Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, announced last month that they would stop purchasing palm oil from a Guatemalan producer tied to human rights violations, environmental destruction, and corruption. The move was the result of years of pressure from Guatemalan and international activists.
Multinational food giant Nestlé announced it will end its relationship with controversial Guatemalan oil palm producer Reforestadora Palmas de Petén S.A. (REPSA) in September 2018. REPSA is implicated in the assassination of community leader Rigoberto Lima and the contamination of the Río Pasión, which has been dubbed an ecocide. Both events took place in 2015 and REPSA has not faced justice for either, benefitting from the general state of impunity that prevails in Guatemala.
Nestlé’s decision came in the midst of a campaign led by a coalition of national and international organisations – including the National Council of Displaced People of Guatemala (CONDEG), Oxfam, ActionAid, Friends of the Earth, and the Coordinator of Cooperatives and NGOs of Guatemala (CONGCOOP) – to convince players downstream in the global oil palm chain to stop doing business with REPSA. Nestlé becomes the third major global agro-food company to do so, following Cargill and Wilmar International Limited. Though often linked to biodiesel, oil palm is more commonly used in food processing and cosmetics.
Guatemala started promoting oil palm production in the 1970s when prices for its traditional exports were struggling, but the crop only started undergoing rapid expansion during the 2000s commodities boom, with exports skyrocketing in 2007 and 2008. The expansion of oil palm has caused environmental, labour, and land conflicts throughout Guatemala, notably the Pacific coastal plain and the northern departments of Izabal and Petén.
