The dangerous pesticides destroying the lives of palm oil plantation workers
Report by Daniela Sala, Adi Renaldi & Budi Baskoro, photographs by Daniela Sala
I used to spray both the yellow and the green poison,’ Herna says. For nearly six years, from 2006 to 2011, Herna worked for the so-called ‘maintenance team’ on one of the oil palm plantations of Musim Mas, a Singapore-based multinational corporation, in Central Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. The green poison she refers to is Gramoxone, the brand name for a highly toxic herbicide based on the organic compound paraquat. Sold by the Swiss, now Chinese-owned multinational Syngenta, paraquat has been banned in the European Union since 2007 due to concerns related to its effect on the health of workers and the environment.
‘I often had nausea, vomiting and dizziness after my work. I don’t know exactly why, but most of my colleagues experienced the same symptoms. I knew these were dangerous substances and I was always afraid to handle them,’ she says. Herna got an indication of how toxic paraquat is when one morning, while she was diluting it with water as instructed, a drop of the liquid splashed onto her hand, causing a burn that took weeks to heal.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of her home in Penyang, Herna looks tired. The humid heat gives no respite, the air is heavy and the fan Herna sits next to is of little use. It’s difficult to imagine how, in these conditions, Herna and her colleagues could work an entire eight-hour shift with a heavy container (weighing some 13 kilograms) on their backs, without ever removing their masks.
Herna grew up in a small cluster of houses surrounded by rainforest. Her family relied on hunting and farming; they had a small area of land where they harvested rice and fruit. It was a simple, quiet life. In the late 1990s, however, their economic situation rapidly deteriorated with the arrival of oil palm plantations. They lost not only their land, but also access to the forest. Herna, in her early 20s, had no choice but to accept a job on one of the plantations that had so drastically altered the way of life in her village. For five years, from 7am to 3pm, she sprayed highly toxic herbicides, which prevented weeds and other plants from proliferating and allowed oil palms to grow faster and taller.
Herna endured continuous discomfort for years, sometimes so intense that she had to stay in bed for days. The plantation doctor, whom she sometimes asked for help, always told her not to worry too much, prescribing at most paracetamol or an anti-emetic.
Eventually, Herna began to suffer a pain in the pit of her stomach, ‘like a stab wound’. The doctor speculated that it might be a symptom of a lung problem. The cause was never clarified because Herna couldn’t take further tests as they were too expensive. She decided, however, that she couldn’t take it anymore and quit her job.
Paraquat’s known direct health effects include respiratory problems, severe burns and skin and eye irritation. In the USA, it has also been linked to Parkinson’s disease. In Indonesia, paraquat should only be used by properly trained workers with appropriate protections. However, a report by PANAP (Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific) documented how these conditions are rarely met.
Herna, who is now 48 and has six children, did her best to find another job, ‘but since the plantations are here, there is no other job,’ she says.
As she goes silent, the background noise becomes more obvious: it’s the constant traffic along the Trans Kalimantan, the highway that cuts through southern Borneo, just a few dozen metres from Herna’s home. Trucks follow one another in a constant back-and-forth. In one direction, they transport oil palm fruits to the refineries. In the opposite direction, they transport the refined oil to ports for the export market.
MADE IN EUROPE
Indonesia is by far the world’s largest exporter of palm oil, accounting for nearly 50 per cent of global exports in 2022, closely followed by Malaysia, with 30 per cent. The industrial uses are countless, from food and cosmetics to the production of biofuels. About ten per cent of palm oil exports from Indonesia end up in Europe.
The oil palm, a plant native to West Africa, was first introduced to Indonesia during Dutch colonialism. Over a few decades, the expansion of monocultures in the archipelago triggered the destruction of large portions of Borneo’s rainforest. Despite intense environmental campaigns in recent years, the rate of deforestation due to plantation expansion only slowed; it started to rise again in 2023.
In Indonesia, intensive palm oil production and the heavy use of paraquat and other herbicides are inextricably linked. In total, Indonesia imported pesticides worth about half a million US dollars in 2020, a market that has steadily grown over the past decade.
In 2019, Indonesia imported from the UK 2,300 tons of paraquat, largely manufactured by Syngenta’s Huddersfield plant. Since 2017, with ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta, production and exports from China have also increased, making the paraquat supply chain increasingly difficult to track.
The countries that are responsible for most of the manufacturing and export (China, Switzerland and the UK) ban paraquat domestically, as has the EU. While the EU’s internal regulations are increasingly protective of the environment, it remains the largest pesticide exporter, with EU companies investing more and more in countries in the Global South.
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
In Kalimantan, the effects of palm oil monocultures and the extensive use of pesticides are unspooling before the eyes of the local communities.
A short drive from Herna’s house, just on the other side of the Trans Kalimantan highway in the village of Bangkal, most residents still have first-hand memories of life before the plantations. The village is located on the shore of the biggest lake in the region, Sembuluh Lake. Its 4,000 residents, mostly Dayaks, the indigenous peoples of Borneo, relied on farming and fishing, and they drank water from the lake. Now, they have lost their land and, in one of the wettest areas in the world, they struggle to access clean water.
It all started with huge concessions to palm oil companies. ‘It happened suddenly, without any consultation with the community,’ says Sangkai Rewa, secretary of Bangkal and leader of AMAN, the association that represents the indigenous people of Central Kalimantan. Sangkai has been connected to Bangkal for generations. His wooden house, on stilts, like all the houses in the surrounding area, sits on the edge of the village. The residents did everything they could to resist the arrival of the plantations. In the late 1990s, they managed to force the Indonesian company Agro Indomas to back down. But in 2005, their fight against another conglomerate, PT Hamparan Masawit Bangun Persada, failed, due in part to support for the company from the then local governor, Darwan Ali, as revealed by a Gecko Project investigation.
‘The people of Bangkal were forced to give up their land by threats and deception. Around us it was all forest. Look around: what is left today?’ says Sangkai. The establishment of Hamparan plantation paved the way for the arrival of more companies. Bangkal is now surrounded by a dozen plantations and refineries.
‘We saw the colour of the water changing’, says Sangkai. ‘We can not even use the water for washing: it feels itchy and you get rashes. The water is polluted, and because of that, our entire ecosystem is under threat.’
At dawn every day, a few narrowboats approach the small wooden dock next to the daily market in Bangkal. Nouredin, a 60-year-old fisherman from a nearby village, is busy untangling a few dozen small fish from his net. He spent the whole night fishing, but the catch was meagre. ‘It did not used to be like that,’ he explains while unloading his catch. ‘Fish were bigger and easier to catch. There are species that are slowly disappearing.’
Fish have become scarcer, while the fast-growing weed water hyacinth is invading the shore of Sembuluh, forcing fishermen to travel much further. Residents say that the overgrowth must be associated with fertilisers and chemicals dumped from the plantations.
In 2018, the Central Kalimantan Environment Agency had the water in the lake tested. Nothing is wrong, they stated, dismissing the residents’ protests.
But not everybody agrees. ‘We openly challenged the agency’s findings,’ says Muhammad Habibi, director of the NGO Save Our Borneo. ‘We asked the agency to disclose the actual results, and to share all the relevant details: where the samples had been taken, how they had been treated, what residues they had been analysed for. But the agency simply refused to comply.’
Save Our Borneo and Ecoton, another environmental NGO, conducted some water testing in Sambas, Western Borneo, in an area geographically very similar to Lake Sembuluh and similarly affected by palm oil monoculture. The results were worrying, with levels of chloride and phosphates in the region’s river far higher than accepted norms. Habibi fears for the fate of Lake Sembuluh. ‘Our suspicion is that the local authorities have no interest in going against the palm oil industry. What if it becomes known that the ongoing ecological disaster in Lake Sembuluh is caused by the companies?’
FARMER TURNED PROTESTER
‘Palm oil means Gramoxone, Gramoxone means palm oil’, says James Watt, a farmer in Bangkal. Watt is among the few residents who still have a small piece of land left: he used to grow rubber plants, fruit and vegetables. He started life as a traditional farmer and had no interest in palm oil cultivation. But as the vast plantations came to dominate the region, he was forced to switch. Around the same time, in 2015, he was introduced to paraquat, under the label Gramoxone. ‘I needed a stronger herbicide, and I went to the shop in Sampit, the nearest city. I asked the shopkeeper for advice, and he gave me this,’ Watt says, holding out the five-litre plastic package of the substance. Paraquat became a familiar household item and can be found in most farmers’ houses in Bangkal. ‘When I have to spray it, I smoke a cigarette first, so I make sure of the wind direction,’ Watt says.
Watt has no love for palm oil. In addition to being a farmer, he’s an activist. At 54, he has spent nearly half his life fighting against the palm oil industry, trying to mediate between residents and companies, and paying the price himself.
In 2020, following a demonstration against the plantation, Watt was sentenced to ten months in prison on a charge of stealing oil palm fruit from the land that once belonged to Bangkal residents.
The last major protest against palm oil companies in Bangkla was in October 2023. Gijik, a 35-year-old man, was killed by a gunshot fired by police deployed to defend the plantation. Such cases, according to the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA), an Indonesian association fighting against land grabbing, are far from isolated. Between 2015 and 2022, at least 69 people died as a result of clashes and protests against land grabbing. The clashes and deaths, again according to KPA, can’t be separated from the decision to deploy police forces always and exclusively in a repressive function, in defence of plantations.
‘I can’t understand what the government means when it says palm oil brings development and prosperity,’ says.Watt. He never asked his parents why they named him after the Scottish inventor, which is said to have started the industrial revolution. While he grasps the subtle irony, he’s proud of the name he bears.
‘For me, real prosperity was before. We were not dependent on anyone: we grew our own vegetables, rice. We went fishing and if we wanted meat, all we had to do was go hunting in the forest. Now all that is gone’.
Enjoying this article? We have thousands more for you.
Get immediate access to over 1,000 Geographical magazines in our archive back to 1935.
Sign up today and you will soon be travelling back through time reading all our amazing features of the last eight decades PLUS… you also get to enjoy every new issue of Geographical each month going forward in both print and digital formats.
Simply press the button below to choose the perfect package for you.
