Indonesia is the largest producer of palm oil.

“The challenge now is to bring local banks into the process because smallholders, who account for a large percentage of the palm oil supply, aren’t financed by the big guys,” Rachel Kyte, the IFC’s vice-president for business advisory service, said yesterday in an interview. — Bloomberg

Source: Business Times

Troubled Indonesian tycoon to drop cabinet post: spokesman

JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesia’s billionaire Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie will leave the cabinet next year, a spokesman said Friday, as the global economic crisis continued to batter his business empire.

“He has no interest in returning as a minister for the term 2009-2014,” Bakrie’s spokesman Lalu Mara Satria Wangsa said.

He refused to explain under what circumstances Bakrie would leave.

“He will go when his job is finished. He’s not resigning, it’s just that he has no intention to continue the next term,” he said.

The tycoon and political powerbroker would continue to be a member of the Golkar party, the main group in the ruling coalition under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, he said.

Bakrie denied reports that he was interested in taking over from Vice President Jusuf Kalla as head of Golkar ahead of elections next year.

“That’s not correct. The focus of Golkar is to continue efforts to win the legislative elections,” the spokesman said.

Bakrie’s family business empire, ranging from construction to coal and palm oil, has been hit hard by the global credit crisis and the slump in commodity prices.

Shares in the group’s companies have nosedived by as much as 90 percent as it struggles to pay off 1.2 billion dollars in debt due next year.

Until recently, Bakrie was considered the richest man in Indonesia with a family fortune estimated by Forbes Asia magazine at 5.4 billion dollars.

He told Forbes.com this week he wanted to spend more time with his family and his charity.

“I have already contributed five years of my time. Now, I’d like to play with my grandchildren,” he was quoted as saying.

He dismissed allegations of a conflict of interest and suspicions he is using his political influence to try to save his family’s faltering business empire.

“Me? Never. Never. I am no longer a businessman. I know what (my family) is doing but I’m not a businessman at all,” he said.

“Life is tough at the moment for everybody,” he added, referring to the economic downturn.

One of his companies allegedly triggered a devastating mud volcano while drilling for gas in East Java two years ago, killing 13 and displacing more than 36,000.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j5vqqch09WrAk4HO6QZX5pWIduzg

Over a two-month period, the scientists used nets to trap three furry, mouse-sized pygmy tarsiers — two males and one female — on Mt. Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park in central Sulawesi, the researchers said on Tuesday.

They spotted a fourth one that got away.

The tarsiers, which some scientists believed were extinct, may not have been overly thrilled to be found. One of them chomped Sharon Gursky-Doyen, a Texas A&M University professor of anthropology who took part in the expedition.

“I’m the only person in the world to ever be bitten by a pygmy tarsier,” Gursky-Doyen said in a telephone interview.

“My assistant was trying to hold him still while I was attaching a radio collar around its neck. It’s very hard to hold them because they can turn their heads around 180 degrees. As I’m trying to close the radio collar, he turned his head and nipped my finger. And I yanked it and I was bleeding.”

The collars were being attached so the tarsiers’ movements could be tracked.

Tarsiers are unusual primates — the mammalian group that includes lemurs, monkeys, apes and people. The handful of tarsier species live on various Asian islands.

As their name indicates, pygmy tarsiers are small — weighing about 2 ounces (50 grammes). They have large eyes and large ears, and they have been described as looking a bit like one of the creatures in the 1984 Hollywood movie “Gremlins.”

They are nocturnal insectivores and are unusual among primates in that they have claws rather than finger nails.

They had not been seen alive by scientists since 1921. In 2000, Indonesian scientists who were trapping rats in the Sulawesi highlands accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier.

“Until that time, everyone really didn’t believe that they existed because people had been going out looking for them for decades and nobody had seen them or heard them,” Gursky-Doyen said.

Her group observed the first live pygmy tarsier in August at an elevation of about 6,900 feet.

“Everything was covered in moss and the clouds are right at the top of that mountain. It’s always very, very foggy, very, very dense. It’s cold up there. When you’re one degree from the equator, you expect to be hot. You don’t expect to be shivering most of the time. That’s what we were doing,” she said.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081118/sc_nm/us_primate_indonesia

Unggai Ak Gumeh is in charge of the village of Kampung Klauh in Sarawak, one of the two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. A slight, wiry figure in his long red jogging shorts and white polo shirt, his Dayak ancestors long ago made this jungle their home. Yet now his village, along with many others, is under threat from plantation and logging companies that believe they can buy native territories from the local Sarawak government

Dayak men patrol an anti-logger barricade. Photograph: Jonathan Gorvett

We’ve been here for more than nine generations. We’ve been here since before there was even a Malaysia, and before the British.

It was August 24 2004 when the logging companies first came. Nobody had come to tell us this was going to happen and most of the people in the area did not agree with it. The logging company cut the timber on our land. They gave us just 600 Malaysian ringgits [around $150] compensation, and cut all the trees from here to the next village. Then they went away, leaving the land devastated.

Then, in May this year, another company came. Except for the area around our village, they have taken everything.

We have what is called native customary rights to the land. These rights cover the area around the longhouse that we have traditionally cultivated, for rice and fruit and so on, and it also covers the forest land that we use for hunting, and collecting certain medicinal plants, and for our own timber needs. This area, which we call pemukai menoa, also includes our burial grounds. It is this that the companies are trying to take from us.

So we complained to the police. We said: “The logging company is stealing our property,” but the police didn’t do anything. We had been using the land to plant our crops and the company destroyed these too when they came, leaving only a few rubber trees for timber. Their activities also left our roads cut off, as they banked up earth across them. Even motorcycles couldn’t get through. Our rightful land was taken without our permission.

So, on July 23, we set up a barricade to keep the company away. The police came and issued an order and the barricade was taken down. But on August 6 we built another one, and this barricade is still there. Two days ago the police tried to clear it again, but we all turned out, the whole village, and saw them off. They will come back again, but we will simply make another barricade if they do. Every time they demolish one, we will build another.

We’re also pursuing a legal case here. The lawyer wanted 3000 ringgits [about $750] to start proceedings, which is a lot for us, but we all got together and pooled our savings. All the families here support the blockade. We want a court decision on all this – we won’t negotiate with the company out of court as we want this properly decided.

Since the logging company started, the environment around here has got a lot worse. It’s also the water. There is a river here and, before, the water was clear. Now, it looks like a cup of milky coffee. There’s no fish any more, no wildlife; the animals are scared off by the sound of the chainsaws. The loggers throw sump oil from their machinery into the river and everything is killed off.

We have to survive on the little we can grow around the longhouse, where we live. We’ve lost most of our hunting grounds – after the loggers have finished, the land gets planted with oil palm by plantation companies. We are not allowed to hunt in there – and even if you did poach, it would be very difficult to find any animals. We get no support or compensation from the government either.

Most of the longhouses face the same problem these days. We are a 31-door longhouse, with more than 100 people living here. Many now work away from here, in Johor, Miri and Kuching.

We will continue to try to keep our land. We mustn’t think about just ourselves and our generation, but about future generations too. If we sell out, then we lose the future. Our future.

• Unggai Ak Gumeh was speaking to Jonathan Gorvett in Borneo.

The agreement was reached after a series of meetings held during the recent 2008 SSP Orangutan Husbandry Workshop at the Saint Louis Zoo.

The Orangutan Crisis Coalition (OCC) was formed in 2008 by the Orangutan Conservancy as an umbrella group capable of uniting zoos, conservation organizations, museums, research institutions and other interested parties in the fight to save orangutans from extinction. The OCC has already begun distributing media tools – including posters, stickers, brochures, web pages and other items – to increase support for orangutan-related issues.

“Although both the Orangutan Conservancy and Orangutan Outreach are distinct entities, we believe there is enough overlap and mutually shared goals that we can work together on key issues,” said Norm Rosen, president of the Orangutan Conservancy. “We see no reason to compete. Both organizations are committed to ensuring the permanent survival of wild orangutans, and we believe we can maximize this opportunity best through the OCC.”

The Orangutan Conservancy was established in 1999 to support projects that focus on wild orangutan protection, reintroduction, education, and research. Its efforts include direct aid to orangutan rescue and rehabilitation centers in Borneo and Sumatra.

Orangutan Outreach was created in 2007 primarily to support the work of Lone Droscher Nielsen at the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rehabilitation Center in Borneo. The Center, which is home to approximately 700 orphaned and displaced orangutans, is featured in Animal Planet’s series Orangutan Island. Orangutan Outreach fully supports the work of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation and is preparing to back additional orangutan projects throughout Borneo and Sumatra.

Richard Zimmerman, Director of Orangutan Outreach, is optimistic about joining the OCC.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with partners through the OCC,” he said. “If the orangutans are to have any hope of surviving, we will need to work together on their behalf. Time is of the essence. The forest is disappearing at an catastrophic rate and the orangutans have nowhere left to go.”

Recent data indicates there are approximately 61,000 orangutans remaining in the wild in Borneo and Sumatra. But deforestation – coupled with a massive effort to convert rainforests to oil palm plantations in the region – has isolated important populations and prompted experts to predict they will cease to exist in the wild by 2025 at the current rate of decline. The OCC intends to prevent this from happening.

To learn more about the Orangutan Conservancy or the Orangutan Crisis Coalition, please visit www.orangutan.com. To learn more about Orangutan Outreach, please visit www.redapes.org.

JAKARTA, Nov 20 - The Indonesian government has defended the country’s drive to expand oil palm cultivation, resisting demands by environmentalists who say it is destroying the country’s natural forests and peatlands.

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono has said that Indonesia would still retain 60 per cent of its forests, in addition to the 23 million ha already marked out as protected forest.

Besides, he told an annual meeting on sustainable palm oil in Bali earlier this week, any moratorium on deforestation, as environmental group Greenpeace recently demanded, was beyond the government’s control.

Yesterday, a forestry official said Indonesia will plant 100 million trees this year to limit deforestation.

Global demand for palm oil - which apart from being used in cooking and food products, is also increasingly being used as an alternative biofuel - has seen more land being cleared for bigger plantations.

Environmentalists say the rapid deforestation threatens the survival of native wild orang utans in the forests.

The expansion of oil palm cultivation often creates thick haze - caused by companies and farmers using slash-and-burn methods to clear the land - that can spread to the skies above Singapore and Malaysia.

The minister’s remarks immediately drew a sharp response from environmentalists.

Arif Wicaksono, Greenpeace’s political adviser in Indonesia, said Anton’s statement contradicted a commitment made by the government last year, when it said new crops would not need to be planted on natural forest.

“If they say ‘no’ to a moratorium, that means Indonesia intends to destroy its forest in the name of palm oil,” Arif said yesterday.

“They shouldn’t use new land, as they can use the existing, degraded lands to grow their new crops.”

The government says only 6.8 million out of the country’s 133 million ha of land - or about 5 per cent - have been planted with oil palm.

But non-government organisations say the figures are much higher: According to independent monitor Sawit Watch, a further 18 million ha have been cleared, on top of the land already planted.

Last week, Greenpeace stopped several shipments of palm oil from leaving Indonesia.

Anton, however, had noted the economic necessity of oil palm cultivation.

Palm oil serves as one of the main drivers of Indonesia’s economy. Last year, the country earned US$7.9 billion from palm oil exports, up from US$4.8 billion the previous year. Palm oil accounted for about 7 per cent of the country’s total exports last year.

Indonesia is now the world’s largest crude palm oil producer. It churned out 17.4 million tonnes last year and is expected to produce 19.8 million tonnes this year.

The agriculture ministry projects oil palm cultivation to expand to cover 7.7 million ha next year, up from an estimated 7.16 million ha this year.

But analysts point out that with crude palm oil prices falling as a result of weakening global demand, this is not the right time to talk about expansion.

Indeed, some oil palm growers are already cutting back expansion plans. Astra Agro Lestari, Indonesia’s largest publicly-listed oil palm grower, earlier this year set a target to grow 30,000 ha of new oil palm trees in the year, but is now planning to trim it to 20,000 ha.

“Low crude palm oil prices and high fertiliser prices have been our reasons for the cut,” head of investor and public relations Tjahjo Dwi Ariantono said.

Next year’s expansion plans, he added, would depend on the price of crude palm oil futures. He said: “If it falls further, then we have to put a brake on expansion so that we won’t be throwing away the cash money that we have.”

Source: The Straits Times
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/business/12755-jakarta-palm-oil-drive-to-continue

Of course the deforestation of these valuable forests should stop! And this is why:

Manufacturers are sourcing their palm oil from suppliers who aren’t picky about where they site their plantations. As the volunteers at the Forest Defenders Camp in Sumatra have seen, this includes tearing up areas of pristine forest and then draining and burning peatlands.

Indonesia’s peatlands act as huge carbon stores, so replacing them with plantations them not only threatens the amazing biodiversity, including the rare Sumatran tiger, it also releases huge volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They only cover 0.1 per cent of the land on Earth, but thanks in part to the activities of the palm oil industry they contribute 4 percent to global emissions. If expansion of the palm oil industry continues unabated, that figure can only rise.

All this is a little unnerving as the three companies mentioned above are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a group of retailers, manufacturers and suppliers who also include multinational suppliers Cargill and ADM. The group aims to create clear standards for producing sustainable palm oil but at present those standards are far too weak to ensure that forests and peatlands are not destroyed to meet growing demand for palm oil.

Global problem, Global solution?

What’s to be done? The Indonesian government must urgently introduce a moratorium on forest and peatland destruction, which will provide a chance to develop long-term solutions and prevent further emissions from deforestation.

With deforestation accounting for up to a fifth of global emissions, financing for forest protection must be a core part of the plan to tackle climate change.

The international scientific consensus on climate change is that avoiding the worst impacts of climate change demands global warming be kept as far as possible below 2 degrees Celsius. Emissions of greenhouse gases need to have peaked globally by 2015 and then begin a rapid decline.

We need governments to agree to negotiate a new funding mechanism to protect the world’s remaining tropical forests as a critical component of the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol. The resulting reductions in emissions from deforestation must be additional to cuts in emissions from burning fossil fuels.

I. WOUDSTRA
Utrecht, the Netherlands

Hyginus Hardoyo, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono on Tuesday defended Indonesia’s drive to expand oil palm plantations, despite a demand by environmentalists for a moratorium on deforestation.

Speaking in his keynote address at the opening of the sixth annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Nusa Dua, Bali, Apriyantono said any moratorium, including that recently called for by Greenpeace, was beyond the control of the Indonesian government.

The four-day meeting will discuss issues such as the certification program for members, palm oil small-scale growers, the RSPO and the government, and market standards for biofuel.

The RSPO was established by NGOs and business operators involved in the production, processing and sale of palm oil, in response to criticisms that oil palm plantations were causing rapid deforestation.

“The government has its own program of preserving our forests; we aim to keep 60 percent of our forests in addition to allocated protected forests,” the minister said.

He said Indonesia still had 23 million hectares of protected forest.

“Out of 133 million hectares of land, only 6.3 million hectares, or about 5 percent, have been planted with oil palms — arguably a very small area compared to what other countries have done with their natural forests,” Apriyantono said.

But data from independent monitor Sawit Watch shows that in addition to the land already planted, another 18 million hectares have been cleared for plantation expansions.

Sawit Watch deputy director Abetnego Tarigan said development programs by regional administrations were targeting oil palm plantation expansions — especially in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua — of up to 20 million hectares.

“Another new plan still under negotiation deals with the development of the world’s largest oil palm plantation, covering 1.8 million hectares in the heart of Kalimantan,” he said.

Tarigan suggested that instead of expanding plantations, it was time to intensify existing estates and improve current yields of only 10 to 15 tons of palm oil per hectare per year — far less than the 25 tons per hectare per year recorded in Malaysia.

In 2006, Indonesia became the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Last year, total production reached 16.9 million tons, and is projected to reach almost 18 million tons this year, or 26.2 percent of the world’s vegetable oil production.

Of the 2006 figure, 5 million tons was sold domestically, with 11.8 million tons exported, Apriyantono said.

“In term of palm oil exports, Indonesia managed to substantially raise foreign exchange earnings from only US$745 million in 1998 to $7.9 billion in 2007,” he said.

He added some 5 million smallholders were employed in the industry.

“I challenge everyone — NGOs and stakeholders — to come up with positive news of benefits as well as successful and positive multi-stakeholder collaborative projects,” the minister said.

Source: The Jakarta Post

In a bid to further preserve their area’s forests and increase regional revenue, Jambi’s provincial and municipal administrations signed a carbon trade agreement with an Australian investor last week.

Jambi Governor Zulkifli Nurdin and Mayor Bambang Priyanto signed the contract on Nov. 12 with Australian consultant Peter N. Kene of International Business Network and investor Charles Jackson of Carbon Strategic Global.

Zulkifli said the contract would last indefinitely as long as it was mutually beneficial, in line with prevailing regulations and forests were well preserved.

“So by preserving forests we are making money. We will use the money to improve the prosperity of communities living around the forests,” Zulkifli said.

The contract covers the carbon value of some 200,000 hectares of forests across the province with a price set at US$10 per ton per year during the first phase, Zulkifli said.

“The price will be reviewed periodically according to market developments,” he said.

At the current price, Jambi expects to gain credit for some 100,000 tons of carbon per year, meaning it will earn US$1 million from the forest’s preservation, Zulkifli said.

“Imagine if the price rises to US$20 or even US$30 per ton per year.”

Zulkifli was confident the contract would guarantee the protection of the forests because the local community would benefit directly from it.

He gave his word that the money would be spent to benefit the communities living around the forests, adding that they would no longer need to cut down trees to make a living but preserve them instead.

“As long as the forests are preserved, carbon is produced. And as long as the carbon is produced, money is also earned,” he said.

Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) executive director Arif Munandar said the contract was a step in the right direction.

On the one hand, he said, forests and whole ecosystems will be well preserved. On the other hand the local administrations will earn rewards from their preservation efforts.

Arif reminded the local administrations to keep their word regarding the use of money earned from the carbon trading, and to make certain it was for communities living around the forests and not other purposes.

“It is they who contribute the most to the preservation of the forests … So, don’t ever forget them,” Arif said.

He further reminded the local administrations that they needed to work out what they would do with the money, especially to improve the livelihoods of communities.

Among other means, he suggested, was the establishment an economic institution to help communities become economically independent.

Arif said local administrations needed to change people’s perspective of forests, so that they see forests as not just a timber resource but having myriad other advantages also.

“This way we will be able to maintain the beauty of the forests while the community also benefit economically,” he said.

Source: The Jakarta Post

—-

This is part of Lake Suwakai, Runtu, where United Plantation’s contractor constructed a road and stacked wood debris in the lake, presumably when the tidal lake was at its lowest. © Greenpeace

The first shipment of certified sustainable palm oil is due to arrive in Rotterdam any day now for a company called United Plantations. But our investigations on the ground in Indonesia reveal that Universal Plantations’ operations are far from sustainable. In fact, they fail to meet the already inadequate criteria established by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO - its a bit of a mouthful), and the certification, in this instance, looks like little more than a bit of marketing lubrication for the industry.

We’ve been pushing the RSPO for some time now to implement its currently weak standards and to make standards tougher moving forward - not least by ensuring that its members stop clearing vast areas of forest and peatland. For example, the criteria of this voluntary initiative is weak at preventing the development of plantations on peatlands even though these same peatlands are one of the largest carbon stores on earth and their protection is crucial in the fight against climate change.

In August, United Plantations was the first company to be certified by the RSPO. While the certification only applies to their Malaysian operations, all of their operations, including those in Indonesia need to meet certain minimum standards, through the so called ‘partial certification’ process. Environmental groups pushed for this condition so that big companies couldn’t certify a showcase plantation to woo buyers, while trashing forests and peatlands on their other lands.

And lo and behold, our investigation team discovered United Plantations doesn’t comply with the key standards around partial certification on its Indonesian estates. Our evidence shows that the company is embroiled in illegal practices, including deep peat conversion and land disputes to name but a few issues.

You can read our full 12-page report here (pdf), but I’ve summarised the highlights for you below to give you an idea how much further we have to go to get sustainable palm oil - and why we are calling on the RSPO to support a moratorium on forest and peatland clearing.

Failed - compliance with local law

Our field investigations found that a subsidiary of United Plantations has been clearing peatlands, including some as deep as three metres in Runtu village. Indonesian law doesn’t allow development or degradation of peatland any deeper than two metres. Operations have also failed to respect conservation areas around lakes and additionally there are irregularities in their planning permits and documentation.

Failed - mutually agreed resolutions where land disputes exist

Four community members from Runtu village in Kalimantan have been jailed allegedly for their opposition to land clearing activities by a United Plantations subsidiary. The RSPO rules for partial certification require that a mutually agreed resolution takes place when such disputes happen - their imprisonment indisputably shows that significant land conflicts still exist in palm oil concessions owned by United Plantations.

Failed - speedy plan for full certification

The RSPO requires companies that go for partial certification to have in place an “adequately ambitious and realistic” plan for certification of all their operations. While other companies such as New Britain Palm Oil have committed to achieving full certification in one to three years, United Plantations are working towards much longer timelines.

All in all it’s not a good start for certified palm oil. The case shows that there are fundamental flaws within the RSPO if certified members are failing to comply with the minimum standards, and certifiers are missing key issues like land conflict and breaches of Indonesian law.

Moreover, all members of the RSPO - certified or not - should not be allowed to keep clearing forests and peatlands. The RSPO’s going to have to take a tougher line if it wants to save the forests, the climate and its reputation.

Source: Greenpeace UK