Orangutan Outreach Website - Saving the Orangutan

WE NEED A PROGRAM LIKE THIS IN THE U.S.
CONTACT US IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN! ~ RZ

By Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

An initiative to help to stop orangutans being driven into extinction has put the price of saving the apes at £568.48 a head.

Conservationists are attempting to save vital areas of forest from destruction by buying them from loggers and farmers to ensure that the apes have enough habitat to survive.

In the first stage of a scheme to buy and preserve thousands of acres of tropical forest in Borneo, conservationists have identified a 222-acre plot that links two protected reserves supporting 604 orangutans.

The animals are under so much pressure from habitat loss that they face virtual extinction in the wild, with only a few small groups left.

Orangutans suffer a double whammy from deforestation because the loss of trees deprives them of territory, while the fragmentation of wooded areas limits their ability to travel to meet new mates and find fresh sources of food.

In an effort to fight the effects of fragmentation a campaign has begun to buy thousands of acres of forests from farmers and loggers before they can be chopped down.

By preserving the privately owned land, conservationists will be able to link up small but valuable reserves in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, where orangutans are already protected.

Other rare animals that will benefit by the forest being saved include Borneo pygmy elephants, the proboscis monkey and several types of hornbill. The first plot to be identified has been offered by a palm oil company to conservationists if they can come up with £343,364 by Christmas. The price means that it will cost £568.48 to save each of the 604 orangutans known to be living in the neighboring reserves and an appeal has now been started by the World Land Trust, based in Suffolk, to raise the money in a race against time.

Wildlife experts have identified thousands more acres of privately owned land that they hope to buy to form forested bridges linking up eight other protected reserves that form the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary.

Deforestation to make way for palm oil crops is the biggest pressure on orangutan numbers, which have halved in the past 20 years to an estimated 40,000 to 50,000.

Emma Stuart, a spokeswoman for the WLT, said that the strip of land on offer has the potential to play an important part in protecting orangutans. “This corridor will create a viable reserve for orangutans to live in,” she said. Money raised for the appeal will be used by the WLT to buy the land but ownership and land management responsibility will be handed to Leap Conservancy, a nongovernmental organization in Borneo.

Sir David Attenborough, the WLT’s patron, has previously voiced his support for saving the orangutan’s habitat: “Every bit of the rain-forest that is knocked down is less space for orangutans.”

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4446364.ece

In Indonesia, the thirst for palm oil is decimating the rainforest habitat these primates need to survive

Photo and article by Anna Sussman
Please visit the source of this article: Plenty

Crouching low in a canoe, my sneakers and socks are quickly soaked with river water. A stocky, shirtless park ranger in blue jeans pulls the boat across the river by rope-pulley rigged between trees. When we reach the opposite shore, we climb out of the vessel and walk along the muddy riverbanks and up through the rainforest until we reach a feeding platform. There, park rangers bang loudly on a plastic bucket. They are calling the orangutans.

I have come to northern Sumatra, an island in the Indian Ocean covered with twisting dirt roads and steep green mountains, to report on the orangutans because there isn’t much time. Experts say the world’s 30,000 remaining orangutans will go extinct in 3 to 20 years. The last of the hairy apes live on the islands of Indonesia and Malaysia, where they spend most of their time in the trees, eating fruits and leaves.

Here in Indonesia, their forest home is being leveled at a rate faster than 300 football fields per hour, according to Greenpeace forest campaigner Hapsoro, primarily to make way for palm oil plantations, vast expanses of non-indigenous palms where the trees’ fruit is harvested for its rich oil. The oil is found in sundry products, from snack foods to beauty products, and is increasingly being used in biofuel production. The rainforest is disappearing so quickly that there is not enough food left for the orangutans to forage. In the Bukit Luwang national Park, they are hand fed bananas from park rangers to supplement their diet.

“The future for the orangutans is in the hands of the humans now,” said Dharma Bhodi, a park ranger at Bukit Luwang who was born and raised in this remote region. As Bodhi talks, an adolescent male orangutan hangs lazily by one arm in a tree above us. He looks down occasionally, gives a bored look, and reaches for a handful of leaves to chew. “Humans have been cutting down the forest for plantations. I have seen the places that used to be rainforest and now are plantation, you can’t recognize it anymore,” he said. “Neither can the orangutans.”

Palm oil has long been a staple in Indonesia. There (and in products the world over) it’s used in everything from soap to ice cream. Over the last year and a half, crude palm oil has become even more valuable in the global rush for environmentally sustainable biofuels: In fact, due to rising demand, the price for the oil has increased by 88 percent. Poor countries like Indonesia, the world’s leading palm oil producer, are clearing thousands of acres of pristine rainforest to plant the crop.

Plantation proponents say that palm oil is environmentally superior to fossil fuel because it doesn’t add to the earth’s over-all carbon dioxide levels. Instead, carbon dioxide created when the biofuel is burned is absorbed by the plant itself. Another boon is the economic growth for small landholders and family farmers.

Critics say those benefits aren’t worth the ecological costs of palm oil production. Destruction of rainforest to make room for plantations releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide: clearing land produces some 400 mega-tons of the greenhouse gas annually in Indonesia. Meanwhile, orangutans and other species that call the rainforest home are left searching for food, water, and shelter in a barren mudscape.

But some in Indonesia are working to stem the spread of the seemingly unstoppable palm industry. Hardi Baktiantoro founded the Centre for Orangutan Protection in Indonesia, a Jakarta- based non-profit. He, his wife, and her brother wear matching T-shirts that say “Palm Oil Kills.” Together, along with his two toddlers, they take frequent trips to document decimated rainforest areas. He takes photos while she shoots video for use on their website, in reports, speaking engagements, and direct-action events. They are trying to save what’s left of the rainforest for the orangutans.

“I find dead orangutans, they have starved to death. There is no food, no water,” he said. He tells me that on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan (formerly Borneo), more than ten orangutans are starving to death each day because of palm-oil driven deforestation. “The situation for orangutans today is very, very critical. The experts say the orangutans will be extinct in 2015. The orangutans will be extinct in next three years unless the government takes extreme action to save them. But instead they are planning convert 455,000 hectares of forest [in Kalimantan] into new plantations, mostly palm oil,” he said.

The workers on those plantations see orangutans as nuisances that trample and eat their crops. “The plantation workers have to protect the oil-palms. That is their job. To them the orangutan who is hunting for food is only a pest,” said Baktiantoro, clicking through slides on his laptop of orangutans whose fingers and hands have been mutilated by plantation workers, and others chained to workers’ dormitories.

In northern Sumatra, uniform rows of oil-palms line the roads in mile after mile of plantation. After bumping down the road in a white minivan, we pull-over and approach a husband and wife team working the trees. Thirty-seven year-old Parida picks up loose, red palm fruits from the ground and drops them into a bucket. Her husband slashes the massive fruits from the trees with a knife attached to the end of a 20-foot pole. Palm oil processing employs thousands of workers like Parida and her husband in Indonesia. Parida is clearly uncomfortable speaking with us and she smiles nervously as she goes about her work. She says she makes fewer than three dollars a day, which she uses to help feed and care for her three children. “Without the palm oil company I would have no job,” she said.

But Baktiantoro insists that the workers would be better off farming and fishing on their own land. “I never heard that workers in plantations become wealthy because of the plantations,” he said. “The profit is for the company, not for the workers.”

Back at Bukit Luwang National Park, I eat lunch at a riverside restaurant with some local tour guides. Young and entrepreneurial, these guys make their money leading European tourists to the orangutan feeding platform. They tell us that everyone here dreams of someday turning their land—low-lying rainforest on the edge of the park—into oil-palm plantations.

It is clear that any long-term solution to the deforestation problem will have to find a way to replace the substantial income generated by oil-palm. The Indonesian government has called on Western nations to help implement environmental standards for the industry. This year, some major palm oil buyers, like Unilever, the company behind Dove soap and Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, announced they would not support the clearing of any new land for palm oil plantations.

At the tiny Medan airport in Sumatra, my flight to Jakarta has been delayed by four hours, so I hunker down in a metal chair at a sweltering Dunkin Donuts. As a father and daughter next to me say a prayer over their donuts, I am reminded of another suggestion: introducing orangutan-safe palm oil logos for baked goods and cleaning products. Like the dolphin-safe tuna logo, forest campaigner Hapsoro believes branding could help Western consumers weigh in on the issue with their purchasing power.

Lies, lies, lies. These greedy, heartless orangutan killers are pushing their dope onto US consumers. We need to wake up and boycott palm oil! NOW! They destroy forests and murder orangutans for lowfat margarine. Shame Shame Shame! ~ Rich

This graphic was provided to us by supporter Jenn Carvin:

Americans show growing appetite for palm oil
By Ooi Tee Ching

The US could buy a million tonnes this year, says the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, adding that so far in the first half of 2008, Malaysia has shipped more than 450,000 tonnes there

CONSUMERS in America are increasingly accepting palm oil’s health benefits, as seen in the rise of shipments to the US, according to the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC).

“Palm oil nutrition awareness is gaining momentum there,” MPOC deputy chief executive officer Dr Kalyana Sundram told Business Times in an interview in Petaling Jaya recently.

Palm oil in its natural form does not contain any trans fat and thus, is a healthy alternative fat for making bakery shortenings, confectionery fats and margarine that go into baked and processed foods like chocolates and cookies.

In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that from January 1 2010, all 88,000 restaurants in the state will be prohibited from using oil, margarine and shortening containing trans fats. Retail baked goods have an additional 1-year grace period until January 1 2011. Packaged food, however, are exempted.

In New York, all bakeries and restaurants in the city have since July 1 been ordered to stop using hydrogenated oils in crackers, candies, cookies, snack foods and deep-fried desserts. Philadelphia and Seattle are two other cities to have done the same.

The rising palm oil consumption in the US is helped, in part, by the US government’s move to mandate declaration of saturated fat and trans fat levels separately on nutritional labels from January 1, 2006.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), eating saturated fat and trans fats raises low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. This means, trans fats - listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated vegetable oil - can raise bad cholesterol and lower healthy cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart attacks.

Many food manufacturers in the US add hydrogen, in the presence of a chemical catalyst, to soya oil and canola to harden them into bakery fats. Hydrogenation increases the melting point of fats and gives food a longer shelf life but it results in harmful trans fats.

The FDA warned that these artificial trans fat is so common that the average American eats about 2kg of artery-clogging trans fat in a year.

Palm oil, on the other hand, is a healthier choice for use in processed food because it is not genetically modified and does not contain harmful trans fat.

Rising palm oil consumption in the US could also be attributed to a patented fat blend that uses up to 50 per cent palm oil, discovered by Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) and Brandeis University biomedical scientists Dr Kalyana Sundram and Dr K.C. Hayes, 13 years ago.

They had since licensed US Nasdaq-listed Smart Balance Inc to market the patented blend in America.

Last year, Smart Balance posted US$160 million (RM521.60 million) in margarine sales alone. While it is not the No.1 margarine brand in the US, Smart Balance is fast eating into its rivals’ market share because the patented blend is proven to help improve cholesterol ratios.

“Since 1996, Smart Balance has been paying royalty to MPOB and Brandeis University for the patented blend. This will expire in 2015,” Dr Kalyana Sundram said.

When asked to estimate America’s increasing appetite for Malaysian palm oil, he replied: “This year, the US could buy a million tonnes. So far, in the first half of this year, we’ve shipped more than 450,000 tonnes there.

“A million tonnes is not much because it is less than three per cent of the total edible oils consumption there. There is still tremendous growth potential.”

Palm oil is richer in mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fatty acids than any other saturates, even more than the average olive oil. When it comes to blood cholesterol, palm oil is scientifically proven to be just as heart healthy as olive oil.

In Malaysia, fastfood outlets like Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, McDonald’s Corp, Wendy’s, Kenny Rogers Chicken Roasters, Starbucks, A&W, KFC and Pizza Hut have long been using trans fat free palm oil in their food preparation. [They deserve nothing less than a full boycott!]

Source: http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BTIMES/Industries/Commodities/transfat.xml/Article/index_html

By Benjamin P. Jordan, P.E.‚ Jul. 28‚ 2008

Source: Beyond Chron

Editor’s Note: San Francisco is perhaps the largest city in America to implement the use of the alternative fuel, biodiesel. The City’s entire diesel fleet, MUNI, Airport Shuttles just to name a few, all use a blend of this more environmentally sound fuel source. The SF Bioufuels Cooperative now numbers over 200 members and alongside the SF Department of the Environment, helped the City to reach it’s goal of converting it’s entire diesel fleet to the use of biodiesel, ahead of it’s December 2007 date. Yet the Bay Area has seen the price of biodiesel rise from it’s $3.25 per gallon for B100, or “pure biodiesel” in 2006, to as high as $5.80 today. Why? Benjamin Jordan of the Peoples Fuel Cooperative, is also one of the biodiesel community’s leading advocates and co-founder of the Biofuel Recycling Cooperative, one of the architects of the successful “SF Greasecycle”, a program run by the BRC & SF Public Utilities Commission, by which restaurant grease is collected around San Francisco and turned into biodiesel. Jordan was kind enough to shed some light on the rising costs of this much needed alternative to our dependance on foreign oil and the important issue of sustainability.

What controls the price per gallon of biodiesel? It seems as though every time the price of diesel goes up so does biodiesel. Why is this when the two industries are so very different? When can I expect the price to go down? All good questions that attempt to decipher the complex road fuel industry that has traditionally been ignored due to the low prices for so long.

Biodiesel will become cheaper than petroleum diesel but it won’t be because the price of biodiesel goes down. This change will occur because the price of petroleum will continue to rise. A good place to start to understand some of the factors that affect the price per gallon of biodiesel is to ask where does your fuel come from? Was it locally produced or did it travel across the country or around the world by train, truck, or ship? What is your fuel made from: virgin soy bean, corn, canola, tropical palm oil, rendered animal tallow or waste vegetable oil and inedible kitchen grease?

The base cost of each gallon of biodiesel is the sum of raw materials costs (vegetable or animal oil feedstock, methanol, catalyst, heat), market influences of supply and demand, and taxes. Additional items that affect the final cost are transportation, distribution, permits, state regulation, and consistent quality assurance of the fuel.

Raw Materials

It’s all about the oil! Restaurants have typically been paying $40 to $60 for oil collection services. With the new demand for feedstock, biofuel producers are offering to collect for free. Some producers are even starting to pay restaurants for their grease. Waste oils, usually referred to as yellow grease and brown grease are traded in the commodities market. Market price is listed on indexes such as The Jacobson and can fluctuate significantly as we have seen recently with increases of 40% in a few weeks. Other feedstock prices such as soy beans have risen as much as 94% in the past year. The world is now facing the most severe food price inflation in history as corn, grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs. One key factor in these increases is the record cost of crude oil which recently reached a high of over $129/barrel. As the world’s main source of energy, the cost of petroleum has significant repercussions on many other resources. The importance of having a local sustainable source for fuel has never been more important. As energy costs rise, so will the cost of alternatives. The less energy involved in producing these alternatives, the better able we will be to control these cost increases.

Supply and Demand

Biodiesel is a superior alternative to petroleum diesel. Biodiesel producers are unlikely to sell a superior product cheaper than petroleum diesel. There are an estimated 10 million gallons of waste vegetable oil in the Bay Area. Those who have managed to secure a recycled feedstock have separated themselves from skyrocketing soybean prices. A few local producers have successfully managed the cost hurdles of initial investment, feedstock acquisition, permitting and overhead cost of doing business in CA. At the moment the realities are still the same, a locally produced sustainably sourced fuel costs more to produce compared to conventional biodiesel production sources and the petroleum fuel supply chain.

Taxes

Currently in California there is approximately $0.75 of tax on every gallon of biodiesel sold. While states like Texas enjoy paying no state tax, Californians pay a state fuel excise tax as well as significant sales tax. The state of California also regulates all distributors of biodiesel through a state wide alternative fuel variance program. Although biodiesel has become widely accepted and is extensively used around the country, the state of California still considers it an “experimental fuel”. This program requires distributors to keep records on everyone they sell biodiesel to and compile and submit quarterly reports. This includes the purchasers name, the make, model and year of their vehicles, their estimated usage, and information regarding the performance of the fuel.

The following taxes apply in California:

Federal Excise - $0.244 California Excise - $0.18 *Sales Tax at point of sale - varies by city and county, 8.5% in San Francisco Total (approx) - $0.75

Quality

Not all biodiesel is created equal. Special care must be taken to analyze and certify all fuel is of the highest quality and meets ASTM standards. We feel it is also important to evaluate fuel on a sustainability standard as well. When sourcing sustainable fuel, verifying quality is absolutely critical. Fluctuating feedstock quality, developing producers, new processes, and small batches are some of the factors affecting fuel quality. Constant vigilance from People’s Fuel assures that the fuel you use meets the highest quality standards.

Operating Costs

There are many costs involved in running any business. For a fuel distributor vehicles must be maintained, permitted, and insured. Commercially licensed drivers must be paid. State and local regulating agencies require ongoing reporting. People’s Fuel is a not for profit worker cooperative. Most of the labor to run the company has been and is still unpaid.

Commitment to sustainability

At People’s Fuel we are committed to supplying fuel from local sources and will not support the influx of imported palm oil biodiesel or virgin soy, canola or animal byproduct biodiesel shipped across the country using petroleum based fuels. We are deeply committed to increasing access through retail stations so more of this fuel can be sold to you. In an industry of volumes, an important cost element will be that the more people who buy sustainable biofuel, the cheaper it will become.

Hopefully this helps to demystify some of the speculations regarding fuel costs. Biodiesel is an industry in its infancy. Start up costs are significant and supply is limited. Biodiesel has struggled to establish itself as a better alternative to petroleum against artificially low costs for petroleum fuel. Many have attempted to make it in the biodiesel industry but have not succeeded. The few who have survived are struggling to make a difference in our world. With over 5 years of experience in the industry there has been no time more exciting than now. The mention of biodiesel is no longer met with the reply of “What” but “Oh, really”… and “where can I buy it?” Municipalities and even entire states have begun to implement biodiesel as a legitimate petroleum free alternative. The dedicated individuals who have shared this vision and made a commitment to sustainable biofuel do so out of the belief in locally produced energy, fuel security, green collar jobs, and a cleaner healthier future for us all.

Rethinking Energy

What are the true costs and scale of our overall energy consumption? The age of cheap fossil fuels is now behind us. Paying $10.00/g for fuel may happen sooner than we think. It is important that we be conscious of our energy consumption. To help reduce the price of biodiesel and energy in general, when possible drive less, walk more. Telecommute, use public transit, bicycle, carpool, and car share. Through our daily choices we can reduce our resource consumption. Together we can find a petroleum free option and create a solution to this energy crisis.

Quick Facts

* With 5% of the world’s population, the United States consumes a third of the world’s resources.

* It is estimated that 53% of US dollars spent on crude oil leave our country. Nationally, more than 60 percent of the oil our country uses comes from foreign sources.

* Californians use more than 16.5 billion gallons of gasoline a year. That’s enough fuel to drive a car at 30 mpg, three round trips to the sun and back. * Half of all the energy used by Californians is in the transportation sector. * Eighty-two percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States are from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and power our vehicles.

Sustainability in San Francisco and the Bay Area

Currently PFC is only suppling the most sustainable fuel available; inedible kitchen grease methyl esters (IKGME) that is as local and ecological as possible in regards to feedstock, production, distribution and quality. In San Francisco this means that restaurant oil is collected through private industries and the SFPUC through the SFGreasecycle Program (www.sfgreasecycle.org). This cooking oil is then sold to local producers for biodiesel (IKGME) production. The short list is Bently Biofuels, BioEasi, Blue Sky Biofuels and Yokayo Biofuels with other sources arriving from Southern California and Las Vegas Nevada.

The SF biodiesel community then has access through the not for profit cooperative distribution infrastructure, the PFC. The PFC purchases biodiesel from all of these manufactures and makes it available for delivery and at the pump through mobile fueling at Rainbow Grocery. As the PFC is a cooperative distribution network, our costs are transparent, established and do not fluctuate. The higher prices and reduced availability is the result when the PFC and the membership in San Francisco are not able to purchase fuel consistently and if we can, it is at a higher price. This means that increases in fuel price and decreases in availability are a result of the industry in general and the community’s buying power.

The communities buying power, or a joining of people creating a fueling network through the fueling cooperatives, will help keep oversight and prices appropriate for the fuel. Currently for petroleum, the US Congress takes care of the policing and oversight of the industry. They could do better for sure. Here locally, community awareness/involvement will be the only way to keep the biodiesel sustainable, available and equitable. Unfortunately there are many more steps for the biodiesel cooperatives of the Bay Area and the rest of California to work more closely to keep the fuel available and as cheap as possible. This is where we as consumers must play our roll and use our cooperatives to establish a supply of consistent high quality fuel from local industries.

Benjamin P. Jordan, P.E., is a Technical Consultant and provides civil engineering expertise for sustainable ecological design projects including water conservation, biodiesel production and permaculture education. He is also the co-founder of the SF Biofuels, Biofuel Recycling and Peoples Fuel Cooperatives, as well as Healthy Fuels, a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable and environmentally sound biofuels. He can be reached at http://www.biofuelrecycling.org

Watch the full video

Consumers can and do make a difference.

24-Jul-08 Marketing Week

Unilever is leading a coalition of multinational companies, believed to include Nestlé, Cadbury, Kraft and Procter & Gamble, to tackle the issue of sustainable palm oil production.

The coalition is being formed after talks with Greenpeace, which has been running a sustained campaign on the issue. It published a report last November that branded Unilever, Nestlé, P&G and Kraft as “climate vandals” for their part in the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforest and peat forest swamps to make way for palm oil plantations (MW November 8).
The new initiative will run alongside the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an industry body formed in 2002 to ensure sustainable production.

A Greenpeace report in April heavily criticised the RSPO, claiming that many of the companies involved in rainforest destruction were its key members. The lobby group accused Unilever, the world’s largest purchaser of palm oil and chair of the RSPO, of failing to lead the sector towards sustainability.

To coincide with the report, Greenpeace protesters dressed as orangutans and chained themselves to Unilever’s Merseyside headquarters and gathered at its London offices. The lobby group singled out Unilever brand Dove for criticism, with posters parodying the brand’s Campaign for Real Beauty.

Protesters also targeted Unilever marketing services agencies Ogilvy Advertising, Jackie Cooper PR and Lexis PR, in a bid to persuade them they were doing Unilever’s “dirty work” by “greenwashing” its brands (MW April 23).

It is understood that Unilever has accepted Greenpeace’s findings that the RSPO has not been effective.

Palm oil is the world’s second largest oil crop. It is extracted from the fruit of palm tress and use primarily in the production of food and personal care products, and for industrial purposes. The largest producers of palm oil currently are Indonesia and Malaysia. These countries have extensive plantations of palm trees that have resulted from the destruction of native rainforest.

People tend to overlook the repercussions of palm oil plantations. The environmental impact of producing palm oil has a disastrous effect, causing deforestation and threatening the habitat of both indigenous human communities and orangutan populations. Other species such as Sumatran rhinos and tigers have also fallen victim to the destruction of their homes. Undeniably, the eradication of rainforests releases extreme levels of carbon dioxide into the environment. Consequently, 15 percent of C02 emissions derive from the fossil fuels of rainforest removal. This method of farming palm oil is not only morally reprehensible, it heightens the seriousness of global warming; an issue that needs solutions, not greater contributing factors.

It is fair to say that the big wigs from international palm oil corporations don’t negotiate satisfactory terms with the Asian communities they come into. Social conflicts, disputes and abuses are prevalent as locals are forced to surrender their land. In spite of their outcry for justice or compensation for violations of their basic human rights, indigenous peoples are ignored because of their ‘lack of value’ in the global economy. Producers claim they add value to communities by creating employment opportunities for locals in the palm oil plantations. This type of reasoning is the epitome of ridicule when most of palm oil companies offer meager salaries, embodying the principles of slavery instead.

Consumers often disregard the negativity associated with palm oil production because they are uninformed, which is understandable when the truth about the social and environmental impact of palm oil is concealed. What lies beneath the food labelling on mass produced items we purchase are secrets marketing executives have left out: ‘Only about 50 orangutans were slaughtered and a couple of rainforests were cleared for your pleasure and consumption’ is a truth they conveniently left out.

Labelling regulations in Australia are quite lax with regard to palm oil, easily fooling consumers. Even if palm oil is a key ingredient in a food product, it does not have to be labelled as such. A popular and people-friendly substitute is for it to be labelled as ‘vegetable oil’.

As consumers we have a lot more influence and power than we think we have with regard to palm oil production; without our spending, there is no business. Therefore we have every right to voice our beliefs and concerns over this important issue. A simple, thoughtful and effective option is to write a letter to someone who has involvement in palm oil production or manufacturing. Write to a food company suggesting they should stop telling fibs on their labels because as a comsumer you deserve the right to know.

There are alternatives to palm oil that are healthier for people, animals and the planet, and it is a failure to the indigenous people and orangutans that have to suffer in order to feed corporate and consumer greed.

Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his meticulous PowerPoint presentation, An Inconvenient Truth. Well, the ‘Uncomfortable Truth’ about palm oil, won’t be made into a movie but it is just as important and relevant.

Be outspoken, be passionate and be the change you wish to see in the world.

Source: Aduki
http://www.aduki.net.au/aduki-online/other-stuff/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-palm-oil.html

Methinks a time for protest is upon us! ~ Rich

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta 22nd July

Samsung Group, South Korea’s largest company, plans to develop a 25,000-hectare oil palm plantation and a biodiesel refinery in Riau province with an investment of up to Rp 15 trillion (US$1.63 billion).

Head of the national team for biofuel development Al Hilal Hamdi said Monday the company had spent Rp 1.5 trillion on acquiring the land and the factory.

“They bought the land recently and that was their first investment. The total investment will likely increase by 10 times,” he said, refusing to reveal the exact location of the land.

He said the Samsung factory was expected to go online next year and produce 50,000 kiloliters of biodiesel per year.

“Samsung is one of many investors interested in taking part in the country’s biodiesel development project in Sumatra,” he said.

However, Indonesia-based Kang Hyonghyun of Samsung C&T Corporation said he had yet to be informed of the plan.

As of March 2008, bio-energy development investment in the country had reached Rp 31.47 trillion.

To reduce dependency on fossil fuels, including oil, the government will in October impose a new regulation requiring that at least 2.5 percent of fuel consumed by manufacturers be biofuel.

The first law will initially be enacted in Java and Sumatra only.

Indonesia produces two types of biofuel — bioethanol, made from cassava, sugarcane and sorghum; and biodiesel, made from castor and crude palm oil.

The country’s annual biofuel production is currently 2 million kiloliters and is expected to grow to 5 million kiloliters by 2010.

The country’s annual bioethanol production capacity reached 192,349 kiloliters as of the end of the year’s first half. This figure is expected to increase to 4 million kiloliters by 2010.

Samsung’s business operations include electronics, engineering, construction and shipbuilding.

By KEITH BRADSHER

JAKARTA, Indonesia — While prices have been rising in the United States and Europe, the biggest increases are being felt in Asia, and countries like India and Vietnam are already having to deal with double-digit inflation.

Sharp rises in global food and oil prices are now spilling over into wages and broader measures of inflation across Asia, as the Asian Development Bank noted in a report released Tuesday.

Workers are demanding higher wages to cover their rising living costs, and companies are imposing higher prices for a wide range of goods to cover accelerating production costs.

“The epicenter of the inflationary storm is really in Asia,” said Cyd Tuano-Amador, the managing director of monetary policy at the Philippines Central Bank.

Higher inflation in Asia is also starting to contribute to higher prices in the United States. According to the Labor Department, prices for imports from Pacific Rim countries — mostly Asian goods — rose 2.7 percent in the 12 months through June, after falling 1.4 percent in the preceding 12 months.

Asia’s central bankers, who are preparing for their annual gathering July 28 in Shanghai, have been unable to develop a united response to deal with the worst inflation threat in at least a decade.

In an interview Tuesday, Boediono, the governor of the Bank of Indonesia, called for a coordinated international move toward tighter monetary policy, including higher interest rates by the United States, so as to slow inflation.

In an era of global capital flows, so much excess money is now flowing through world markets that no single country can fight the international problem of inflation effectively by tightening its own monetary policy, Boediono said. (Like many Indonesians, he uses only one name.)

“I don’t think any one country, even as big as China or even the United States, would be able to stomach the adjustment” of raising interest rates far enough to slow global inflation, he said.

World oil prices could fall by 30 percent if countries took coordinated action to reduce liquidity, he said. He attributed much of the recent rise in global commodity prices to excess money in circulation.

But Boediono said he was not recommending that Asian central banks sell any of their dollar reserves to put pressure on the United States to raise interest rates. Asian purchases of dollar-denominated securities, led by China’s $1.8 trillion in foreign reserves, have played a central role in financing the American trade and government budget deficits and in holding down interest rates on mortgages during the recent American housing market decline.

Most central banks in Asia have been reluctant to give up any of their economic independence or challenge the United States by coordinating their monetary and currency policies, even as they fret about rising prices.

“There is a legitimate concern about the recent developments on the inflation front,” said Y. Venugopal Reddy, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, in a speech late last month. “Oil price increase is now a global problem, making inflation a problem for all countries, both developed and developing. Hence, our solutions to the problem will also be similar, but tailored to suit our conditions.”

Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, said this month during a visit to Switzerland that an interest rate increase might be needed in China to combat inflation. While the rise in consumer prices slowed slightly in China last month, to 7.1 percent from 7.7 percent in May, inflation accelerated at the producer level, to 8.8 percent in June from 8.2 percent in May.

Ms. Tuano-Amador said the meeting in Shanghai was unlikely to produce any consensus on monetary policy coordination. “I don’t think that it’s on the table right now,” she said.”

As the Asian Development Bank said in its report issued Tuesday in Singapore, inflation has risen across the region. “The external economic outlook for emerging East Asia has dimmed amid prospects for slower growth, tighter credit conditions and higher inflation,” the bank said.

The report also mentioned that “heightened inflationary pressures will require more decisive tightening of monetary policies across much of emerging East Asia.”

The initial reaction of many governments and private sector economists across Asia over the winter was to see price increases as largely confined to food and energy — and therefore not requiring monetary policy responses like interest rate increases. But broader inflation trends are now starting to become apparent.

The core inflation rate, excluding food and energy, accelerated in Indonesia to 8.7 percent in May from 6.3 percent in December. During the same period, the core rates rose in May in the Philippines and Singapore to 6.2 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively, from 2.6 percent and 3.5 percent.

Strong demand for Indonesia’s many commodities, from coal to palm oil, have insulated it somewhat from slowing growth elsewhere. But rising prices are starting to take a toll, particularly on the poor.

Halimah, a teacher, echoed the unhappiness of many Indonesians as she bought milk on Sunday at a street market in Karawang, a town in west-central Java. “It has been very difficult for us, especially on kerosene, cooking oil and eggs — they have been rising in price dramatically,” she said.

Central banks in the region have been struggling for months to respond to the Federal Reserve’s low interest rates. Low American interest rates are making it harder for the region’s central banks to raise their rates; doing so would make them more attractive for international investors and could produce rapid appreciation in their currencies.

Stronger currencies would lower the cost in local currency terms of importing oil and other goods. But stronger currencies would also reduce the competitiveness of exports at a time when demand for Asian goods is weakening in the United States.

Boediono said he saw some room for the Indonesian rupiah to rise against the dollar, but that the timing could not be forced on his country. “Some orderly appreciation,” he said, “would be helpful for us.”

Boediono said that the Federal Reserve should raise short-term interest rates, and that his experience during the Asian financial crisis made him believe that the Fed could act without causing excessive damage to the American banking system.

“I don’t think a move of 25 or 50 basis points,” or 0.25 or 0.5 percentage points, “would collapse it,” he said.

Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, told the Senate Banking Committee in testimony on July 15 that the United States economy faces risks of a further slowdown and higher inflation. Analysts interpreted his comments as meaning it was unlikely that the Fed would either raise or lower interest rates soon. The target for the overnight borrowing rate among banks, or federal funds rate, stands at 2 percent.

Boediono spoke in an interview in his elegant, wood-paneled offices, where the international décor and even the styling of the paneling bear a striking resemblance to the governors’ suites at the Federal Reserve’s headquarters in Washington.

Source: The New York Times

By James Ken

Bandar Seri Begawan - Illegal logging continues to be the major cause of deforestation and forest degradation in Southeast Asia. Although five per cent of the world’s forests are located in this region, the World Bank estimates that Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) accounted for nearly 25 per cent of the global forest loss over the past decade.

In an effort to overcome the situation, Asean has called for national policies to be intensified and regional collaborations strengthened.

Uncontrolled illegal logging could harm the Heart of Borneo (HoB) project, an ambitious initiative to conserve the richness of the forests that was undertaken by Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Mr Hugh Blackett, a forestry consultant at the training workshop on “Timber Verification of Legality System” held at the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources yesterday, in an interview said, “The Heart of Borneo project can face an uphill task if illegal logging continues in the island of Borneo, especially in Indonesia.

“The Heart of Borneo project is an inter-government project supported by WWF. It’s a very good and important idea because there is still a lot of forest cover in the Heart of Borneo and many wildlife habitats need to be conserved. It will require a lot of cooperation between governments particularly Malaysia and Indonesia.”

Describing the problem of illegal logging in the region, Mr Blackett said, “Illegal logging happens in remote areas and it’s difficult to exercise control. Therefore making money from harvesting timber is very easy and gives a quick return. A lot of people have taken advantage of weak government controls. Unfortunately, there are some instances of corruption being allow it to happen.

“If logging is uncontrolled, and people take out too much of timber (from the forests), it will destroy the forest environment, the animal habitat, erosion control and subsistence for local community, as well as the future access to raw materials in the timber industry,” he said.

On countering illegal logging, he said, “NGOs specifically in Europe have been actively campaigning against people using tropical timber and demanding them to take a responsible attitude to ensure that the timber purchased is not from illegal logging. So there is a huge pressure to try to find ways on improving control in a country like Indonesia where there is a high incidence of illegal logging, making sure that the law is applied.

“Now in Europe, the governments’ public procurement policies system has set up a standard to see that any purchase of timber for projects come from a responsible source thereby ensuring sustainable, managed forests. We have in existence a certification standard that comes from the forest timber certification council setting the standard for forest management.”

About illegal logging at the borders, he said, “It can happen, and there are forest concessions at the border between Malaysia and Kalimantan and I have reports that there are companies doing cross border logging. A lot of wood is coming into Malaysia from Indonesia mainly across the borders of Sarawak and Kalimantan.

“The Malaysian government has accepted to cut down on the activities and it’s very much reduced. It’s very hard to quantify the volume of illegal trade of timber but it does seem that the cross border illegal trade between Malaysia and Indonesia has drastically reduced,” he added.

“There has to be a high level of government cooperation and support to combat illegal cross border activities. However, in addition to Europe, North America and Japan, other big markets like China and India should also set standards for timber import to help reduce illegal logging.”

He added, “It’s very difficult to detect when timber goes to the mills whether the timber has come from legal sources. Technologies are being developed like timber tracking where details of trees are recorded and marked before they are felled. Therefore timber tracking offers one way of knowing where it comes from to determine whether it’s under legal licence.

“Currently, there are technologies to help control the problem through record keeping in computerisation system,” he added. — Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin