Palming-off our climate change problem

 
Photo via flickr by Anthrotect

Today is Blog Action Day 2009, the annual event which unites the world's bloggers to all write about a single issue of global importance on the same day.  The issue this year is climate change, a topic very close to my heart, and which in 2007 inspired my training with Al Gore to become a Climate Project Ambassador. As I write this, there are over 7,300 of us blogging today from 138 countries and this number is growing by the minute.

 

As well as being Blog Action Day today, October 12-18 is World Rainforest Week.  I have had increasing concerns about the effects that the palm oil industry has had on our rainforests, so today is the perfect day to air them.

 

Deforestation is responsible for a whopping 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, due to the destruction of tropical rainforests, Indonesia and Brazil are the third and fourth largest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, just behind the U.S. and China. As well as being one of the worst contributors to climate change, deforestation continues to destroy the last remaining habitats of the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger.

 

One important driver of tropical forest loss is the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations, which produce oil used in food, cosmetics, cleaning and biofuel products. Roughly 90% of the world’s palm oil comes from Malaysia and Indonesia. The United Nations estimates that palm oil plantations are "now the primary cause of permanent rainforest loss."  If action is not taken, 98% of the rainforests in Malaysia and Indonesia could vanish in only 15 years.

 

Palm oil is not a tropical problem; it is our problem. In the U.S. alone, palm oil is found in almost 50% of items on grocery store shelves.

I am sure that many of you, like me, do your best to tread lightly on the earth.  We do our utmost to raise our children to love nature and understand that we are part of it.  We teach them that there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’ when it comes to humans vs. the planet.  Or humans vs. all other living things.

I believe that to solve the deforestation and climate change issues, we can’t do it by ourselves.  We need our governments to take action.  But there are also actions as individuals which will make a difference:

 

1.Read that label!  

About  40m tonnes of palm oil are produced a year.  The most recent figures I found showed that 1.5m tonnes of “sustainable” palm oil were produced in 2008.  That’s roughly 4% of the total production. Many countries allow palm oil to be labeled as “vegetable oil” in products; as my research has shown me that this happens frequently, I have decided not to buy anything with miscellaneous “vegetable oil” in it.  A quick look around my supermarket revealed either palm oil or “vegetable oil” in chips, biscuits, crackers, and margarine as well as Dove soap.  

 

2. Buy consciously

Some companies are waking up to the palm oil issue.  LUSH previously used around sixty metric tons of palm oil per year, but for the last 3 years have switched to a palm oil-free soap base.  "We believe that until global levels of palm use are cut dramatically, there is little hope of a workable sustainable palm oil industry, and the future of the forests, animals and people of Indonesia and Malaysia is bleak," said Brandi Halls, LUSH Communications Manager.

Accompanying the launch of the public awareness campaign, LUSH is selling a tree-shaped soap called "Jungle". 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the Rainforest Foundation, a group that campaigns for indigenous rights and rainforest conservation. LUSH also partners with the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), an activist group, to convince other comapnies to source their ingredients responsibly.

A big bouquet also has to go to Cadbury New Zealand. Earlier this year, Cadbury incensed their buying public by using palm oil, but as a result of the negative impact on sales and their reputation, they switched back to cocoa butter, and made a further step to commit to fair trade.  Hooray!  A PR win for Cadbury means a win for consumers, producers, farmers, and the planet!

 

Illegal logging also contributes to rainforest destruction.  Every time we buy cheap outdoor furniture and decking made from popular tropical timber called kwila, we encourage this trade. Imports of kwila contribute to the destruction of the rainforests of Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

3.   Lobby

I heard today that there are approximately 100 buyers who buy all the products stocked on the shelves of all of Europe’s supermarkets.  They get paid by picking winners, and not stocking “losers” (ie poor selling products).  I’ll bet the same system is in place in North America. You have the power to influence these buyers through your shopping behaviors and the noise you make.

 

Here in New Zealand, dairy cattle are fed palm kernel as supplementary winter feed.  Our cattle used to be grass-fed, with supplementary local crops grown to assist through the winter months.  Now, with global demand for dairy and New Zealand beef heading offshore at high prices, our dairy industry imports palm kernel expeller for winter feed -- a product created from palm kernel after oil extraction. Indeed, New Zealand is the largest single user of this product in the world.  Fonterra has said that it buys from sustainable sources, but remember that only around 4% of the world’s palm kernel oil is produced sustainably -- while NZ alone buys 25% of the world’s palm kernel expeller. Hmm. Something doesn’t add up.

The bans on palm oil by LUSH and, this year, the Auckland Zoo, go further than the broader push to use ‘responsibly-sourced’ palm oil. In recent years, Unilever, Whole Foods, and other companies have pledged to use only sources of palm oil that have been independently verified and certified to meet environmental and social sustainability criteria. But efforts to develop and promote eco-friendly palm oil have stumbled out of the blocks.

Some activist groups have questioned the credibility of palm oil certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an initiative which lays out green standards for palm oil production.  At the same time, demand for certified palm oil, which costs more to produce than conventional palm oil and carries an 8-15% price premium, has been tepid, partly as a result of the global economic downturn.

Last month, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned an advertorial taken out by the Malaysian palm oil industry and stated that RSPO’s certification scheme was "still the subject of debate".They found that the Malaysian palm oil industry’s claim -- that it was possible for palm oil to be sustainable -- could not be substantiated and it was deemed to be misleading. The ASA pointed out that the industry could not prove that the production of palm oil did not, in fact, lead to deforestation or environmental damage. They added that research had shown biofuel production to cause adverse social impacts including rising food prices and a major short-term impact on the poor. The ASA ruled that the ad should not be shown again.

Nevertheless, curtailing global demand for palm oil will be a challenge for green groups. Oil palm is the world's most productive oilseed, generating more vegetable oil at a lower cost than any other crop per unit of area. A single hectare of oil palm may yield nearly 6,000 litres of crude palm oil, outperforming soy, canola/rapeseed, and corn ten to twenty times over.  Further, the recent drop in palm oil prices has made it more attractive for biofuel production, opening an entire new market. Western governments are considering banning palm oil-based biodiesel due to concerns about emissions associated with its production. However, other countries -- including China and India -- are gearing up to burn more biodiesel as car ownership expands. Thus it seems likely that demand for palm oil will remain strong.

The Worldwatch Institute concludes that despite new efforts at sustainability certification, palm oil development will likely remain unsustainable unless a global solution increases incentives for preserving forest. 

It’s time we used our consumer and lobbying power to create just that incentive.

More information can be found from the following sources:

Rainforests Action Network

Mongabay.com

Green- You can download the film for free and hold a discussion about it. 

The Prince’s Rainforests Project

David Attenborough's Q&A with the Prince's Rainforests Project

Bruce Parry's Q&A with the Prince's Rainforests Project

Article: 'Sustainable' palm oil campaign banned by ASA– guardian.co.uk.  September 2009

Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (industry Org)

Article: Indonesia's Palm Oil Problem  - Worldwatch Institute