Malaysia Palm Oil Board vs Orangutans

[Guest guest]

Below are 2 articles appearing in the Star (Malaysia) today, regarding palm oil

and orangutans.

Michelle Desilets

Director, Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK

Fate in the balance

Tuesday December 27, 2005

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2005/12/27/lifefocus/12847749 & se\

c=lifefocus

 

While there is no clear documentation of brutality against orang utans linked

to the expansion of oil palm plantation in Malaysia, the fate of the Bornean

subspecies in Sabah (Pongo pygmaeus morio) is not any better than its cousin in

Indonesia.

Shrinking home range, no thanks to the relentless conversion of lowland forest

of the Kinabatangan basin into oil palm plantations, has resulted in an increase

in the number of orphaned and displaced orang utans at the famed Sepilok Orang

Utan Sanctuary.

Far from being a success story of orang utan conservation, the centre is a

stark testimony to the failure in protecting the habitat of the sole Asian ape.

“Sepilok is a joke. It only serves the purpose of showing the orang utan to

foreign and local tourists. There is no plan for reintroduction. It is just

another feel-good conservation project that disguises the true consequences of

deforestation,” says forestry researcher Lim Teck Wyn.

It is near impossible to return orang utans to the wild. The highly fragmented

Kinabatangan forest can hardly sustain the existing pockets of orang utan

populations.

Calls for gazettement of the 26,103ha Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary were

ignored until the intervention of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad

Badawi after The Star highlighted the massive destruction there in July.

The Friends of the Earth (UK) report The oil for ape scandal: How palm oil is

threatening orang utan survival said the highly degraded wildlife sanctuary is

fragmented into 10 units by oil palm plantations and other land uses, preventing

the migration of animals such as elephants and orang utans.

Kinabatangan is one of only two places in Asia that are inhabited by 10

primate species. It has the largest population of orang utans in Malaysia and is

possibly the most important wetland orang utan habitat in the world.

The high population densities are a direct consequence of habitat clearance,

forcing individuals into high concentrations in remaining fragments.

WWF-Malaysia which has been engaging the industry through its Partners for

Wetland programme since 1998 concedes that every hectare of forest converted to

plantation contributes to bringing species such as orang utan, closer to

extinction.

No single factor has been a greater cause of declines in wildlife population

than loss of habitat. And no one aspect of changes in habitat conditions has

been more insidious than that of forest fragmentation or conversion of forest to

plantation, it said in a statement.

The programme is encouraging oil palm companies to set aside land for

reforestation for a wildlife corridor that connects the fragmented forest to

recreate the animal migration pathway as a solution to human-wildlife conflict.

It also disagrees with the industry’s claim that oil palm plantations are rich

in bio-diversity. It clarifies that presence of 268 species of microbes,

insects, fish, birds and small mammals in an oil palm plantation should not be

equated with ‘conserving biodiversity’.

“The only way to conserve bio-diversity is to retain as much forest as

possible in as good a condition as possible,” it said.

 

Disappearing haven

Tuesday December 27, 2005

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2005/12/27/lifefocus/12849696 & se\

c=lifefocus

 

By HILARY CHIEW

It is not easy to fight a campaign that endears the public with a cuddly and

impish creature. What more when the images portrayed are those of the creature

being mutilated, abused, maimed and killed.

Such is the content of a four-page pamphlet detailing the destruction of the

rainforest and along with it the survival of endangered orang utans in Borneo

and Sumatra.

Ghastly images and descriptions of the killings were put together to shock

consumers by two Britain-based non-governmental organisations, the Borneo Orang

utan Survival Foundation and Nature Alert, in mid-October. The campaign followed

a similar report launched by the Friends of the Earth Britain (FOE) a month

earlier.

Shoppers in Britain were told that their purchases from a bar of soap to a bar

of chocolate were fuelling the cruel displacement and annihilation of orang

utans. The campaigners hoped to mobilise consumer pressure to compel retailers

into ensuring that products containing palm oil in the supermarkets were sourced

from sustainable sources.

 

Orang utans are losing their forested homes to oil palm plantations. –

Picture courtesy of Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.

 

Britain is the second largest importer of palm oil in Europe, after the

Netherlands. Malaysia dominates the British market, accounting for 42% of the

market share.

Malaysian palm oil producers denied the accusations. Industrial organisations

– the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board and the

Malaysian Palm Oil Producers Council – issued joint statements and wrote an open

letter in defence of the industry’s practices.

The statements claimed that oil palm plantations are rich in bio-diversity and

orang utan conservation is high on the agenda of plantation companies. The

Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Project was touted as the industry’s

success story in balancing development and conservation.

The industry felt the campaign was ill conceived, especially when it was

preparing to adhere to a set of stringent operation practices called the

‘Principles and Criteria’ (P & C). The eight principles and 39 criteria spell out

environmental and social responsibilities of growers, processors, traders and

manufacturers. They were adopted by members of the Roundtable on Sustainable

Palm Oil (RSPO), the industry self-regulatory initiative set up in response to

criticism against unsustainable business practices. It has 95 members,

representing one-third of the global palm oil players.

However, some quarters in the industry felt that the rebuttals were too

reactionary. “Such rebuttals can do more damage than correct the perception. The

situations described by the campaign were more of an Indonesian problem. We

should have just point that out and not deny the facts flatly,” says an industry

source.

The industry said in an email interview that “some of our responses were

perceived to be ‘knee-jerk reactions’ and thus may not entirely address the

situation but in fact enhance the belief that we are ‘skirting’ the issues.” It

plans to meet European non-governmental organisations early next year.

In fact, the pamphlet and the 50-page The oil for ape scandal: How palm oil is

threatening orang utan survival report released by the FOE in September

documented forest destruction and brutality against orang utans that largely

happened in Indonesia.

Unlike previous campaigns that called for a boycott, the new one acknowledges

the importance of palm oil as a relatively cheap source of vegetable oil and its

contribution to the economy.

The groups ask that producers operate in a sustainable manner and stop

converting forested land into plantation. The report says that under the pretext

of plantation development, companies were targeting virgin jungles with the sole

purpose of extracting valuable timber. As much as three million ha of land were

left uncultivated in Indonesia.

The campaign was strategically launched ahead of the RSPO meet in Singapore

last month to encourage growers and the supply chain players to join the group.

And they want the industry to implement the P & C quickly.

A participant at the meeting is sceptical that the industry will be able to do

so. “They only agreed to a two-year pilot project.”

Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation director Michelle Desilets is concerned

about the timeframe for implementation. “When they said it would take six years

in Kalimantan, we want to throw up our arms and give up. The orang utans and the

forest can’t wait this long!”

RSPO secretary-general Andrew Ng concurs that established companies are

equipped to implement the scheme but the real task is in setting up a

verification and audit system to lend credibility to the certification process.

A thorny issue surrounding the debate of sustainable palm oil is the erosion

of the indigenous communities’ land rights. The industry’s claim that there is

“maximum consultation” with affected indigenous communities is disputed by the

Partners of Community Organisations of Sabah. Its secretary-general Adrian

Lasimbang doubts that the industry can comply with the criterion of respecting

land rights of the communities.

Colin Nicholas of Centre for Orang Asli Concern says a majority of the 130

land dispute cases in Sarawak involve conversion of native customary land by oil

palm companies from Kuala Lumpur.

“That shows that the consent of the communities was never sought by the

industry. It is also untrue that expansion of oil palm plantation in the

peninsula only involved conversion from other crops such as rubber. I have

photographic evidence that virgin forests are cleared to grow oil palm.”

Instead of brushing aside the environment and social activists’ concerns, many

feel the Malaysian palm oil producers should make good their promise of

corporate responsibility. The industry has more to loose if it ignores their

pleas now that it has found another profitable use for palm oil in bio-fuel. In

fact, a fresh round of campaign labelling palm diesel to be as ‘dirty’ as fossil

fuel is picking up steam.

 

 

 

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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