Land Deal Brief: Massive Deforestation Portrayed as Sustainable Investment: The Deceit of Herakles Farms in Cameroon
From its very name, American-owned SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon, Ltd. (SGSOC) presents a pro-environment, pro-resources image. This is supported by an impressive-sounding partnership with an NGO by the name of All for Africa and as a package typifies the kind of convoluted modern-day foreign investment going on in Africa. It is sadly all too familiar to communities on the ground. They are unimpressed with promises of infrastructure and jobs, and angry about their loss of land and livelihoods. It is also part of a strategy to deceive the public into believing that there is logic to cutting down rainforests to make room for palm oil plantations.
In 2009, SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon, Ltd. (SGSOC) signed a convention with the Cameroonian government to develop a large industrial palm oil plantation and refinery. The project involves 73,086 hectares (ha) of land (180,599 acres) in the Ndian and Kupe-Manenguba Divisions of the Southwest Region of Cameroon through a 99-year land lease.
Land_deal_brief_herakles.pdf