Did Malaysia cancel plans for palm oil development in the Amazon?

The Malaysian government’s federal land agency (FELDA) is now denying its well-documented plan to develop oil palm plantations in the Amazon rainforest, reports Ecological Internet, a forest advocacy group that carried out a campaign against the project.

“In a positive yet puzzling development, a spokesperson for the Malaysian government’s federal land agency (FELDA) now denies plan for Malaysian government controlled oil palm development in the heart of the Amazon ever existed,” Glen Barry, founder of Ecological Internet and organizer of the campaign, wrote via email. “Wan Zaleha Wan Embong, from FELDA’s Public Relations Department, has been responding to our network’s protest emails, disavowing the plans.”
Barry speculated that the apparent change of plans could be “an attempt to save face” in response to more than 100,000 protest emails, economic difficulties caused by a dramatic fall in the price of palm oil, or simply an attempt to mask the government’s involvement by reorganizing the project with private, rather than government, capital.

Last July Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak (now Malaysia’s Prime Minister) announced that FELDA would immediately establish 100,000 hectares (250,000) of oil palm plantations in the Brazilian Amazon.

Mongabay