Government 'greatly concerned' by palm oil production

19/05/2009 (The Independent) - The Government has joined calls for Britain’s best-selling household groceries to use sustainable palm oil.

The Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said the Government was “greatly concerned” by the impact of palm oil production in South-east Asia, where it causes extensive deforestation and threatens the survival of the orangutan and other rare animals.

Producers chop down forests in Sumatra and Borneo to plant high-yielding oil palms whose oil is poured into food, soaps and skin creams.

As the Independent disclosed earlier this month palm oil is in, or suspected to be in, 43 of the UK’s 100 best-selling grocery brands, including Cadbury Dairy Milk, Mr Kipling cakes and Dove soap.

It is often labelled as “vegetable fat” or “vegetable oil,” making it difficult for the public to exercise choice.

In his first intervention in the palm oil debate, Mr Benn told the Independent: “The UK Government is greatly concerned by the potential environmental impacts of unrestrained palm oil production, regardless of end use, and I want to see sustainability standards adopted to help halt damaging practices.”

The Cabinet minister added: “I am pleased that some UK businesses have already made commitments to using only sustainably-sourced palm oil and would strongly encourage others to do the same.”

His comments were welcomed by the World Wildlife Fund and will intensify pressure on food and household products firms to change their buying policies.

Last week WWF announced it would start scoring companies on whether they were matching their public commitments on sustainability with purchases of certified sustainable palm oil.

Almost four per cent of global palm oil production has been certified sustainable by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (Rspo) on the grounds that they have not been sited on recent rainforest land, limit pesticide use and treat workers well.

However since the first Rspo-certified supplies arrived in Europe in November, businesses have bought only 1 per cent of the amount available, 15,000 out of the 1.3m tonnes available. Unilever, which set up the Rspo with WWF in 2002, and Sainsbury’s are two companies which have bought the oil, which is about 15 per cent more expensive than normal supplies.

“This sluggish demand from palm oil buyers, such as supermarkets, food and cosmetic manufacturers, could undermine the success of sustainability efforts and threatens the remaining natural tropical forests of Southeast Asia as well as other forests where oil palm is set to expand, such as the Amazon,” saidDavid McLaughlin, WWF vice president of agriculture.

Ginny Ng, WWF’s senior program officer for Borneo and Sumatra, urged companies to act quickly. She warned: “The tropical forests of Borneo and Sumatra are being cleared at such a rapid pace that the carbon emissions from this deforestation are greater than the industrial emissions of some developed countries.

“The orangutans, elephants, tigers and rhinos on these islands don’t stand a chance of survival if their forests aren’t protected. Creating a demand for sustainably grown palm oil is essential to their survival.”

WWF urged companies to make public commitments that they would use 100 per cent Rspo-certified palm oil by 2015.

Although most companies say they want to move to source palm oil sustainably, only a few have named a date when they will switch to an Rspo-only supply. Premier Foods says it will do so by 2011, United Biscuits by 2012, Sainsbury’s by 2014, and Unilever, Northern Foods, Kraft and

Tesco all say they will do so by 2015.

Companies that have not set a date include Kellogg’s, Cadbury, Heinz, Mars, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Morrisons, Co-operative Group, Marks & Spencer, and Waitrose.

The Food and Drink Federation, which represents food manufacturers, said its members were fully aware of the need for palm oil to be from more sustainable sources and its “leading members” were actively participating in the Rspo.

“We hope other companies will follow this lead,” the FDF told the Independent.

“FDF fully supports the aims and the multi-stakeholder approach of the RSPO to bring more sustainable palm oil to the market. But the UK is only a small player in the complex global market for palm oil, importing approximately 1 per cent of the world’s annual crop”.

Plantation companies in conflict with villagers

19/05/2009 (The Jakarta Post), Jakarta - The palm oil industry has sparked controversy over environmental issues, as well as concerns over security.

The National Commission on Human Rights has received 10 cases of conflict related to oil palm plantations this year, while the environment ministry has received 56 environmental cases in 2009.

M. Zoel Fachry, the ministry’s deputy assistant, said cases of land disputes between oil palm plantations or mining companies and indigenous people were not uncommon across the country.

“Complaints from indigenous people against oil palm firms have continued to rise in recent years,” he said.

Sawit Watch researcher Norman Jiwan said this kind of case was typically found across Kalimantan and Sumatra.

“In Riau, there are places where conflicts between indigenous people and plantations have been waged for the past 15 years,” he said Monday.

“The problem is not only the large scale of this robbery [of forests], but the systematic rate at which it occurs,” he said. “What I fear is that it has come to the state where these problems over palm oil have become a regular occurrence,” he said.

He added the case of Langkai in Telawan district, Central Kalimantan, was just one of many cases where natives were trying to defend their rights.

“The country can be very proud of being the biggest producer of crude palm oil, but are the indigenous people allowed to have their say in this business? Have they been asked permission for the use of their land?”

He warned that anger over the companies’ lack of respect for local cultures could boil over, as had previously occurred.

“It’s just like the conflict between the indigenous Sampit people and Madura migrants,” Norman said, referring to the Sampit tragedy of early 2001, when hundreds of people were killed in ethnic clashes between Kalimantan-native Dayaks and migrants from Madura Island in East Java.

He added the potential for social unrest was already there.

In 2007, along with other local NGOs, Sawit Watch took the matter to the UN, seeking its intervention into the violation of the rights of the indigenous people of Kalimantan. “We requested the UN’s help to eliminate racial discrimination and prevent social conflicts,” he said.

In a statement made public on March 18, 2009, the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination strongly criticized Indonesia for failing to respect indigenous peoples’ rights in relation to oil palm plantations.

Sawit Watch has, until mid 2007, registered 500 cases of communities facing encroachment upon their lands by oil palm companies.

There are about 1,000 oil palm companies currently operating in the country, with total plantations of up to 7.5 million hectares, according to Sawit Watch. “For years, indigenous people have been losing their civil rights, and also their economical, social and cultural rights,” Norman said.

Getting a grip on oil palm issues - The Star Online

23/05/2009 (The Star Online) - THIS month didn’t start well for the plantation industry. Over the first two days, British newspaper The Independent ran several hard-hitting articles, anchored by a front-page editorial on May 1, that blamed the expansion of oil palm area in Malaysia and Indonesia for ills caused by deforestation.

The allegations – that the current clearing of land to make way for estates is crowding out indigenous people and wild animals, and is contributing to global warming – are not really news. We have heard these many times before.

However, the newspaper, known for its forceful campaigns on environmental issues, has adopted a relatively fresh angle that’s meant to lay a guilt trip on readers.

The Independent says it has discovered that many of Britain’s best-selling products, particularly food items, contain palm oil and therefore, consumers are part of the problem.

It relies on the name-and-shame tactic, listing manufacturers and retailers who use palm oil, and highlighting their policies on the commodity. These companies include Unilever, Cadbury, Mars, Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble, Nestle and Kraft.

“At breakfast, when millions of us are munching toast, we’re eating a small slice of the rainforest,” reminds an article. In other words, The Independent is saying the cookies, crisps and candy bars that the British love are laced with the blood of orangutans, the symbol of the victims of deforestation in Borneo and Sumatra.

The intent is clear – the newspaper wants to shape popular opinion into a market force that will pressure businesses into halting the opening of oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. The tool of choice is the threat of a consumer boycott.

Here’s how the May 1 editorial concludes: “The destruction wrought by the palm oil industry is no longer a distant problem. Its bitter fruits can be found in our shopping trolleys. We need to send a clear message to the food industry by removing them without delay.”

It is interesting that the package of articles in The Independent includes one written by Greenpeace forest campaigner James Turner.

The non-governmental organisation (NGO) has long pushed for a moratorium on oil palm expansion into Indonesia’s rainforest and peatland areas. This stance is increasingly relevant as we approach the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark in December.

The conservation of forests is expected to be a hot topic at the talks, and a strident consumer lobby against products with palm oil will definitely be a valuable bargaining chip.

There have been some attempts to counter the newspaper articles. In his latest blog entry, Malaysian Palm Oil Council chief executive officer Tan Sri Yusof Basiron says The Independent is “telling lies” and disputes several points raised in the stories.

A little-known outfit called the Palm Oil Truth Foundation also pooh-poohs the reports, saying The Independent has “joined the ranks of the integrity-challenged witch-hunters”.

Yusof is doing his job, of course, and The Independent articles are indeed more about putting across certain views than it is about presenting a balanced picture. So, there is much in the stories that can and should be contested.

However, the plantation industry must go beyond refuting untruths and inaccuracies. It should also come clean about its shortcomings and commit to plans to remedy these. There must be a willingness to strictly enforce the law and weed out the black sheep of the industry.

There is a sense that not all the oil palm growers and policy-makers in Malaysia quite grasp the nature and extent of the challenge the industry faces on the environmental front. For one thing, it’s wrong to liken this to the anti-palm oil lobby of the 1980s.

The opposition today is a different beast from that of 20 years ago, when the soybean farmers waged a turf war with the palm oil producers. Back then, the focus was palm oil itself and its effect on the health of consumers.

Today, the practices of the oil palm industry are being targeted, and those attacking are NGOs and the media, organisations that are widely seen as altruistic and trustworthy. It’s difficult to be dismissive when they are talking about saving the planet and its natural resources.

Fighting the anti-palm oil lobby of the 1980s required some savvy wielding of science and cold, hard facts. That won’t work well this time around because the issues raised are often emotional and abstract. Furthermore, the audience in the West are thousands of kilometres away. They will never get the ringside view that the plantation industry and we in Malaysia and Indonesia have. Merely presenting our side of the story will do little to help our case.

The best solution is to mature quickly into a well-regulated industry that deeply understands its impact on people and the environment.

To do this, the industry and the authorities have to first ask themselves some tough questions. Do we have our hearts in the right place? Are we united in what we stand for and in what we need to do to fight this? Are we ready to penalise those that do not play by the rules?

Have we done enough to ensure that the industry does as little harm to the world as possible, particularly by subscribing to the principles of sustainable production of palm oil? Are we transparent and open to engagement with all stakeholders?

Without honest answers to these questions, the palm oil industry will be hard-pressed to come up with a solid game plan that can lead to an enduring position of trust and respect among buyers, consumers and NGOs.

Slow Sales Of Sustainable Palm Oil Threaten Tropical Forests; WWF To Grade Palm Oil Buyers - East News Park Forest

12/05/2009 (East News Park Forest) - New figures released by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) today show that only 1 percent of the sustainable palm oil available on the market has been bought, raising concerns that one of the major solutions to halting deforestation of tropical forests is not catching on fast enough. Rapid increases in the production of palm oil, which is found in everything from cosmetics to ice cream to chocolate bars, has caused extensive land clearing in places like Borneo and Sumatra, resulting in loss of habitat for endangered species like tigers and orangutans and contributing to climate change.

Palm oil use has doubled over the last four years in the U.S., mostly in response to rising concerns about trans fats. WWF helped set up the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) as an international body for the industry to develop sustainability standards. Certified sustainable palm oil, available since November 2008, provides assurance that valuable tropical forests have not been cleared and that environmental and social safeguards have been met during production. Yet further production will hinge on manufacturers and retailers committing to buy what’s available.

In a bid to speed up the “sluggish performance,” WWF will assess the world’s major users of palm oil over the next six months and publish a Palm Oil Buyer’s Scorecard highlighting whether or not companies have supported sustainable palm oil and fulfilled their commitments to purchase it.

“So far, around 1.3 million tons of certified sustainable palm oil have been produced, but less than 15,000 tons have been sold,” said David McLaughlin, vice president of agriculture for WWF. “This sluggish demand from palm oil buyers, such as supermarkets, food and cosmetic manufacturers, could undermine the success of sustainability efforts and threatens the remaining natural tropical forests of Southeast Asia, as well as other forests where oil palm is set to expand, such as the Amazon.”

“The tropical forests of Borneo and Sumatra are being cleared at such a rapid pace that the carbon emissions from this deforestation are greater than the industrial emissions of some developed countries,” said Ginny Ng, WWF senior program officer for Borneo and Sumatra. “The orangutans, elephants, tigers and rhinos on these islands don’t stand a chance of survival if their forests aren’t protected. Creating a demand for sustainably grown palm oil is essential to their survival.”

WWF asks all companies buying palm oil to make public commitments that they will use 100 percent certified sustainable palm oil by 2015; to make public their plans with deadlines to achieve this goal; and to begin purchasing certified sustainable palm oil immediately.

The Palm Oil Buyer’s Scorecard will rank the commitments and actions of major global retailers, manufacturers and traders that buy palm oil. Companies will be scored on a variety of criteria relating to their commitments to, and actions on, sustainable palm oil. The scores are meant to help consumers evaluate the performance of these companies and encourage the companies themselves to better support the use of certified sustainable palm oil.

1. As a founding member of the RSPO, WWF has worked since 2002 with the palm oil industry to ensure that the RSPO standards contain robust social and environmental criteria, including a prohibition on the conversion of valuable forests. The RSPO brings together oil palm growers, oil processors, food companies, retailers, NGOs and investors to help ensure that no rainforest areas are sacrificed for new palm oil plantations, that all plantations minimize their environmental impacts and that basic rights of local peoples and plantation workers are fully respected.
2. The RSPO began in 2002 as an informal cooperation on production and usage of sustainable palm oil among Aarhus United UK Ltd, Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, Migros, Malaysian Palm Oil Association, Sainsbury’s and Unilever together with WWF. These organizations held the first Roundtable meeting in August 2003 in Kuala Lumpur in order to prepare the foundation for the organizational and governance structure that resulted in the formation of the RSPO. Since then the RSPO has grown to include more than 300 members between them accounting for more than 35% of global palm oil production.
3. The oil palm tree originated in West Africa but it has been planted successfully in many tropical regions including the world’s largest exporters of palm oil, Indonesia and Malaysia. Over 43 million tons of palm oil are produced worldwide and comprise a major food source all over the world. Palm oil is used in a wide variety of foods including margarine, cooking oil, chips, cakes, biscuits and pastries. Palm oil derivatives are also found in cosmetics, soaps, shampoos and detergents. Sales in Europe have grown recently due to palm oil being an effective substitute for partially hydrogenated soft oils such as those produced from soy oil, rapeseed and sunflower thereby eliminating trans-fatty acids from many products.
4. WWF recognizes that palm oil is a basic foodstuff with high consumer demand. Europe imports 2.7 million tons of vegetable oil annually for food and soaps, making it the third biggest market for palm oil in the world, after India and China. In addition, palm oil is increasingly used to replace fossil fuels in the transport and energy sectors of (mainly) developed countries. Taking into account the growing demand for palm oil for bioenergy as well as traditional uses, the FAO estimates that palm oil production will double between 1999/2001 and 2030.
5. Despite having the highest yield per hectare of any oil or oilseed crop, it is recognized that there are environmental pressures on its expansion to eco-sensitive areas, particularly as oil palm can only be cultivated in tropical areas of Asia, Africa and America. Oil palm plantations have often imposed environmental and social costs due to indiscriminate forest clearing, loss of habitat important to threatened and endangered species such as orangutan, elephants and tigers, uncontrolled burning with related haze, and disregard for the rights and interests of local communities.

'Green' power plants may burn palm oil - The Independent

11/05/2009 (The Independent) - The operators of Britain's first "biofuel" power plants are considering burning palm oil, which is blamed for causing rainforest destruction in south-east Asia.

At least four new power stations are being planned around the UK to burn vegetable oils with the assurance that they will generate less pollution than burning climate-change-causing fossil fuels. Two that would power more than 50,000 homes, at Portland in Dorset and Newport in South Wales, are considering using palm oil.

W4B Energy, which has submitted a planning application to build the £30m Portland plant, says it would use only sustainable supplies certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Vogen Energy, behind the plant at Newport, says production of its palm oil would not harm the environment.

But environmentalists say using any palm oil would be unwise because it would put pressure on supplies, even if the supplies which go into the power stations are officially sustainable. Some green groups are also unsure whether the RSPO system for certifying "sustainable" supplies is sufficiently robust.


Most of the 38 million tonnes of palm oil produced globally is used in food and cosmetics. But the need for biofuels to mix with petrol and as "feedstock" for power stations is putting pressure on demand, which is forecast to grow at 6 to 10 per cent a year.

Conservationists are concerned at the loss of primary forest in Sumatra and Borneo and elsewhere, to make way for plantations. New plantations result in large losses of wildlife and are blamed for imperilling the future of the tree-dwelling orangutan, which could become extinct in the wild in 20 years.

The power plants would help the UK meet its target of generating 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, but the Government says it must "proceed cautiously" to prevent biofuels raising food prices and destroying wildlife in developing countries. New sources of power are also required because new nuclear power stations will not be in operation until after 2020 and many existing fossil fuel power stations are coming to the end of their life.

But Robert Palgrave, a member of the pressure group Biofuelswatch, argued that growing crops for electricity was a less efficient use of resources than using that land for wind turbines: "To produce the amount of palm oil for food, cosmetics and biofuel is an incredible demand and the only way they can get it is through deforestation."

James Turner, a Greenpeace forests campaigner, said: "Using palm oil to fuel a power station could be even more damaging than burning fossil fuels."