Palm Oil: NGO Sharks in a feeding frenzy!

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by: palmoiltruthfoundation
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Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 Time: 2:33 AM
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Less than two months have passed since the devastating earthquake that brought Haiti to its knees. The world's bill for the Haitian earthquake is large and growing — now $2.2 billion — and so is the criticism about how the funds raised are being used.

Scrawled along the cracked walls that line the road between Port-au-Prince's international airport, the temporary government headquarters, and a U.N. base are graffiti declaring: "Down with NGO Thieves!"

So poignant is the angry message behind the graffiti, that many ordinary Haitians including Haitian leaders — frustrated that billions are bypassing them in favor of U.N. agencies and American and other non-governmental organizations — are whipping up sentiment against foreign aid groups they say have gone out of control.

Ahead of a crucial March 31 post-quake donors conference in New York, many are taking a hard look at the money that's flowed in so far.

First the good news: Assistance has indeed been pouring into Haiti, sometimes from unexpected places.

Donations from Americans for earthquake relief in Haiti have surpassed $1 billion, with about one-third going to the American
Red Cross, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University said Friday. Other major recipients include Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and the U.S. wing of Doctors Without Borders, the center said.

An analysis of U.N. data shows that private donations make up the bulk of the total, accounting for more than $980 million of what has already been delivered or that donors have promised.

The United States leads all countries with its commitments of $713 million — with Canada, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Japan and the European Union among other top donors. Saudi Arabia poured $50 million of its oil wealth into the U.N. Emergency Response Relief Fund. Even countries with their own troubles rushed to Haiti's aid: Afghanistan provided $200,000.

A Nevada real estate developer agreed to send $5 million worth of circus tents formerly used by Cirque du Soleil. Leonardo DiCaprio and Coca-Cola are each sending $1 million. Dollar General is donating $100,000. Hanesbrands is shipping 2 million pairs of underwear.

But leaders including Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive are not happy with the way the aid money is being delivered.
"The NGOs don't tell us ... where the money's coming from or how they're spending it," he told The Associated Press. "Too many people are raising money without any controls, and don't explain what they're doing with it."

There has long been a sneaky suspicion amongst corporate donors and the donating public about the true intentions of NGOs who press the right altruistic buttons to raise funds, like sharks out in a feeding frenzy when they smell blood!

In many ways, it is déjà vu for the palm oil industry which can empathize with the experience of Haiti with "well-meaning" NGOs.

Except in the case of palm oil, the commodity did not have to experience a natural calamity to attract the sharks!

The palm oil industry can be forgiven for feeling, for more than 2 decades now that, for no rhyme or reason they have become a convenient target for unscrupulous NGOs out to raise funds!

How else can it be explained when a commodity that is inherently heart friendly can stand oddly accused in the mid eighties by the curiously named Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) led by the inscrutable Michael Jacobson of being saturated fat, and therefore deleterious to heart health?

Unfortunately, for CSPI its allegations were based on such flimsy "scientific" grounds - so simplistic it will be observed, that it'd be hard put to pass muster for a high school science project, many scientific studies on the health effects of a palm oil rich diet had been conducted AND published in peer reviewed journals! When the weight of scientific evidence was brought to bear on CSPI's claims, the organization now largely discredited retreated to their lair in Washington DC and planned the next move against palm oil.

Some 2 decades later, CSPI worked out a new stratagem, something with stickability that was so simple and devious that it could be described as brilliant. This time CSPI published a "report" called "Cruel Oil: How palm oil harms health, rainforest and wildlife", accusing palm oil of causing massive deforestation and global warming. Using the lovable orang utan as a visible icon for their report, CSPI alleged that palm oil cultivation was threatening their existence. Of course, the report was silent on the many conservation efforts taken by both Malaysia and Indonesia to protect the orang utans and made no mention of the many orang utan conservation set up in both countries.

The allegations of climate change also, was not something that could be easily disproved with scientific studies published in peer reviewed journals, as the science on global warming and climate change was still largely in its infancy. A favorite and commonly used ploy of green groups with an anti-palm oil agenda is take satellite imagery of a small part of a palm oil producing country like Indonesia showing large areas of logged over areas and then try to create the impression that the entire rainforest system of Indonesia has been decimated. This was a tactic used by Greenpeace and others of their ilk to stunning effect!

Sure enough, the mass media fell for it and they were soon drumming up reports on the massive deforestation caused by palm oil and the imminent demise of the orang utan.

The sheer volume of these baseless attacks against palm oil by supercilious and opaque "Environmental NGOs" such as Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth, appears to be moving the political process in the countries in which palm oil is proving to be a serious threat or making inroads against oil seed producers in those countries towards some type of policy restricting palm oil imports - but insidiously and cleverly disguised as policies to prevent deforestation and climate change.

The singular notoriety of Greenpeace and the FOE stem from their support of the astonishing lobby calling for the banning of palm oil, both as a source of healthy edible oil and as an ideal feedstock for biofuel! So convoluted have their position been
that palm oil is blamed for an astounding assortment of environmental ills, each one more absurd than the last!

From an environmental group, Greenpeace has deviously morphed into a shameless lobby with a twisted extremism and so obviously serving competing edible oil seed lobbies. It is to Greenpeace's eternal shame and folly that this once respected environmental group has degenerated into an twisted, nefarious and unethical lobby - one beholden to commercial interests, with a reflexive hostility to all things palm oil that now permeates their increasingly vitriolic and noxious "Reports".

Recently, the Danish part of Greenpeace International targeted Nestle, alleging that the world's largest producer of food, is
using palm oil in their products, as for example in the popular Kit Kat chocolate. They accuse Nestle of buying palm oil for their products from PT Smart, a part of the largest Indonesian palm oil producer Sinar Mas, which according to Greenpeace is using illegal methods.

The palm oil is, according to Greenpeace produced in Indonesian territories, which have been cleared for rainforest. And the rainforest is where the rare orang-utans live. "The destruction that is happening is overwhelming and Nestle should be more responsible than being part of it," says Henrik Pedersen, campaign manager at Greenpeace Denmark.

The culpability or non-culpability of PT Smart in this connection is beyond the scope of this paper.

However, suffice it to say that palm oil cultivation occupies less than 1% of the world's agricultural area and yet the crop accounts for more than 30% of total world edible oil production.

That proves that palm oil does not require quite as much land as its critics would want the world to believe. In fact, the crop is so productive that it has a typical yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare which is close to ten times that of its nearest competitor, such as soy, sunflower and rapeseed. That explains why Malaysia which is a small country could be the world's biggest producer of palm oil for more than a century.

Yet after cultivating the crop intensively for more than a hundred years, Malaysia still retains forest cover of 56%. That dwarfs the forest cover of 25% in Europe and 11% in the United Kingdom from where Greenpeace hails.

Malaysia had undertaken in the Rio Earth Summit to conserve 50% of its lands as forest cover whilst Indonesia has adopted the 25% forest cover of Europe as its target. If the 25% forest cover of Europe is acceptable to Greenpeace, the Palm Oil Truth Foundation is compelled to ask just what is so objectionable for Indonesia to adopt the same standard when it is a developing country with hundreds of millions of mouths to feed, to boot?

The sheer incongruity of that should have alerted the mass media to the uncomfortable scenario that environmental organizations like Greenpeace and CSPI are really proxies used in a cleverly planned and well coordinated trade war against palm oil.

It has often been said by cynics that the easiest way to rob a bank is to own one. Could the likes of enviromental NGOs such as Greenpeace be using palm oil to fill their coffers?

If that is so the ugly specter of "Down with NGO thieves" graffiti appearing in the palm oil belt of Malaysia and Indonesia cannot be discounted. THE END

About the Author

Palm Oil Truth Foundation is an international non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation, without strings to the world of commerce and power. We are a people organisation, organised for the people and founded upon the principles of integrity and responsibility as a global citizen with the sole purpose of representing TRUTH to the global community about health, environmental and economic benefits of palm oil.

The TRUTH Foundation is an international network of social conscience and cooperation among peoples in industry, government, academia and the ordinary global consuming public, strengthening the forces devoted to respect, justice and equality for a more just and sustainable world and for global peace.