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Three years ago Korindo instigated a libel case against a former fiscal sponsor of Mighty Earth and a German NGO for campaign statements on Korindo’s rampant deforestation

Mighty Earth calls for urgent action from UK retailers & government to end deforestation. It follows film screening and panel event highlighting threats to Amazon’s Indigenous communities from meat & soy trade

The French tire giant, Michelin has become the first major company to back the inclusion of natural rubber in the new EU deforestation regulation, currently going through final negotiations. The tire industry is by far the biggest user of this commodity. Read more here on Michelin’s statement and Mighty’s response.

A major new year-and-a-half long investigation by Voxeurop into a “sustainable” rubber project by French tire giant Michelin and Indonesian conglomerate Barito Pacific has led to fresh allegations of widespread deforestation, wildlife habitat destruction, and greenwashing linked to the joint venture. 

The investigation, initially sparked by Mighty Earth’s 2020 Complicit report, alleges investors in a $95 million so-called “green bond” used to finance the PT Royal Lestari Utama (RLU) project in Jambi, Sumatra, were misled and never told that Michelin’s local partner had deforested thousands of hectares of tropical rainforest and global priority wildlife habitats just prior to the launch of the flagship project in January 2015.

The meat industry lost a golden opportunity to end deforestation today and seems hell-bent on making sure they keep missing. The roadmap’s insistence that individual companies undertake best efforts to establish individual cut-off dates for deforestation no later than 2025 means the bulldozers will keep running and the destruction will continue.

Lula’s election really is a big deal: When you dig into his agenda for the environment, it’s exhilarating: 

Ce matin, une dizaine de militants de l’ONG Canopée se sont rendus dans l’agence BNP Paribas du boulevard Sébastopol à Paris où ils ont déclenché une alarme incendie afin d’alerter sur la responsabilité de la banque dans les feux de forêts au Brésil.

Two of the world’s most famous recreational parks – Central Park in New York and Hyde Park in London – could be razed and transformed into huge new industrial rubber plantations under a proposed $1billion ‘Green bond’ application submitted today by environmental campaign group Mighty Earth.

“If the cocoa industry can achieve full traceability it will be huge,” said Etelle Higonnet, senior campaign director at NGO Mighty Earth, noting that if the chocolate sector could achieve supply chain transparency, there was no excuse for other agricultural commodities not to follow suit. The industry, which pledged to eradicate the problem of child labour decades ago, has long faced criticism over its social and environmental impact in the countries where it is grown.

…Critics also said the move reduces environmental protections.  Environmental campaign group Mighty Earth said: “Elements of the new law will worsen deforestation and land rights abuses and reverse recent successes in reducing forest loss.”  “The Indonesian parliament made a ruinous false choice between environmental sustainability and economic growth by effectively legitimising uncontrolled deforestation as an engine for a so-called pro-investment job creation policy,” Phelim Kine, senior campaigns director with Mighty Earth said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera.

The companies want the new British rules to apply to all deforestation - not just in cases where the destruction is illegal. “The proposed legislation would continue to allow rampant deforestation in hotspots such as Indonesia and Brazil,” said Robin Willoughby, UK director of campaign group Mighty Earth. Companies are also concerned that the legislation would not apply to smaller firms who may import considerable amounts of products, such as rubber, from sensitive forest regions.