The GOI’s program of expansion over the past generation of oil palm plantations in Kalimantan and Sumatra was supposed to promote the sustainable management of the natural resources of those islands and advance the socio-economic development of their rural populations. Instead, oil palm development has devastated the natural environment, illegally appropriated land from thriving rural communities, and created for the first time communities of landless poor. It is in recognition of this disastrous history that the EU is finally taking action against palm oil. The argument that the EU ban will just “shift the environmental problem to other crops” does not bear scrutiny. Would we not prevent someone from committing murder on the grounds that this would just “shift the murderer to other crimes”? Indonesia has had decades to get this right and it has failed, in part because state elites have privileged the plantation/estate model of development, instead of smallholdings, which have (e.g.) successfully dominated Indonesia’s rubber industry for over one century.–Michael R. Dove, Yale University