Secret films of palm oil companies destroying Borneo’s rainforest
By Sue Cameron
Meanwhile, Team Brown has been in Borneo secretly filming companies destroying the rainforest to meet consumer demand for palm oil. The exposé, which comes as the United Nations conference on climate change meets in Bali, is to be broadcast on Sky. No, the undercover camerawork has not been done by Gordon Brown, the prime minister, but by his gutsy sister-in-law Clare Rewcastle.
Ms Rewcastle, who is married to the prime minister’s younger brother, Andrew, went to Borneo alone to find out the truth about claims that the rainforest is being torn up to make way for palm oil plantations. Born in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo where her father was “in the colonial service, I’m afraid”, Clare lived there until she was eight and has always cared about the rainforest.
She was horrified by what she found. “I drove for six hours through devastated countryside,” she tells me. “It was like a first world war battlefield. They were burning and draining peatland, despite a presidential decree banning both in March this year. And I filmed rows of bulldozers chewing up the forest.”
She says that deforestation accounts for more greenhouse gases than all of the world’s transport. Indonesia, which controls part of Borneo, is the world’s worst deforester and a major contributor to climate change.
For years mankind has been cutting down the rainforest to make paper. If areas long-since devastated were being replaced by palm oil plantations there would be less concern. What is actually happening is that new tracts of rainforest are being destroyed, the trees pulped for paper and the land then covered with plantations to feed the west’s demand for palm oil.
The oil is used in 10 per cent of all the products we buy in our supermarkets, including margarine, lipstick and shampoo. Some of our best-known companies are involved in producing or using palm oil. Many belong to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, chaired by Unilever, which is dedicated to stopping the destruction of the rainforest. Despite such good intentions, the devastation continues.
Ms Rewcastle’s undercover filming - she went out on a tourist visa - had some scary moments. The only way to cross the peatbogs, which can suck people under, is on logs, which is dangerous at the best of times. She fell in. “I threw myself flat, rescued the camera and managed to wriggle out,” she says. “But it was horrible.”
The Brown government is supportive. It will raise deforestation in Bali today.
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f66fc6ce-a855-11dc-9485-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
