and then we gave Burger King some time to respond.  After hearing nothing from the fast-food-giant, Frontline staff and members of the Greenpeace Organizing Term (GOT) dressed up in orangutan suits (in 100 degree heat) and visited Burger King locations across the country, pointing out the palm oil in food products, sent thousands of phone calls to corporate headquarters, and blasted Burger King’s Facebook page with comments.  The formidable momentum of the Paradise campaign and careful research combined with their persistence “flame-broiled” the King. 

This is a great example of public pressure brought to bear on a company with significant power over the world markets.  Sinar Mas can continue to deny their culpability in the disaster facing Indonesia’s forests.  They are after all a relatively obscure company on the other side of the world.  Sinar Mas customers with consumer-facing brands (like Burger King) are much more susceptible to pressure.

From a larger campaign perspective, this is a precedent-setting win, because Sinar Mas staked a lot on a recent “audit” to disprove claims made in a Greenpeace crime-file earlier this year.  While almost no one was fooled by their exercise in greenwash, Burger King is the first company to actually drop contracts with Sinar Mas since the audit was released.  Even better, Burger King cited the audit in their cancellation announcement.  This sends a strong message to Sinar Mas.

Burger King’s decision to stop doing business with Sinar Mas may be a move to protect their brand, or it could be a genuine expression of their concern for Earth’s fragile ecosystems.  It’s nice to imagine that their actions are driven by good intentions, but what really matters is that there is a little less demand out there for palm oil that replaces orangutan habitat. 

 This victory also sets a tone for future conversations with other food chains: “If Burger King can do it, why can’t you?”  As for those future conversations, they are likely to start soon, according to Greenpeace:

In the near term, public campaign activities will be focused on intensified Pizza Hut tactics.  Behind the scenes, negotiations with a raft of important corporate players will continue, buoyed by the Burger King win.

I spoke with her on the phone today. She mentioned that one of the highlights of her summer was teaching an orangutan workshop at a palm-oil concession. The Indonesian workers were instructed on how to handle orangutans living in and around the palm oil plantation. They also drove three hours to the Orangutan Care Center, where they got to meet baby orangutans, many of whom lost their mothers to the palm oil industry.

This particular palm oil concession lies directly on the disputed eastern border of Tanjung Puting National Park. Dr. Galdikas plans to return in six months to teach another class.

On the other hand, in Boston we can have a direct impact.  We can meet with officials, hang signs on trees, we can even dig a hole and plant a sapling near  a hot street corner.  With our urban forest so close and the rainforest so far, our efforts must seem worlds away from one another.

In truth, they are more similar than different.  In each case, the forest is threatened by an ethic of progress: things need building, jobs need doing, and people need work.  Here and in Indonesia, a web of government and corporate decision-making creates momentum that is difficult to avert once it is moving.  And of course here, there and everywhere else, people are oblivious to the vital services that trees provide on a daily basis.

In Indonesia when forests are cleared for agriculture, smoke blackens the sky, animals are pushed ever-closer to death and extinction, downwind rainfall decreases, and greenhouse gases fill the atmosphere.

In Boston, when trees are cleared for road work or construction, the city gets hotter in the summer, rates of asthma and auto-immune diseases go up, people become more alienated from the natural ecosystem, and city air becomes more toxic.

The problems are similar and so are the solutions.  Here and abroad we can try to stop the powerful corporate and government interests, but we are always on the defensive.  Fighting against what is already happening creates a tiring cycle, for there is always more development to be done and stopped.  This part of the campaign is difficult, but it is also essential.

The lasting solution is also the same in both places.  A proactive approach means getting the people who live in the area to take a stand and support their forests.  This is true in far away lands, where a legacy of colonialism and benevolent but oblivious intervention has created problems for decades.  It is also true in Boston, where a recession has sapped resources to care for our dying street trees.  Solutions to environmental problems everywhere must be local and self-sustaining, but also in solidarity with related movements regionally and world-wide.

The old maxim “think globally, act locally” just barely misses the mark.  In the age of the Internet, it should read “Organize Everywhere!”

Here is a brief summary of the three films we showed:

Orang Rimba: Happiness Lies in the Forest is a video that tells the tale of the Orang Rimba.  These are people whose culture is tied to the rainforest – without it they can no longer be Orang Rimba.  This movie shows the human cost of rainforest destruction and how governments and private corporations can overlook the rights of native peoples in the name of “progress” and “development”.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5tzwv_orang-rimba-happiness-lies-in-the-f_shortfilms

Willie Smits was called to action when he rescued a dying orangutan from a garbage heap in an Indonesian market.  Not satisfied with merely running care centers, he is creating new forests that address the needs of the area’s humans and animals.

http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html

Green is an emotional story of an orangutan that shows how deforestation is driven by products we consume every day.  This film provides a link between the consumption practices of the developed world, the industrial processes that make our lifestyle possible, and the plight of the animals and forests that bear the cost.

http://www.greenthefilm.com/

The Orang Rimba do not write.  Like the trees and the orangutans, they cannot tell their story to the world.  It is up to those of us who can pass on these messages to do so.  We can also make changes in our own lives so that we do not contribute to the problems facing our planet.  I would like to close by asking you to show people these movies and take steps so that your life is not a cause of suffering to others.  Thank you for everything you do to heal our world.

The picture above shows a tree about as old as I am standing amid construction in South Boston’s Andrew Square.  This morning, Susan and I attended a hearing convened by Boston’s tree warden to decide the fate of ten trees threatened by a stimulus project in the square. 

Of those trees, four were grandfathered exceptions to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires 48 inches of sidewalk for wheel chairs.  The major renovations in the square meant that their period of protection was over.  They are slated for removal.

One tree was already dead and removed.

Two trees were determined to be in good health and not impacting the project.  They were spared.

Two trees were in poor enough health that even the ardent eco-rabble in the room raised no objections to their removal.

This left only the sycamore pictured above.  It had been part of a memorial to a South Boston community activist but now stands in the way of re-building that memorial.  The discussion came down to this: five years of planning said that that tree – the only mature tree left on a corner of the square – had no place being there.  Activists protested, engineers spoke of design complexities, the tree warden explained its susceptibility to disease and the project manager lamented the lateness of our comments.  In the end, there was no final decision, but things do not look good for the sycamore. 

Toward the end of the discussion, one of the Boston Parks Department employees made an observation on the planning process.  He said essentially that when plans are presented to the community, every tree looks like every other tree, standing or proposed: they are all dots on a map. 

His words stuck with me.  Trees in the abstract are interchangeable.  It is only when you stand under the canopy on a hot July day that you can really appreciate the uniqueness of its being.  When the mature and heritage trees are gone, they will no longer be conspicuous reminders of years gone by.  Instead we will have saplings struggling in the urban environment -  twigs stuck in the dirt.  They will not provide the same cooling, fresh air, and pollution abatement services of their elders.  They will not sequester as much CO2 or prevent childhood asthma.

Of course on the plans, all the new trees look great - as a matter of fact, the new dots look exactly as good as the old ones.

Sinar Mas is on the defensive and saying that they only develop “degraded land.”  Greenpeace uses the Ministry of Forestry’s land cover map to identify forested areas with Sinar Mas’ concessions. The images of cleared areas taken during over flights or field research show thick forest being cleared, with a canopy cover well above the minimum threshold of 10 percent.  According to Greenpeace campaigners that there is no official definition of “degraded land” in Indonesia. The Ministry of Forestry, for their mapping purposes, differentiates between primary and secondary forests and non-forested areas.  A category “degraded land” does not exist on the maps produced by the Ministry.  By trying to play with definitions, the company is attempting to imply that they are not involved in rainforest destruction.  The evidence points to the contrary. Greenpeace is currently pushing back on this defense.

This boots-on-the-ground work is exactly what we expect when we partner with an organization.  Greenpeace is documenting the damage this company is doing to its country’s environment and exposing their dubious claims.  With that research in hand, they’re using the Internet to pressure Sinar Mas and its business partners to change their practices.  Click the link below for a mildly gruesome example of an very effective video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV1t-MvnCrA

Thanks to everyone on the Greenpeace forests campaign from everyone here at Tech Networks of Boston and the Hutan Project.

The Indonesian rain forest is a beautiful place. As the third largest rain forest in the world, it is home to more than 12 percent of animal and plant species, including the remarkable “people of the forest” – the orangutans. See these incredibly human creatures in action and meet the people trying to save them from extinction in the wild!

The Hutan Project, a social venture of Tech Networks of Boston, will be screening two films on the orangutan at 7 PM on August 26th: “Orang Rimba” and “Green”.

“Orang Rimba” tells the story of Indigenous peoples impacted by deforestation.

“Green” tells the emotional story of a female orangutan in Indonesia and how the everyday products we buy here at home are affecting beautiful creatures like her.

Come spend an evening getting to know these beautiful creatures and meeting others who share a passion for healing our planet. After the movie you will have a chance to win fair trade Indonesian products that protect the rain forest, and learn about innovative organizations that are buying land, rescuing orangutans, and even creating new rain forests from scarred and burned land.

Sign up for this event here:  http://events.ran.org/hotaugustnights/events/show/12052

Because the land is owned by the native peoples, the Dayaks, Indonesian law specifies that palm oil company must purchase land before establishing a palm oil plantation. This means that palm oil company representatives are on the prowl for villagers who want to earn between $160 and $550 per hectare for their land. They frequently try to curry favor with the villagers by giving them packs of cigarettes and other gifts.

Dr. Galdikas is fighting a one-woman battle to preserve land as it comes up for sale. Last February, the Hutan Project donated $25,000 to purchase 160 hectares of swamp-peat forest. Now Dr. Galdikas has her sights set on a particularly large parcel of at 1,000 hectares. It’s about 16 kilometers Southwest of the Care Center. The cost is quite low, at $160 per hectare. But that is a tall order for a small organization like OFI.

Triple Pundit has the details:

http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/07/hsbc-indonesian-palm-oil/

This is a great example of an established environmental group leveraging online activist communities to multiply the impact of their work.  We at Tech Networks of Boston and the Hutan Project would like to thank Greenpeace and all of the thousands of Internet citizens who spread the word about this campaign.  In troubling times like these, its nice to know you have a friend who can lend a hand… or, in this case, tens of thousands who will lend their fingers and keyboards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/world/asia/06indo.html?_r=2

The article highlights tension between the environmental movement and profit-driven corporations.  There is a fundamental difference between their worldviews.  One views the forest as a living thing, a home and a habitat.  Environmentalists measure the forests in terms of biomass, species populations and diversity.  Logging companies see the forest as a “natural resource” which is measured in acres and board-feet of lumber.

The framing of ecosystems as “natural resources” is a fundamental problem with our relationship to nature.  This perspective robs the forest of its intrinsic value as a living thing and a sacred part of creation.  Economically speaking, the analysis of Sinar Mas, the timber company responsible for much of the questionable logging in Indonesia, undoubtedly excludes the value of ecosystem services like pollution filtration, CO2 sequestration / O2 production, wildlife habitat, and downwind rainfall, just to name a few.  Even though the pulp industry will bring jobs to Indonesia, in the end it will rob the country of its natural heritage and is likely to have far-ranging environmental implications beyond the rainforest.

Reports by Greenpeace and similar organizations help us target our efforts by providing information on ecological destruction in crucial places where distance and government corruption or dysfunction often prevent us from having a good conception of the situation on the ground.  The Hutan Project is proud to announce that we will be supporting Greenpeace with an ongoing monthly donation so that they can continue to bring light to the troubles facing our world.  Keep checking the Hutan Project blog for news on Greenpeace, Orangutan Foundation International, Tech Networks of Boston, and our other partners.