Demand for biofuels is destroying tribal peoples’ land and lives, according to indigenous representatives at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), meeting currently in New York.

A report presented to the UNPFII refers to ‘increasing human rights violations, displacements and conflicts due to expropriation of ancestral lands and forests for biofuel plantations.’ One of the report’s authors, UNPFII chairperson Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, has said that if biofuels expansion continues as planned, 60 million indigenous people worldwide are threatened with losing their land and livelihoods.

Palm oil is one of the most destructive crops used for biofuels. Millions of indigenous people in Malaysia have already been affected by palm oil plantations, and millions more in Indonesia, where over 6 million hectares of oil palm have been planted, mostly on indigenous territory. In Colombia, thousands of families, many of them indigenous, have been violently evicted from their land because of palm oil plantations and other crops.

Malaysia, Indonesia and Colombia all plan to expand their palm oil plantations. Indonesia has announced plans for plantations in Borneo, projected to displace up to 5 million indigenous people, and 5 million hectares, much of it indigenous land, has been set aside for palm oil in Papua. Colombia is planning 6.3 million hectares of plantations, which could affect more than 100 indigenous communities.

‘If the government take our land, what will we have left?’ an indigenous Papuan leader said in an interview with Survival. ‘If there is a plantation, our land will be destroyed.’

Other crops for biofuels include sugar cane, soy, corn, manioc and jatropha, a plant native to Central America. The Guarani in Brazil have lost much of their land to sugar cane cultivation, while the government in India is targeting 13.5 million hectares of what it calls ‘wasteland’, much of which is actually indigenous land.

Survival’s director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The biofuels boom doesn’t just have consequences for the environment, global food prices or orang-utans – it’s having a devastating effect on tribal people too. The companies feverishly promoting this industry have been perfectly willing to push aside tribal people in their hunger for land.’

Source: http://www.survival-international.org/news/3279

Costlier Palm Oil, Europe Oversupply Cast Cloudy Outlook

By TOM WRIGHT
April 30, 2008

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Plans to invest billions of dollars in biodiesel refineries across Southeast Asia have been put on hold as the prices of key raw ingredients — particularly palm oil — have shot up amid surging food demand in China and India.

An oversupply of biodiesel fuel in Europe thanks to a wave of heavily subsidized U.S. imports and growing concern in the West about the adverse environmental impact of oil-palm cultivation have added to the bleak outlook, Asian producers say.

That is an unexpected reversal of fortune for the industry. Just a year ago, Asian companies were rushing to build biodiesel plants to take advantage of subsidies in Europe and the U.S. aimed at promoting the consumption of cleaner-burning fuels.

Projects being built or planned were forecast to pump out five million metric tons of biodiesel a year upon completion, or about half of Europe’s total refining capacity in 2007. The Indonesian government boasted that $12.5 billion in new biofuel investments were in the pipeline for that country alone.

Biodiesel, refined from vegetable oils, is mixed with regular diesel and sold at the pump in Europe and the U.S. In theory, the blended fuel reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by stretching how far a vehicle can travel on gasoline or regular diesel.

The planned outlays on refineries seemed to make sense when crude-oil prices began rocketing last year. But the price of palm oil — produced widely in Southeast Asia — has climbed even more steeply, making biodiesel plants that use the commodity commercially unviable.

At the same time, the European Union — by far the world’s largest consumer of biodiesel — is tightening its subsidy program to specifically exclude biodiesel produced from palm oil grown on recently destroyed natural forest. Razing forests to plant palm oil — a common, if often illegal, practice in places like Indonesia — releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, negating any benefit from cleaner-burning fuels, recent studies have found.

Biodiesel makers in Asia are also complaining that U.S. exporters have flooded the European market with biodiesel fuel up to 30% cheaper than they are able to produce. U.S. producers of soybean-derived biodiesel get a $1 per gallon tax credit and then export their product to Europe, benefiting from subsidies there as well. Last week, an association of European biodiesel producers filed an official complaint to the European Commission claiming the U.S. export of subsidized biodiesel constitutes unfair competition.

The result: Some Asian palm-oil producers have scrapped their plans for biodiesel refineries, and only a few new plants have come on line. In Malaysia, for instance, the industry produced just 80,000 metric tons of biodiesel last year, much lower than the country’s annual capacity of one million tons, Malaysian Commodities Minister Peter Chin said last week.

“At current high palm-oil prices, palm biodiesel is not viable,” says Au Kah Soon, a spokesman for Wilmar International Ltd, a Singapore-based palm-oil plantation owner. Last year, Wilmar completed Southeast Asia’s largest biodiesel plant on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. But the plant, which has the capacity to produce around one million tons of biodiesel each year, is running only to meet current contracts. “We foresee a very small percentage of our revenue coming from biodiesel this year,” Mr. Soon says.

Sinar Mas Agro Resources & Technology Ltd., an Indonesian palm-oil company, has also suspended plans to invest $5.5 billion to build a huge biodiesel complex in Indonesia’s remote Papua province with China National Offshore Oil Corp., says a Sinar Mas Agro spokeswoman. The plan to develop one million hectares of virgin rainforest for the plantations has drawn complaints from environmentalists.

Biodiesel producers who don’t own oil-palm plantations have been hardest hit because they must fork out ever higher prices for their raw materials. Crude-palm-oil futures on the Malaysian Derivatives Exchange have climbed 12% so far this year after jumping 50% in 2007.

Mission Biofuels Ltd., which runs a refinery in Malaysia and is listed in Australia, warned investors recently that core earnings for its financial year ending June will be less than half an earlier forecast. Swaminathan Mahalingam, the company’s managing director, says the 100,000-tons-per-year plant is operating at only 40% capacity. “We’re only producing biodiesel if we have an order which makes sense,” he says.

To be sure, biodiesel could still play an important role if fossil-fuel output is unable to keep up with growing world energy demand. Many biodiesel producers in Southeast Asia say they might kick-start production again if crude-oil prices remain above $115 per barrel.

Goldman Sachs estimates that palm-oil-derived biodiesel exports to the EU can break even at current prices if crude remains above $100 a barrel. To be commercially viable, similar biodiesel exports to the U.S. would require crude oil to trade at above $120 a barrel, Goldman estimates.

Some biodiesel producers that buy palm oil from third parties say they can still make their expansion plans work. Finnish company Neste Oil Corp., for example, is moving ahead with an $800 million biodiesel plant in Singapore, which is expected to start operations in 2010.

Simo Honkanen, a vice president at Neste, says sales of the company’s high-performance biodiesel are strong. Neste is confident it will be able to pass higher palm-oil prices to customers. “Those that survive will be companies that have a superb product,” he says.

Meanwhile, some Southeast Asian palm-oil producers are refocusing on more traditional products and markets. Palm oil is still much more widely used to make cooking oil, margarine and cosmetics than it is for biodiesel. With diets improving in China and India, cooking-oil demand has soared, driving up prices. With subsidized U.S. and European soybean oil still flowing into biodiesel, some palm-oil producers, including Wilmar, have switched gears and are trying to exploit the opportunity to supply China and other Asian markets with cooking oil.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120950216587953897.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

PETA Press Release

Company Unmoved by Experts’ Warnings About Violent Training Methods and Other Abuses Suffered by Great Ape ‘Actors’

For Immediate Release:
April 28, 2008

Contact:
Kristie Phelps 757-622-7382

Columbus, Ga. — For using a live, young orangutan to portray the inferior nature of a competitor in a television commercial, insurance company Aflac, which is based in Columbus, Ga., has been nominated for a PETA Litterbox Award. PETA gives out Litterbox Awards once a year for ads that stink for animals.

Aflac has ignored evidence provided by PETA from the world’s foremost great-ape experts about the abuses of young orangutans and other nonhuman primates used in entertainment. Infant orangutans are taken from their mothers and often are beaten and electrically shocked behind the scenes to force them to pay attention and repeat what–to them–are senseless acts. PETA also provided Aflac with evidence from a primatologist who spent 14 months working undercover at a California facility that trains great apes for the television and film industries. The primatologist witnessed trainers kicking, punching, and beating the animals. At around 8 years of age, orangutans become too powerful to be safely handled and are often discarded in decrepit roadside zoos. A study recently published by primatologists in the journal Science concluded, “[T]he inappropriate portrayal of great apes in advertisements undermines the scientific, welfare, and conservation goals that we and many readers work hard to achieve.”

Nearly 3,500 people have complained to Aflac since PETA posted an action alert about the commercial on its popular Web site. PETA is urging Aflac to join Subaru, Honda, PUMA, and other companies that have made a commitment not to use great apes in future ads after receiving information from PETA. The group also gives out Glitterbox Awards to companies that depict animals in a positive manner and promote respect for animals in their ads.

“Aflac is damaging its own reputation by ignoring the public’s interest in the preservation and protection of great apes,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “Aflac needs to send the right message by pulling this offensive ad and pledging never to use great apes again.”

PETA’s correspondence with Aflac is available upon request. For more information, please visit PETA’s Web site NoMoreMonkeyBusiness.com.

By Dr Glen Barry

To comment: http://forests.org/blog/2008/04/legal-logging-destroying-the-e.asp

http://www.rainforestportal.org/ — Rainforest Portal
http://forests.org/ — Forests.org
http://forests.org/blog/2008/04/legal-logging-destroying-the-e.asp

April 28, 2008
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet

It is easy to rail against “illegal” logging, when in fact typical “legal” commercial logging is far more extensive and destructive in total to the world’s biodiversity, climate, water and biosphere. Both liquidate life giving natural habitats, and more people are realizing they are mostly ecologically indistinguishable. Ancient primary forests industrially harvested for the first time are in fact destroyed — in terms of being a fully intact ecological system with a unique, unimpaired evolutionary trajectory — regardless if society considers it legal or illegal. Natural and planted secondary forest ecosystems managed industrially as tree farms become further ecologically diminished with each successive harvest including continued toxification, soil diminishment, species and genetic loss, reduced carbon and water holding potential, and so many other symptoms of ongoing biological homogenization.

Humanity’s relationship with all forests must be transformed if we are to stop the hemorrhaging of lost species and halt transformation of the atmosphere. Industrial forestry is incompatible with sustaining the full range of natural forest values — from species to genes, from soil microbes to local microclimates, from a forest stand to the Earth system and everything in between. Solving the biodiversity, climate and water crises requires a new forest protection paradigm that optimizes ecosystem, biodiversity and climate values while ecologically sustainably harvesting the annual growth increment (minus ecological restoration of natural capital to account in the future for past damage).

To maintain an operable biosphere while achieving equitable and just global ecological sustainability, the forest protection movement must unite behind a rigorous set of goals know to be actually sufficient to stop forest and climate decline. This includes ending ancient forest logging and all industrial destruction of relatively intact natural ecosystems, gaining permanent protections for all remaining primary and old-growth forests (with appropriate compensation and continued small scale use for local peoples), promoting the ecological restoration and certified management of regenerating and planted natural forest ecosystems, and assisting local peoples with small-scaled, community-based eco-forestry projects based upon regenerating secondary and standing ancient forests.

Ecological Internet’s network and partners are committed to this sufficient, ecology and people based forest protection agenda. This ecologically sufficient forest vision is the only way forward for forests including rainforests, species including humans, and ecosystems including Gaia. To work for anything less is to acquiesce to the powers of ecological simplification, accepting ecological diminishment and collapse as inevitable, while pursuing tokenistic responses that by legitimizing current trends impede global forest sustainability. You know who I am talking about, and if it is you, I urge you to reexamine your motivations and strategies. Otherwise, your apologist reform efforts causing continued forest destruction remains a legitimate target for protest.
By Dr Glen Barry

To comment: http://forests.org/blog/2008/04/legal-logging-destroying-the-e.asp

SEREMBAN: Drug traffickers from the Klang Valley and Johor went “harvesting” at an oil palm estate in Negri Sembilan. However, the joint-venture had nothing to do with palm oil or oil palm fruits. Instead, police investigations revealed that the traffickers had set up a drug distribution centre hidden away in the plantation to avoid police detection.

For a while, they operated the centre without any police harrassment. But not for long. They underestimated the power of police-public cooperation.

State narcotics crime investigation department chief Supt R. Ravichandran said police crippled the distribution centre, thanks to public cooperation.
“Members of the drug syndicate had used the oil palm plantation as a distribution centre, thus making it difficult for us to locate them.

“However, with the cooperation and information from the nearby villagers, our operations against the syndicate went satisfactorily,” he told reporters at his office here today.

Ravichandran said on April 25, a 26-year-old drug pusher was detained while trying to distribute drugs in Taman Seremban Jaya.

The suspect was believed to be linked to a drug syndicate in the Klang Valley.

Source: http://www.palmoilhq.com/PalmOilNews/police-drug-raid-on-malaysian-oil-palm-estate/

A male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish.

It is the first time one has been photographed using a tool to hunt.

The extraordinary image, a world exclusive, was taken in Borneo on the island of Kaja, where orangutans are rehabilitated into the wild after being rescued from zoos, private homes or even butchers’ shops. The island is part of the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation Center, which is operated by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.

“Orang hutan” means “forest man” in Bahasa Indonesia and our long-armed cousins do indeed show a remarkable ability to mimic our behavior.

This individual had seen locals fishing with spears on the Gohong River.

Although the method required too much skill for him to master, he was later able to improvise by using the pole to catch fish already trapped in the locals’ fishing lines.

The image is part of a series taken for a new book, The Thinkers Of The Jungle, which also includes the first photograph of an orangutan swimming.

Thinkers Of The Jungle, by Gerd Schuster, Willie Smits and Jay Ullal, is published by Ullmann Publishing.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=562236&in_page_id=1965

Are you a “green” consumer? Even if your intentions are good, your “Earth friendly” soap and organic ice cream may be driving species to extinction and heating up the planet, especially if these products contain palm oil.

Palm oil is a cheap vegetable oil used in products such as lipstick, soap, detergents, dry soups, ice cream and increasingly for so-called ‘biofuels’. Global demand for palm oil is booming, and to meet this demand, industrial agriculture giants clear vast swaths of Paradise Forests in Southeast Asia to create palm oil plantations. This deforestation results in habitat loss, harm to local people species extinction, and global warming.

Paving Paradise

Forest destruction for the development of the palm oil industry is taking place primarily in the Asia/Pacific Paradise Forests, primarily in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea (PNG). When deforestation is factored in, Indonesia is among the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. These Asian forests represent a green wall against uncontrollable climate change. Their destruction results in irreplaceable biodiversity loss and increased global warming due to the release of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Twenty percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are the result of deforestation.

Forest destruction is worst where forests grow on peatlands, like in large parts of Southeast Asia. Peatlands store vast amounts of carbon, globally up to 528 billion tons (70 times the current annual global emissions from fossil fuel burning). Emissions from current deforestation on SE Asia’s peatlands alone, equals to almost 8 percent of global emissions from fossil fuel burning. Riau province in Sumatra, subject to a massive expansion of palm oil plantations, alone comprises 4 million hectares of peatland (the size of Taiwan), storing 14.6 billion tonnes of carbon. If these peatlands are destroyed, the resulting emissions would equal an entire year of mankind’s global greenhouse gas emissions.

Magnificent animals now threatened by this deforestation include the Sumatran tiger, rhino, elephant, birds of paradise, and the critically endangered orang utan. Indonesia contains between 10-15 percent of all known species of plants, mammals and birds that make up the world’s biodiversity. Borneo and Sumatra, now host the world’s remaining orang utans. They depend on the forest for food and nesting sites. According to the Centre for Orangutan Protection, at least 1,500 orang-utans died in 2006 as a result of deliberate attacks by plantation workers.

Wolves guarding the sheep

Nearly 75 percent of Indonesia’s pristine forest areas have already been destroyed or degraded. Meanwhile, demand for palm oil is predicted to double by 2030 and triple by 2050. To meet this demand, the industry intends to convert more Asian forests to plantations. The UN Environmental Program estimates that 98 percent of Indonesian lowland forests could be gone by 2022.

To counter bad publicity about disappearing forests, the palm oil industry in Asia formed the “Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Production” (RSPO). The word “sustainable” sounds earth-friendly, but notice that palm oil production is enterprise to be sustained, not the forest, the animals, or the Earth’s climate.

The chair of RSPO is a representative from Unilever, among the world’s biggest palm oil buyers. Other corporations on the board include plantation owners, commodities traders, and buyers such as Cargill, Cadbury’s, Nestle, Tesco, and Golden Hope. Together these companies control about 40 percent of the global palm oil market. The wolves are guarding the sheep.

Greenwashing and cherry picking

Earth Day once served the purpose of raising awareness about the environment. Today, few people remain unaware, so perhaps the new purpose of Earth Day is to help people distinguish between real solutions and pure “Greenwashing,” making a company or industry look green for public relations purposes, without actually changing environmentally harmful practices.

Corporations now realize that consumers care about the environment, so they have set their public relations departments loose to sell a new, “green” image. In 2003, Co-op America selected Starbucks as one of the “Ten Worst Greenwashers” for their reluctance to reduce paper waste or purchase Fair Trade coffee. Starbucks promised to add “up to 10 percent” recycled material in their coffee cups, “within five years.”

Tricks of the green spin trade include “cherry-picking” data to look scientific while promoting a single point of view. “Astroturfing” is the tactic of making industry support groups that look green. Global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller pioneered this tactic in the 1980s with “Forest Alliances,” funded and controlled by the international logging industry.

The Unilever-led RSPO uses some of the same Astroturfing tactics, creating an ineffective body with an environmental sounding name to obscure the continued destruction of the world’s irreplaceable forests. Unilever is a marketing company that distributes some of the world’s best-known brands, including Dove soap, Vaseline skin cream, the Heartbrand ice cream, and Slim Fast diet products. Most of these products include palm oil.

We at Greenpeace are asking Unilever to live up to their promise of “sustainability,” by refusing to purchase palm oil from suppliers that are destroying forests for plantations. The destruction of these forests destroys habitat for endangered species and contributes to global warming. We are asking customers, who buy Unilver products, to write to the company and urge them to become authentic good citizens, not greenwashers.

— Rex Wyler
Take action against Unilever. Visit http:///www.greenpeace.org.ph/dove

Source: http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20080425000021135