Top: A guard at a Golden Veroleum Liberia gate in Lower Kulu Clan in the Tarjuwon District, Sinoe County. The DayLight/Matenneh Keita
By Esau J. Farr
WIEH TOWN – Before the Ebola epidemic in 2013, Levi Jarteh joined other townspeople from Tarjuwon to file a complaint against Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the watchdog of the global oil palm industry.
They accused GVL of encroaching on their land and destroying sacred places. The Palloh Hill, believed by locals to host spirits that granted good harvest, gave way for the mill. The Slinee Creek, where women sought children, made way for an irrigation system for palm nurseries.
Five years after their complaint, the RSPO found GVL liable for land grab. It ordered GVL to stop work in that area until it signed a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Tarjuwon, including the Lower Kulu Clan, where Jarteh was born. The rebuke called for GVL to remap its plantation in the disputed area. The RSPO gave GVL a three-month deadline to implement the order.
“Any deviation from the above-mentioned milestones and timelines by GVL will be viewed adversely and may lead to consideration of suspension and eventual termination of membership,” the RSPO said.
GVL’s appeal of the decisions was rejected and left the RSPO, only to rejoin about a year later. GVL is a member of RSPO through its parent company, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), a Singaporean multinational, one of the world’s largest oil palm firms.
But, more than six years after that ruling, GVL has not signed a new MoU with Tarjuwon. Instead, the company has defied the RSPO by constructing the mill, planting in some areas and building houses in others. It has not been punished as the global watchdog had warned.
The first of those violations happened just three months after the RSPO’s order. Satellite images published in a report by the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), an NGO based in Margibi, show GVL cleared additional farmland in Lower Kulu.
Then in 2019 evidence gathered by Blogbo-Teh, a local advocacy group, and RSPO confirmed that GVL cultivated additional land in Lower Kulu and continued to construct the mill.
GVL admitted to the violation, saying, “It took what it believed was a precautionary approach and interpreted the order to apply to the whole of the Lower Kulu area.” RSPO reordered GVL to complete the mapping of its plantation bordering the Upper and Lower Kulu “without any further delay.”
Again in 2022, Blogbo-Teh filed another complaint with evidence that GVL continued to develop the mill, houses and palm nurseries. Blogbo-Teh rued GVL’s “snail-pace” implementation of the RSPO’s orders, saying, ‘Justice delayed is justice denied.’”
“It is unfortunate that duty bearers who have responsibilities and have signed international treaties, conventions and laws in our country do not have the willpower to do the right thing,” Simpson Snoh, the chairman of Blogbo-Teh, told The DayLight. Blogbo-Teh, which means “round land business” in the Kru language. Blogbo is a section within Lower Kulu.
“We are advocating for justice to be done per RSPO’s principles,” Snoh added.
GVL confirmed Blogbo-Teh’s findings, saying it carried out “minor works” at the mill site, repaired machines, established a nursery and replaced dead palms. The RSPO is reviewing that complaint. The DayLight has emailed the certification scheme for comments and will update this story once a response is obtained.
‘No more farmland’
Just as the years have witnessed an array of credible complaints of violation, so too have efforts to map GVL’s plantation in Tarjuwon.
In 2018, when the RSPO made the decision, Earthworm Foundation, a Switzerland-based nonprofit was appointed by RSPO to map Tarjuwon. However, Blogbo-Teh questioned the group’s independence, as it had worked for GVL before.
Subsequently, Proforest, a UK-based NGO, was appointed to conduct the mapping. But it came at the time the Liberia Institute for Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS) was about to conduct Liberia’s fourth census. So, Proforest supported LISGIS to carry out the national duty and submitted the report to the RSPO in November 2021.
But LISGIS’ map established clan boundaries, and not the size of GVL’s plantation in Lower Kulu, the crust of the matter.
“We want to know the total hectare of land and how many hectares of land is occupied by GVL or will be occupied by GVL before any MoU can be signed,” added Simpson Toby, an ex-chairman of Blogbo-Teh.
“No more farmland [for us] because the palm bush is around us,” said Jarteh, the General Town Chief of the Lower Kulu Clan. “We have to travel beyond the palm plantation before we make farm and that distance is a [three-hour walk].”
The RSPO announced it would schedule a meeting with Proforest on the mapping report, whose draft the watchdog said it had received.
GVL dodged questions The DayLight emailed to it. However, it said in a periodic report to the RSPO that it would begin negotiation with Tarjuwon if the watchdog recommended that. The company has only reported for the first quarter of this year so far.
Meanwhile, locals of Lower Kulu say they are open to a negotiation with GVL. They want similar benefits that GVL-affected communities are entitled to, as they are excluded from the current MoU.
GVL’s current MoU calls for the payment of US$5 per hectare of developed land and gives citizens priority for jobs in affected communities. The agreement gives citizens access to healthcare services, schools and scholarships, especially employees and dependents. It also contains infrastructural development, including the construction of roads and bridges.
GVL, Liberia’s largest oil palm company, signed a 65-year agreement with the Liberian government covering 220,000 hectares of land in Sinoe, Grand Kru, and Maryland in a deal worth US$1.6 billion.
Ophelia Kumon, a resident of Wieh Town said, “Since they took the land, they should provide us safe drinking water, school for our children and job opportunities for the citizens here.”
Green Livelihoods Alliance (GLA) provided funding for this story. The DayLight maintained editorial independence over the story’s content.
