Original article posted by Student Campaign to Stop BP at Berkeley
For further information: Student Campaign to Stop BP at Berkeley http://StopBP-Berkeley.org

Source of article: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/14/18461214.php

“Our Generation’s Manhattan Project” is now reality; students, faculty, citizens outraged

Wednesday Nov 14th, 2007
Berkeley, Calif.— As the San Francisco Bay Area reels from the worst oil spill in living memory, UC Berkeley and oil giant BP secretly signed a $500 million deal despite public criticism and calls for transparency. The contract will create an “Energy Biosciences Institute” (EBI) to do research on genetically engineered agrofuels (also known as biofuels) and microbes for enhanced oil and coal production. The final agreement, released today, allows BP to conduct secret research in the publicly-funded EBI building, while reaping the benefits of the open research done by university scientists on the same project.

The deal has become infamous since its preliminary announcement on February 1, 2007, as a threat to public research at the world’s premier public university. Its signing has been fraught with controversy as Berkeley faculty charged administrators with bypassing standard processes of governance. UCB administrators, who said the deal was negotiated “at warp speed,” also disregarded an external review the University commissioned in the wake of the equally ill-received Novartis-Berkeley deal of 1998, which advised them to “avoid industry agreements that involve complete academic units or large groups of researchers.” The university’s student government passed a strong resolution calling for the deal to be delayed so its terms could be studied.

The BP/Berkeley research, and schemes for large-scale agrofuel production in general, are facing strong popular resistance around the world, for instance from farmers in Africa, peasants and consumers’ groups across South America, and environmentalists from Papua New Guinea to Denmark and Germany. The use of land for large-scale agrofuel farming would place the unconstrained energy “needs” of first-world consumers into direct competition with cash-poor countries’ food supplies and conservation of rare and important ecosystems. These conflicts are already reality, even in today’s tiny agrofuel market, as U.S. ethanol production has led to riots over skyrocketing corn prices in Mexico earlier this year, and palm-oil farming for export threatens to drive the orangutan to extinction in Indonesia and Malaysia.

BP scientists will be treated like tenured faculty at Berkeley, with privileges such as teaching classes, mentoring students, and conducting research in a building constructed with $70 million of taxpayer funding.

The Institute’s researchers, including both Berkeley and BP scientists, will be housed in Berkeley’s Strawberry Canyon, a mere few hundred meters from the Hayward Fault, probably the most dangerous earthquake fault in Northern California. Untested genetically-modified organisms could easily be released in case of a serious earthquake.

This new development is a direct continuation of UC Berkeley’s past involvement in global devastation and inequality, from its participation in the devastation of native tribes and desecration of native remains to the development of nuclear weapons, all of which continue to this day. The research and technologies the EBI is designed to create are a direct threat to indigenous and traditional communities around the world. They have the potential to create new global catastrophes beyond the climate crisis, ranging from predictable extinctions and financial crises resulting from excessive pressure on the global agricultural economy to ecological collapses brought on by escaped genetically modified organisms.

BP and Berkeley administrators have referred to this project as “our generation’s moon shot” and compared it to the Manhattan project, the unprecedented large, fast and secret research project that created the Atomic Bomb. Like the Manhattan Project, the EBI is unprecedented in scale, is being initiated at Berkeley, and has been rushed into existence in secrecy. Democracy has no more place in this project than in its predecessor, and the damage it ultimately causes may be just as severe.

Resistance to the BP project, and any further violations of the UC’s responsibility to California and the world, will continue undeterred by this latest disgrace committed by the university’s administration. The Student Campaign to Stop BP at Berkeley (http://StopBP-Berkeley.org) has opposed the deal unequivocally since it was announced. Its recent international petition calling for transparency and a halt to negotiations quickly received nearly 1,000 signatures from people in over 50 countries.

For further information:
Student Campaign to Stop BP at Berkeley http://StopBP-Berkeley.org

Source: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/14/18461214.php

An interview with Borneo scientist Rhett Harrison

This incredibly informative interview originally appeared on Rhett A. Butler’s mongabay.com on November 13, 2007
Please visit the site: http://news.mongabay.com/2007/1113-interview_harrison.html
to see the interview with all accompanying photos, graphs and charts.

Borneo, the third largest island in the world, was once clothed with dense tropical rainforests. With swampy coastal areas fringed with mangrove forests and a mountainous interior, much of the terrain was virtually impassable and unexplored. Headhunters ruled the remote parts of the island until a century ago.

In the 1980s and 1990s Borneo underwent a remarkable transition. Its forests were leveled at a rate unparallel in human history. Borneo’s rainforests went to industrialized countries like Japan and the United States in the form of garden furniture, paper pulp and chopsticks. Initially most of the timber was taken from the Malaysian part of the island in the northern states of Sabah and Sarawak. Later forests in the southern part of Borneo, an area belonging to Indonesia and known as Kalimantan, became the primary source for tropical timber.

Though destruction was extensive on parts of the island, Borneo still harbors large areas of primary forests–many of which are officially protected–and enormous areas of logged-over forests that, given time, could recover and even today are important habitats for many species. But a new threat is fast-rising: industrial oil palm plantations

The threat from oil palm is driven by its status as the world’s most productive oil seed. A single hectare of oil palm may yield 5,000 kilograms of crude oil, or nearly 6,000 liters of crude, making the crop remarkably profitable when grown in large plantations, with net present values exceeding $4500 per hectare in some areas. As such, vast swathes of land are being converted for oil palm plantations. Oil palm cultivation has expanded in Indonesia from 600,000 hectares in 1985 to more than 6 million hectares by early 2007, and with prices surging toward $1000 per metric ton, is expected to reach 10 million hectares by 2010.

While environmentalists have been increasingly vocal about the conversion of natural forests for oil palm plantations, the market is driving the trend. At the same time, the palm oil industry has launched an aggressive marketing campaign that attempts to portray palm oil as a “green” solution to global warming. While palm oil can be produced in ways that make it carbon-neutral and minimize its impact on the environment, in the current rush few firms live up to the claims of their media materials. A recent investigation by Greenpeace supports the argument that the industry is not as accountable as it leads the public to believe. Greenpeace specifically noted that the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil appears to be failing to live of to its lofty standards of environmentally-friendly palm oil.

Nevertheless, there are signs of hope for conservation in Borneo. In February 2007, the governments of Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia agreed to a WWF-led initiative to protect roughly 220,000 square kilometers (85,000 square miles) of upland tropical forest in the so-called “Heart of Borneo”, while this coming December, policymakers will meet in Bali to discuss an “avoided deforestation” framework that could see hundreds of millions of dollars in the form of carbon credits go towards forest conservation on the island. Still, despite the good news, conservation in Borneo faces some serious challenges

In May, the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) — a group of 1500 scientists in over 70 countries — praised the “Heart of Borneo” plan but warned that it alone would not protect the bulk of the Borneo’s biodiversity found in its lowland forests. Further, the lack of a legal framework on avoided deforestation means that prices for carbon offsets through forest conservation are presently too low to attract much interest from investors. As long as the offset market is voluntary, avoided deforestation projects will struggle to compete with the likes of oil palm plantations.

Any forest protection initiative in Borneo is also overshadowed by the caveat that protected areas have not faired well on the island — especially the Indonesian territory of Kalimantan — over the past decade. A 2004 study published in Conservation Biology showed that between 1997 and 2002 nearly 79 percent of forest loss took place within the boundaries of designated or proposed protected areas.

In an interview with mongabay.com, Dr. Rhett Harrison, a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) associate researcher and Secretary for the Asia-Pacific Chapter of ATBC, says that law enforcement could be the key to safeguarding biodiversity contained in Borneo’s lowland parks.

“Simply investing in protecting the existing protected area system and enforcing wildlife protection laws would achieve far more [than "Heart of Borneo],” he said. “If the current protected area systems were actually protected things wouldn’t be so bad. However, throughout Borneo hunting and wildlife collecting are rampant (both inside and outside protected areas), and in parts of Kalimantan (Indonesia) you even have logging in some parks.”

Harrison, who is helping organize the 2008 ATBC-Asia-Pacific Chapter meeting in Kuching on sustainable land use, further states that there may be opportunities for conservationists to work with oil palm to developers to ensure that existing forests are not converted for plantations and that palm oil can be produced in a sustainable manner. He adds that carbon offsets may eventually offer a means to fund conservation and sustainable development efforts in areas that still have standing forest.

INTERVIEW WITH DR. RHETT HARRISON

Mongabay: What is the focus of your research?

Harrison: Since I starting working on my masters degree in Borneo back in 1994, my research has focused on the interactions between plants and animals, especially insects, and the stability of these interactions in the face of environmental change, such as forest fragmentation and climate change. Mostly I focus on pollination systems and my pet topic has always been figs.

Mongabay: Why are figs important to tropical forest ecology?

Harrison: For many reasons really. They are important for conservation because figs produce large quantities of easily digestible fruit at all times of the year - when other more seasonal fruit are scarce figs are often the only fruits available to sustain populations of fruit eating birds and mammals. Figs are also very diverse. In fact throughout the tropics they are commonly them most species-rich group of plants in any particular forest. And finally, in tropical Asia it has been shown that they are almost essential for the recovery of natural vegetation in disturbed landscapes, because they colonise quickly and their fruits attract seed dispersers, and therefore the seeds of other plants.

But figs are also interesting and important as a model system for studying co-evolution.

Mongabay: Wasps have an interesting relationship with figs, can you elaborate on this?

Harrison: What we normally think of as the fig fruit is in fact an inflorescence, that is a plant structure that bears many small flowers. Figs have a unique closed inflorescence, with the flowers lining the inside of this urn-like structure. The fig can therefore only be pollinated by tiny, highly specific wasps, known as fig wasps, that can push their way through the neck of the urn to reach the flowers inside. However, the wasps do not just pollinate but also lay their eggs in some of the flowers. The fig and its pollinator therefore have an obligate mutualism, as neither partner can reproduce without the other. A few weeks later when the wasp larvae have matured, they emerge from their galls and mate inside the fig. The female wasps then collect pollen from the fig’s male flowers, which ripen at this time. Simultaneously, the male wasps, which are wingless, cut a tunnel through the wall of the fig to allow the female wasps to escape. When the males emerge on to the surface of the fig, they are often attacked by ants, but by pouring over the surface of the fig and distracting the attentions of the ants, they help the female wasps to escape. As the wasps have already mated, it is easy to understand that the male wasps should be selected to sacrifice their lives in order to protect their genetic investment in the sperm that the female wasps are carrying. Female wasps only have from a few hours to one or two days to live, depending on the species, and fly off in search of a fig with receptive inflorescences to lay their eggs, and begin the cycle anew.

Mongabay: How did you get interested in this area of work?

Harrison: As an undergraduate I was involved with various volunteer conservation groups and in my second year led an expedition to a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon. After that I was hooked.

Mongabay: Do you have any advice for aspiring tropical biologists?

Harrison: Try and visit the tropics - especially if you can volunteer to work with existing projects or do as I did and organise an undergraduate expedition. Apart from the practice, it is good to get the experience of living and working in the tropics before you commit to doing a postgraduate study.

Mongabay: Recent trends in Borneo are discouraging. What are the biggest threats to the forests in coming years?

Harrison: The biggest threats are always, regardless of where you are, deforestation, fire, hunting, and the wildlife trade. The question should be, what is the biggest problem? The biggest problem is enforcement or rather the lack of enforcement. If the current protected area systems were actually protected things wouldn’t be so bad. However, throughout Borneo hunting and wildlife collecting are rampant (both inside and outside protected areas), and in parts of Kalimantan (Indonesia) you even have logging in some parks.

Mongabay: The Heart of Borneo initiative pushed by WWF has received a lot of attention but some question whether it will be effective. What do you think of the plan? Where does it fall short? Will it be enough to protect Borneo’s biodiversity?

Harrison: My personal opinion is that the Heart-of-Borneo project is mostly a publicity stunt by WWF. As a strategy to protect Borneo’s biodiversity it falls way short of what’s needed and is in fact diverting attention away from where it should be focused.

The problems with it are various. First, it does not address the main problem - enforcement. Simply investing in protecting the existing protected area system and enforcing wildlife protection laws would achieve far more. Second, the focus is on the upland forests in the interior of Borneo, where there already are several very large protected areas. It is the lowland forests that are most threatened and it is the lowland forests that have the highest biodiversity.

Fortunately, the definition of the project is quite vague and therefore there is a reasonable opportunity for WWF and the signatory countries to improve the scope of the project by, for example, including more lowland areas and focusing on enforcement. WWF should be congratulated for getting the Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei to commit to such a large scale conservation project, but a better thought out strategy for conservation in Borneo is required.

Mongabay: The Heart of Borneo conservation area is limited to the central part of Borneo. What about other protected areas on the island? What is the best way to safeguard these as well as maintaining biodiversity in human-altered landscapes?

Harrison: Enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.

Mongabay: A lot of Borneo today is covered with degraded lands. What are the prospects for large-scale reforestation or establishment of plantations on heavily damaged lands?

Harrison: They could be good. There is a great opportunity to use, for example, carbon offsets to pay for re-forestation. I would be especially interested in tying it to creating buffer zones and corridors connecting protected areas.

Unfortunately, most of the investment in plantations is in fast growing exotic species or Oil Palm, both of which are a disaster for biodiversity.

Mongabay: If oil palm isn’t the answer, what are better alternatives for rural populations in Borneo?

Harrison: There are some partnerships starting between Oil Palm companies and conservation NGOs, where land is set aside both inside the plantations and as protected areas, and local population is employed. These are a promising development. Again using carbon offsets, community forests could be an attractive option for achieving both rural development and conservation.

Mongabay: What can the general public do at home to help?

Harrison: Well obviously stay informed of the issues, and use your consumer power to effect change. For example, avoid products with palm oil until the Oil Palm industry decides on an acceptable certification scheme for eco-friendly palm oil.

If you are a member of WWF, then please demand that WWF conduct a proper eco-regional conservation assessment before proceeding further with the Heart-of-Borneo project.

Please visit MONGABAY.COM

Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development

It is estimated that one in 10 of all products sold in the UK contains palm oil.

A certification process designed to allow palm oil producers that meet environmental standards to label their products as eco-friendly was launched today.

The industry-led Round table on sustainable palm oil (RSPO), meeting in Kuala Lumpur, has drawn up the criteria which includes commitments to preserve rainforest and wildlife, avoid conflicts with indigenous people and improve palm oil yields.

The round table is made up of producers, such as Unilever and Procter and Gamble, consumers, and environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth (FoE) and WWF, which have criticised the rapidly expanding palm oil industry in south-east Asia for destroying rainforests and wildlife, and called for a moratorium on development.

Launching the certification process, Malaysian commodities minister, Peter Chin, accused environmental groups of harming palm oil’s image, particularly in the UK – where it is estimated that one in 10 of all products sold contains palm oil.

“Using these [emotive] arguments, they often manage to pressure the rest of the supply chain towards giving support through the adoption of negative policies, as being the case with some major retailers in the UK,” said Mr Chin.

Earlier this week, Sainsbury’s announced a ban on palm oil from unsustainable sources in its own-brand food. It follows a move this summer by The Body Shop and Asda to cut their use of palm oil from unsustainable sources. Asda plans to phase it out from 500 products and has banned supplied from the worst-affected regions in Borneo and Sumatra. The Body Shop has pledged to use only sustainable palm oil in its soap.

Ethical cosmetics company Lush, taking on board environmentalists’ concerns about so-called sustainable palm oil, is eliminating the ingredient from all it products.

“It seemed clear to us that the only way we could properly address the enormous problems created the growth in palm oil production was to cut our use of the material and encourage others to do the same,” said Lush’s head of creative buying, Simon Constantine.

The certified sustainable palm oil is expected to be available in the first quarter of next year. But FoE, which threatened to walk out of the round table talks after accusing the Malaysian and Indonesian governments of using the voluntary initiative as an excuse not to legislate to protect rainforests form the rapid expansion of palm-oil estates, says the certification is no guarantee that the oil is truly sustainable.

An investigation by FoE in the Netherlands linked several Indonesian suppliers, which were certified as sustainable, to illegal burning, habitat destruction and unapproved plantation development.

Hannah Griffiths, FoE campaigner said: “The two major problems with the RSPO certification scheme are that it is very difficult to enforce and it does allow some deforestation to take place. We want no further deforestation for palm oil production.”

Malaysia and Indonesia, home to more than 4% of the world’s rainforests, produce nearly 85% of total palm oil on 10m hectares of palm plantations. Greenpeace says that in Indonesia, between 2000-05, an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches was destroyed every hour to clear land for plantations.

Both nations have laws to protect tracts of rainforest against illegal logging but green groups say penalties should be stiffened, more rainforest should be locked away, and that existing laws are not properly enforced.

Yusof Basiron, the chief executive of the industry-funded Malaysian Palm Oil Council, has claimed that oil palm cultivation is not responsible for the destruction of rainforest.

But FoE says almost 90% of orangutan habitat has now disappeared because oil palm expansion. It warns that Asia’s great ape could become extinct in just 12 years.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/22/ethicalliving.food/print

The Russian vegetable oil market has caught the attention of one of the world’s leading producers and traders of palm oil. The Singaporean Wilmar International Ltd. and the Nizhny Novgorod Oil and Fat Combine group of companies may form a joint venture with equal shares to produce industrial lipids from palm oil. Wilmar, which has an annual revenue of $5.3 billion, may acquire the Nizhny Novgorod combine for $250-300 million, since it currently has no representation in Russia. The final decision on the deal will be made by January.
Wilmar International was founded in 1991. It owns 160 plants in 20 countries. Its net profit for 2006 was $105 million. Its stick is traded on the Singapore Exchange and its capitalization is more than $21 billion. The Nizhny Novgorod Oil and Fat Combine group consists of the combine itself, the Samara Lipid Combine, the Perm Sdobri Margarine Plant, two oil extraction plants and two elevators. In 2006, the group occupied 30 percent of the Russian margarine market, 18 percent of the mayonnaise market and 11.3 percent of the market for toilet soap. Its estimated proceeds for 2006 are 9.8 billion rubles.

Wilmar and the Nizhny Novgorod Oil and Fat Combine group are long-time trading partners. Observers say that Wilmar is following a tried pattern – forming a joint venture, then buying out its partner. The Singaporean company acted thus to obtain Delta Exports, the Ukrainian subsidiary of Wilmar Delta CIS. The oil market in the 2006-2007 season is estimated to be worth $5 billion.

Source: http://www.kommersant.com/p828069/lipids/

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A certification process was launched on Thursday enabling palm oil producers meeting stringent environment standards to label their products as eco-friendly.

Palm oil companies that meet the criteria set by an industry-led initiative, the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, will be able to market their certified “green products” in global markets.

“It has been launched and we hope by the first quarter of 2008, we should be seeing some sustainable palm oil,” said Teoh Cheng Hai, secretary general of the roundtable, which groups producers, consumers and environmentalists, such as Friends of the Earth and WWF.

The rapidly expanding palm oil industry in Southeast Asia has come under fire from green groups for destroying rainforests and wildlife.

An environmental group has even threatened to withdraw its support from the certification process, accusing Malaysia and Indonesia of cynically exploiting the initiative.

Friends of the Earth said the two nations appeared to be using the program as an excuse not to legislate to protect rainforests from the rapid expansion of palm-oil estates.

The criteria include commitments to preserve rainforests and wildlife, avoid conflicts with indigenous people and improve palm oil yields.

Malaysia and Indonesia, home to more than 4 percent of the world’s rainforests, produce nearly 85 percent of total palm oil.

Both nations already have laws to protect tracts of rainforests against illegal logging, but green groups say penalties should be stiffened and that more rainforests should be locked away. They also say existing laws are not properly enforced.

Malaysian commodities minister, who launched the certification process in Kuala Lumpur, accused the environment groups of harming palm oil’s image.

“These groups demand a moratorium on oil palm development. Unfortunately, many of these arguments are often driven by emotions rather than facts,” he said.

“Using these arguments, they often managed to pressure the rest of the supply chain towards giving support through the adoption of negative policies, as being the case with some major retailers in the United Kingdom.”

(Reporting by Naveen Thukral; Editing by Ben Tan)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSKLR14853020071122

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Three Jakarta junior high school students who made a five-minute documentary film on mangrove forests won a video news competition Tuesday, beating hundreds of participants from more than 200 schools across the country.

The students of Jubilee School in West Jakarta documented the story of a mangrove forest in Pulau Rambut, Kepulauan Seribu Regency, which had been seriously damaged.

Adeline Tiffanie, the scriptwriter and reporter for the documentary, said her team, which also included Sean Trianto P. Kusmuljadi and Monica Celine Triono, chose to document the mangrove forest as they were concerned about its poor condition.

“The mangrove forest is significant in protecting the coast from abrasion and serves as a habitat for many living creatures including birds, fish and seaweed,” said the eleven-year-old girl.

The winning team was selected by an independent panel of professional filmmakers and public figures in the “Kids Witness News” video education competition sponsored by PT Panasonic Gobel Indonesia in cooperation with the Jakarta Arts Institute and Hope Worldwide Indonesia.

PT Panasonic Gobel Indonesia commissioner Rahmat Gobel said this year’s environment theme for the competition encouraged students to identify issues relating to climate change.

“With the problem of global warming, environmental issues have become more important,” he said.

The company’s president director, Ichiro Suganuma, told The Jakarta Post the project was also aimed at improving media content.

“Our company has created technology including video and television, but we also think it is important to improve the content of television itself,” he said, adding the competition also encouraged students to develop valuable cognitive, communication and organizational skills.

The competition attracted 236 elementary and junior high schools from different parts of the country. On Tuesday, the top 10 teams, which won video equipment and the chance to attend a cinematography course at an arts institute, presented their films at Panasonic’s office in East Jakarta.

The first winner received a gold trophy and a study trip to Singapore in December. The winning team will also represent Indonesia in the world competition in Osaka, Japan.

The “Kids Witness News” contest started in the USA in 1988. Up until 2006, more than 100,000 students around the world had participated in the competition.

In Indonesia, the competition took place for the first time in 2004.

Second place in this year’s competition went to SMPN 4 state junior high school from Samarinda, East Kalimantan, while SDN 11 state elementary school from Pondok Labu, South Jakarta, won third place. The fourth and fifth-placed winners were SD Al Firdaus from Surakarta, Central Java, and SD Islam Dian Didaktika from Depok, West Java, respectively.

Rizka Amalia, 11, of SMPN 4 Samarinda told the Post about the school’s film on orangutan conservation.

“My students read a book that explained how orangutans were exploited in a circus, and they were so angry. To see my students’ reactions and sincere attitude was the most wonderful experience for me,” she said. (dia)

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation is currently a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) which is meeting this week in Kuala Lumpur. While the goals of the RSPO are in line with what we would like to see, there is some discussion that certain parties are using the Roundtable as a way of green-washing. Membership in the RSPO does not guarantee that a company is engaging in sustainable practices; we will only begin to see evidence when these companies put themselves forward for accreditation against the principals and criteria of the RSPO. BOS hopes that with this process in place, if integrity is maintained, that the RSPO will be able to identify the non-players in the use of sustainable palm oil. However, as this article points out, participation in the RSPO is voluntary. The only true way to protect the last remaining habitat of the orangutan would be for the Indonesian and Malaysian governments to put a complete moratorium on the conversion of High Conservation Value Forests to oil palm. BOS continues to push for both industry and governmental commitment to protect the rainforest as just one part of what it means to be sustainable.

By Niluksi Koswanage

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 21 (Reuters) - An environmental group has threatened to withdraw its support for a plan to certify “eco-friendly” palm oil, accusing the world’s two biggest producers of cynically exploiting the initiative.Friends of the Earth said the Malaysian and Indonesian governments appeared to be using the programme, a voluntary industry-led initiative, as an excuse not to legislate to protect rainforests from the rapid expansion of palm-oil estates.

The certification system is set to be unveiled in Kuala Lumpur this week at a meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which groups producers, consumers and green groups such as Friends of the Earth and WWF.

If green groups walk out of the roundtable, it could deal a blow to the industry, which is trying to promote palm oil as a sustainable alternative to petroleum. Demand for palm-based biofuel has sent demand and prices for the commodity soaring.

“The governments in Malaysia and Indonesia use the roundtable as an excuse not to undertake strong legislation to protect their environments and the rights of indigenous people,” said Ed Matthews, head of new economics for Friends of the Earth.

“That is beginning to happen now and if that continues to happen over the next year or two, then I think we would be deeply concerned about that and at that point we will have to walk away,” he told Reuters last Friday.

Malaysia and Indonesia, home to more than 4 percent of the world’s rainforests, produce nearly 85 percent of total palm oil.

Both nations have laws to protect tracts of rainforests against illegal logging, but green groups say penalties should be stiffened and that more rainforest should be locked away.

They also say existing laws are not properly enforced.The Malaysian Timber Council agreed that enforcement needed to be stepped up but rejected the call for stronger legislation.”Current laws have been more than adequate…,” a council spokeswoman said.

ALARM OVER EXPANSION PLANS

Malaysia has 19.3 million hectares of rainforests, peat and mangrove forests, with 78 percent of the area available for production, Forestry Department data showed.Many of these concessions are on the island of Borneo, in which Malaysia and Indonesia have territories.

It is a treasure trove of plant and animal species, including the orangutan.Malaysian states, such as Sarawak, on Borneo, are allowing palm oil firms to take up these concessions.”Unfortunately, there are no very strong government standards and enforcement is poor,” Friends of the Earth’s Matthews said.

“Sarawak is the place where companies are looking to achieve the greatest expansion of oil palm over the next five to 10 years and it is reeling in the money from these concessions.

“With palm oil prices hitting record highs, Malaysian planters are looking to expand beyond the 4 million hectares covered by palm-oil estates across Malaysia.Malaysian palm-oil firms already have nearly 1 million hectares of palm-oil estate in Indonesian Borneo.

Overall, there are around 6 million hectares of estate in Indonesia, and the country’s agriculture minister expects this area to expand by about 300,000 hectares per annum.

Malaysia is setting up an institute to probe allegations that palm-oil firms are also destroying peatlands which, with rainforests, are important in countering global warming.

“If by converting peat soil into palm plantations it will cause enormous emissions of carbon dioxide, then we will be taking proactive steps to limit peatlands usage but we have to be certain,” Malaysian Commodities Minister Peter Chin said on Friday. (Additional reporting by Naveen Thukral) (Editing by Mark Bendeich and Ben Tan)

Source: Reuters

November 20, 2007
Paul Icamina - AHN News Writer

London, England (AHN) - Expanding biofuel crop plantations through deforestation worsens global warming and harms local livelihoods and the environment, says the International Institute for Environment and Development in a new report.

The report, “Up In Smoke? Asia and the Pacific”, presents new evidence that biofuels could turn into a rush for “fools gold” across Asia as huge social and environmental costs outweigh the benefits.

The report cites one example, as farmers in Indonesia have expanded the development of oil palm plantations and deforested an estimated six million hectares of land. As a result of deforestation, some of which is for palm oil plantations, Indonesia is now the third-largest global emitter of carbon dioxide, after the U.S. and China.

Deforestation is already the second-largest contributor to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “Deforestation to make way for large-scale mono-cropping obliterates the green credentials of biofuels by actually increasing the amount of emissions rather than reducing them,” the report explained.

The economic attraction of biofuels is also leading to conflict between crops grown for food and those grown for fuel. Increasingly, the result is expected to be both greater competition for land and higher food prices, the report concludes.

Download the report as a PDF

Source: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009221849

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian edible oil refiner Jhunjhunwala Vanaspati Ltd said on Wednesday that it will spend up to 1.5 billion rupees ($38 million) to buy 20,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Indonesia.

“We are looking at either virgin or developed plantations in Indonesia. We may also consider other countries, including Malaysia,” company director S.N. Jhunjhunwala said in a statement.

India, the world’s second-biggest vegetable oil importer after China, buys palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia, and soyoil from Brazil and Argentina.

Some Indian refiners have expressed interest in buying oil palm plantations in Indonesia, a leading producer of palm oil.

Indonesia has the potential to add 10 to 11 million hectares of oil palm plantations, which currently total about 6 million hectares, without damaging virgin forests, M.R. Chandran, adviser to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, told Reuters in an interview in September.

Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-30620620071121

SINGAPORE: Southeast Asian nations declared Tuesday they would increase efforts to reduce pollution and strengthen the conservation of their resources, saying the effects of climate change must be urgently addressed.

“ASEAN cannot ignore the increasingly obvious and worrying signs of climate change,” said Lee Hsien Loong, prime minister of Singapore, which is hosting the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Leaders of the 10-member bloc issued a declaration to promote their efforts toward a sustainable environment.

The measures include achieving an “aspirational goal” of planting trees to cover at least 10 million hectares (25 million acres) in the region by 2020 to absorb greenhouse gases, according to the declaration signed Tuesday.

Members said they would promote the use of renewable and alternative energy sources, such as solar, hydro and wind, as well as civilian nuclear power, the declaration said.

The declaration states climate change and energy policies should not introduce barriers to trade and investment.

On pollution, ASEAN said it would boost regional cooperation to tackle the choking haze in the region caused by manmade forest fires to clear land for palm oil plantations, mostly in Indonesia.

The group also signed a declaration in support of the U.N. climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, next month.

Environmental group Greenpeace International welcomed the declarations, but said the documents lacked specific targets.

“It would certainly help to come up with ambitious renewable energy targets and efficiency targets so that it can create genuine incentives to formulate policies that will bring massive investments to the region,” said Red Constantino, a Manila-based Greenpeace campaigner.

Lee had earlier acknowledged that for many countries, it would be a challenge to strengthen efforts to address environmental issues without compromising competitiveness or economic growth.

“Unbridled growth without heed to environmental consequences will ultimately be disastrous,” Lee said. “But neither can countries lightly sacrifice economic growth and higher living standards for our peoples.”

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda was expected to unveil Wednesday a major initiative to help Asian countries — in particular China and India — cut back carbon emissions and combat climate change.

ASEAN’s members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

November 20, 2007
Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/20/asia/AS-GEN-ASEAN-Environment.php

Sainsbury’s has announced a ban on an ingredient used in tens of thousands of its products that is blamed for the destruction of tropical rainforests.

The supermarket chain said it would phase out the use of palm oil from unsustainable sources in its own-brand food, after pressure from campaigners and customers . It is estimated that the oil is used in one in 10 of all products sold in Britain.

Booming demand for palm oil has fuelled concerns over the felling of huge sections of rainforest in countries such as Indonesia to make way for plantations.

Sainsbury’s says it intends to accept palm oil only from certified sustainable sources, starting with plantations in Colombia. It has pledged to convert its first products to the new sustainable oil by next May, and will announce a deadline for the total phase-out of unsustainable sources by February. It also intends to label the use of palm oil in all of its food by July.

Judith Batchelar, director of Sainsbury’s brand, said: “From soap to biscuits, palm oil is in thousands of everyday food and beauty items wherever you shop. Rather than banning the use of palm oil, we want to find a sustainable solution that will stop deforestation while continuing to support the communities that rely on its production.”

Only a small amount of palm oil on the world market is from sustainable sources, and Sainsbury’s said it would encourage suppliers in Borneo to clean up their act. Cutting down primary forest releases greenhouse gases and is driving animals such as the orangutan towards extinction.

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation called the supermarket’s move a “huge step”. Adam Harrison, senior food and agriculture policy officer for WWF, said: “We welcome Sainsbury’s move to address the serious impacts of palm oil demand and hope their actions will inspire others to follow suit.”

The announcement follows a move this summer by the Body Shop and Asda to cut their use of palm oil from unsustainable sources. Asda plans to phase it out from 500 products and has banned supplies from the worst-affected regions in Borneo and Sumatra. Body Shop has pledged to use only sustainable palm oil in its soap.

The Swiss supermarket Migros banned the use of palm oil linked to forest destruction in its own-brand products in 2002.

Hannah Griffiths, of Friends of the Earth, said: “The supermarkets are in a difficult position because they are under pressure to act, but growing sustainable palm oil on the massive scale required is very difficult. And the certification is no guarantee that the oil is truly sustainable.”

An investigation by Friends of the Earth in the Netherlands linked several Indonesian suppliers which were certified as sustainable to illegal burning, habitat destruction and unapproved plantation development.

Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: November 21, 2007

Nov 21, 2007
By Sugita Katyal

JAKARTA, Nov 21 (Reuters) - For years, Indonesia has made money by chopping down its forests. Now it wants to earn billions by preserving what is left.

The huge archipelago, with about 10 percent of the world’s tropical rainforests, is pinning its hopes on next month’s U.N. climate talks in Bali.

The government is backing a scheme that aims to make emission cuts from forests eligible for carbon trading.

Experts estimate Indonesia could earn more than $13 billion by preserving its forests if the carbon trading plan gets support in Bali.

About 190 countries will gather on the Indonesian resort island to try to hammer out a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, a global pact aimed at fighting global warming.

“Carbon will be the new valuta (currency),” Marcel Silvius, senior programme manager of Wetlands International, told Reuters.

“In the coming years we may see investments in millions, in the next decade it may be hundreds of millions.”

Indonesia’s forests are a massive natural store of carbon, but environmentalists say rampant cutting and burning of trees to feed the pulp, timber and palm oil sectors has made the country the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions.

Indonesia’s forests, a treasure trove of plant and animal species including the threatened orangutan, emit a staggering 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to a report sponsored by the World Bank and British development agency.

Deforestation is estimated to contribute 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions — more than all the emissions of the world’s cars, trucks, trains and airplanes combined.

Environmental groups say that protecting tropical forests is the most direct and fastest way to mitigate some of the impact of climate change.

“Trade in palm oil by some of the world’s food giants and commodity traders is helping to detonate a climate bomb in Indonesia’s rainforests and peatlands,” global environmental group Greenpeace said in a recent report titled “How the Palm Oil Industry is Cooking the Climate”.

TROPICAL RAINFORESTS

Indonesia is one of the few countries that still has swathes of tropical rainforests left.

Even though it has lost an estimated 70 percent of its original frontier forest, it still has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres (91 million hectares), with a host of exotic plants and animals waiting to be discovered.

The richest forests are found in Borneo — the world’s third-largest island shared among Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei — which is home to about 2,000 types of trees, more than 350 species of birds and 210 mammal species.

Many animals such as pygmy elephants, orangutans as well as the clouded leopard, the sun bear and the Bornean gibbon top the list of Borneo’s endangered species.

Charles Darwin described Borneo as “one great untidy luxuriant hothouse made by nature for herself”.

But environmentalists say the island is being stripped by illegal logging, slash-and-burn farming and creation of vast oil palm plantations.

Greenpeace estimates Indonesia had the world’s fastest rate of deforestation between 2000-2005, losing the equivalent of 300 soccer pitches every hour.

There is no clear estimate of Indonesia’s current deforestation rate, but figures range between 2.5 million and 3.5 million hectares a year.

‘HEADING FOR THE WATERFALL’

“We’re in a canoe heading for the waterfall,” Frances Seymour, director-general of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), said.

“Current rates of deforestation, whether it is here in Indonesia or anywhere else in the world, are unsustainable and need to be slowed.”

During the Bali conference, participants will hear a report on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation (RED) — a new scheme that aims to make emission cuts from forest areas eligible for global carbon trading.

Conservation and research experts have said deforestation rates have dropped significantly after the Indonesian government’s recent moves to implement tough measures on illegal logging and a new law prohibiting the use of fire to clear land.

But Indonesia says it must be given incentives, including a payout of $5-$20 per hectare, to preserve its forests.

“We want an appreciation of the forest cover that we have, because in maintaining it, we want to lobby for a compensation for that,” Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar told Reuters in a recent interview.

“The world will benefit very much if the hundreds of millions of forests all over the world, not just Indonesia, will be restored. And for that the world will be happy to pay.”

He did not say how Indonesia, where corruption is rife and law enforcement is often lax, could ensure the full protection of its forests under such a scheme.

Jakarta has been trying to mobilize nations with most of the world’s tropical rainforests — Brazil, Cameroon, Congo, Costa Rica, Gabon, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea — ahead of the talks.

“Carbon is the big hope,” Ian Kosasih, director of the WWF’s forest programme in Jakarta, told Reuters, referring to carbon trading as the answer to saving Indonesia’s forests.

“Eighty percent of carbon emissions come from fossil fuels and 20 percent from land use. But in Indonesia, the figure is opposite, which relates to how important forests are to carbon emissions,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Adhityani Arga; editing by Ed Davies and David Fogarty)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSP21478