Some of the world’s largest coffee companies have been unwittingly
sourcing beans from illegal plantations inside an Indonesian wildlife
sanctuary, reports the conservation group WWF.
A new WWF study says growers supplying companies including Nestlé and
Kraft Foods have illegally used 45,000 hectares of the Bukit Barisan
Selatan National Park in Lampung province on Sumatra. The investigators
used satellite images, tracking and interviews to calculate that 19,600
tonnes of beans were being produced illegally every year.
The WFF emphasized that most of the coffee companies were unaware of
the irregularity, thanks to the absence of local planning rules, but it
criticized importers and exporters for not having procedures to stop
the illegal trading.
Nazir Foead, of WWF Indonesia, said: ‘WWF doesn’t want to shut down the
coffee industry in Lampung province. But we’re asking multinational
coffee companies to implement rigorous chain-of-custody controls to
ensure that they are no longer buying illegally grown coffee, and we’re
asking the Indonesian government to better protect the park.’
A Nestlé spokesperson said: ‘We share the concerns of the WWF and we
are in talks with them. It is an industry-wide issue. It’s true that
sometimes determining source can be problematic, but we would never
[knowingly] buy illegally grown coffee.’
