Indonesian palm oil firm to pay losses in 'historic' ruling

Seed Daily via AFP: An Indonesian court has ordered a palm oil company to pay almost $30 million to the state for illegally clearing peatland in a "historic" ruling, lawyers said Thursday. The Meulaboh district court on Sumatra island ruled late Wednesday that Indonesian company Kallista Alam had illegally burnt vegetation on 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of peatland in Aceh province to clear it for a palm oil plantation.

In the civil case brought by the Ministry of Environment, the court ordered the company to pay 114.3 billion rupiah ($9.4 million) in losses to the state and 252 billion rupiah to rehabilitate the land it destroyed.

The forest was protected under several laws, including a presidential decree suspending new permits to log peatland and some other types of forests across the country. Using fire to clear land is also illegal. The practice has sent choking haze across parts of Southeast Asia in recent years.

"This is a historic moment for law enforcement on environmental issues in Indonesia. We hope it will deter plantation companies from damaging the environment," the environment ministry's lawyer, Syafruddin, told AFP....

On a palm plantation in Indonesia, shot by Wagino 20100516, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license