Sunday 6 May 2018

splash & burn

Having recently been reminded myself how damaging and disruptive the practise of palm oil harvesting can be for society the ecology, this interview with artist and activist Ernest Zacharevic from Colossal struck us as quite resonant and important.
Zacharevic has partnered with an array of international and local artists to raise awareness of devastation that what has been portrayed as a sustainable industry has caused for the people and environment of Indonesia—the former by short-term employment opportunities and a one-time infusion of revenue in exchange for selling off the lands of indigenous peoples and part of the country’s patrimony and the latter by habitat destruction, monoculture and eventual desertification—all exacerbated by the popularity of coconut oil, sourced from the same plant and plantations, and palm oil as a bio-fuel, diverting more agricultural resources from nutrition towards green-washing.