Whose Forest? The palm-oil business is pressuring wildlife.

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Whose Forest?

The palm-oil business is pressuring wildlife.

 

By Lorien Holland

Newsweek International

Dec. 26, 2005 - Jan 2, 2006 issue - In Malaysia and

Indonesia, palm oil is viewed as the " wonder oil. "

It's easy to see why: Malaysia's production of the oil

has doubled over the last 20 years, while Indonesia's

has tripled. Between them, Malaysia and Indonesia now

account for 84 percent of global production of the

cash crop and 88 percent of global exports—worth some

$11 billion last year between them. And demand for

palm oil is rising: since 2004, it has pipped soybean

oil as the world's biggest vegetable-oil crop. It's

widely used in Asia for cooking, and in Europe for

processed foods and toiletries ranging from bread to

soap, ice cream to lipstick. In the United States,

where usage is low, imports have been rising steadily

because palm oil, unlike other vegetable oils,

contains no trans fats. Palm oil also has potential as

a biofuel, particularly with prices for crude oil so

high.

 

The problem is that oil-palm plantations need land to

expand, and their swelling size has raised alarms

among environmentalists. The land occupied by oil-palm

plantations in Malaysia has risen dramatically, from

642,000 hectares in 1975 to nearly 4 million hectares

in 2004. Much of that space has been carved out of

primeval forest, home to the endangered orangutan.

According to Friends of the Earth, a London-based

environmental group, the business has become " the

primary threat " to the survival of the orangutan and

other endangered species in the forests of Southeast

Asia. Other environmental groups describe palm as the

" cruel oil. "

 

The standoff is prompting a debate echoed in China,

India and other developing countries: can economic

growth coexist with a healthy environment? Malaysian

and Indonesian officials, bristling at the criticism,

note that oil-palm planters tend to use land that has

already been logged, not virgin forest. And they point

out that on Nov. 23 in Singapore, the Roundtable on

Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a fledgling organization

representing environmental, government and

plantation-owner groups, agreed to a ban on new

plantations in areas with so-called high

conservation-value forest—meaning, essentially, virgin

forest. Still, RSPO secretary-general Andrew Ng

acknowledges that getting the whole industry to agree

to these measures remains a question when illegal

logging is already a problem in national parks in both

countries. " Let's call a spade a spade: there are

issues and we're trying to find ways to deal with

them, " he says.

 

Development is clearly going ahead. Malaysia already

boasts more than 800,000 small oil-palm landholdings,

and the industry employs more than 1 million

people—one tenth of the entire work force. Those

numbers are sure to rise: Procter & Gamble, the

consumer-products giant, has announced plans to ramp

up usage of palm oil, instead of crude oil, in its

detergents. Meantime, the Malaysian government is

planning to build three palm-oil biodiesel plants in

the next year, and would like to export the new fuel

to Europe. In August Indonesia signed an $8 billion

financing deal with the China Development Bank to

create the world's largest palm-oil plantation in the

Indonesian part of Borneo. The proposed site covers an

area half the size of the Netherlands and skirts

several national parks.

 

While many plantation owners, particularly in

Malaysia, are well established and believe in

sustainable planting and the importance of wildlife

protection, abuses occur. Some planters strip virgin

forests, clear land that is too hilly for practical

use, burn their plots in ways that lead to forest

fires and get into conflicts with local communities.

Government officials don't dispute the problem of

illegal logging, but don't appreciate the meddling by

outside groups. " This is our country, so of course we

care about our forests and its biodiversity, " says a

senior government official. " We're trying to work out

an arrangement whereby palm oil is sustainable.

Instead of supporting us, some of these foreign groups

just want to attack us. " He points out more than half

of the land area in Indonesian and Malaysian country

is forested, compared with 12 percent in Britain and

25 percent in America. That number, however, is fast

shrinking.

 

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

 

 

 

Michelle Desilets

BOS UK

www.savetheorangutan.org.uk

www.savetheorangutan.info

" Primates Helping Primates "

 

Please sign our petition to rescue over 100 smuggled orangutans in Thailand:

http://www.thePetitionSite.com/takeaction/822035733

 

 

 

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