What if there's no palm oil?

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by: palmoiltruthfoundation
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Word Count: 1824
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 Time: 5:22 AM
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The day of February 19th 1942 was an interesting day for Canada. It was "If Day" - a simulated Nazi invasion of the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba and surrounding areas in February 19, 1942, during the Second World War. It was conceived and organized by the Greater Winnipeg Victory Loan organization, which was led by prominent Winnipeg businessman J. D. Perrin as Chairman.

The intent was to show what it would be like "if" Canada fell under the harsh occupation of Nazi forces and to promote the purchase of Victory bonds. It was believed that bringing the war (or, rather, a simulation thereof) to people's homes would result in a change of attitude in people living in North America who were not being directly affected by the war.

The If Day event not only resulted in Victory Bond sales well over Greater Winnipeg's goal, but brought Winnipeg's innovative efforts to the attention of people throughout North America. Life Magazine ran a pictorial spread of the If Day activities in Winnipeg and in smaller centers across Manitoba.

Activities organized for that day included simulated firefights between Allied and Nazi soldiers within the city as it was "captured" and the renaming of the city to "Himmlerstadt". German Reichsmarks were given out as change to customers by retail stores and proclamations and commands were posted throughout the city announcing Nazi supremacy and new civil rules. Armed troop patrols took place throughout the city, and a Nazi tank column proceeding down Portage Avenue, whilst a supplement in the city's newspaper included censored articles with "Nazi equivalent" columns.

The event had its intended result: within a week of the event, the city had surpassed its war bond sales quota. The entire province's quota was met less than two weeks after the events of If Day. Many newspapers throughout the continent reported on the day-long event. In 2006, a television documentary of the events was created by Aaron Floresco.

How can this relate to palm oil?

Take the recent draft European Commission communication offering guidance to EU member states on the use of biofuels which has classified palm oil plantations as "forests."

Essentially, the document argues that because palm oil plantations are tall enough and shady enough, they count as forests. "Continuously forested areas are defined as areas where trees have reached, or can reach, at least heights of five metres, making up a crown cover of more than 30 percent," reads the leaked document.

"They would normally include forest, forest plantations and other tree plantations such as palm oil. Short rotation coppice (the practice of repeatedly cutting young tree stems down) may qualify if it fulfils the height and canopy cover criteria."

"This means, for example, that a change from forest to oil palm plantation would not per se constitute a breach of the sustainability criteria."

The reaction from the Friends of the Earth (FOE), which had been at the forefront of the concerted smear campaigns against palm oil was swift and as expected, typically irrational!

Says Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth Europe: "Palm oil plantations are one of the very worst examples of the problems with biofuels. The spirit of the debate in 2008 was specifically to stop this sort of thing."

In a shrill spiel using the well worn and tattered arguments that are fast losing credibility and traction with fair minded and objective observers, Bebb says: "This leaked document shows the disgraceful attempts to push palm oil through European laws designed to prevent destruction of the world's forests." "Allowing the expansion of palm plantations to fuel cars and lorries in Europe will have a devastating impact on the climate, biodiversity and the people who depend on forests."

Let's see what the scenario would be if the FOE and their cohort of "environmental organizations" which include Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and a host of opportunistic "environmental" NGOs succeed in their mission to have palm oil taken away from the trade equation. "What If" there's no palm oil?

The prospects are indeed sobering.

First, in all likelihood the smallholders and plantations in Malaysia, Indonesia, the South Pacific, Africa and South America (who depend on palm oil for their livelihood) would switch to alternative crops.

This would, depending on suitability to tropical conditions, probably be another oilseed crop such as soy, sunflower or rapeseed. Let's assume, for the purposes of this paper, that it is sunflower.

Can we imagine the truly apocalyptic deforestation that will ensue? Ten times more rainforest will be cut down as all the alternative oilseed crops typically have yields that are, more or less, ten times less than the highly productive palm oil which can yield 4-5 metric tons of edible oil per hectare. Think of the fertilizer run off and soil erosion that will inevitably occur as all the alternative arable oilseed crops are, unlike palm oil, annual crops requiring annual replanting with the environmentally damaging annual tilling, fertilization and soil preparation that palm oil, as a "perennial" tree with a productive lifespan of 30 years requiring little or no fertilization is, mercifully for the environment, spared.

The doomsday scenario painted by Bebb of a "devastating impact on the climate, biodiversity and the people who depend on forests," will truly then come to pass.

Take climate. The CO2 that is currently efficiently sequestered by the palm oil tree, in the event that palm oil plantations are cut down and replanted with other oilseeds, would then be really released into the atmosphere. Whether that would be sufficient to cause global warming is another issue, but one thing is certain. The amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere then would dwarf what is currently placed on the lap of palm oil.

After all, even if we take into account the use of palm oil in the production of biofuels, which FOE had taken such strong exception to, research has shown that biodiesel from Palm Oil has a lower greenhouse gas footprint than other sources of biodiesel. Using a life cycle analysis approach the GHG emissions of palm oil have been estimated at a highly efficient and much lower 835kg carbon equivalent. Soybean emissions were estimated at 1,387kg and rapeseed emissions at 1,562kg.

What about biodiversity. That biodiversity would be massively devastated and decimated if palm oil plantations were converted to arable oilseed crops is patently obvious. As things stand, most palm oil plantations abut and sit cheek to jowl with primary and secondary rainforests and the palm oil industry had in a recent colloquium in Sabah, pledged to provide wildlife buffer zones of at least 100 meters along all major rivers, in addition to creating wildlife corridors for connecting forests to enable orang utans and other wildlife to transit to primary forests.

In addition, a RM20 Million (US$6 Million) Palm Oil Wildlife Conservation Fund has been set up by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. In addition, orang utan enclaves and conservation centres have been established in Indonesia including those at Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas have been set up and they include the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah.

The Palm Oil Truth Foundation is compelled to ask whether these actions are congruous and consistent with that of an industry which is painted by these "green" NGOs as profit driven and uncaring and one dominated by greedy big corporations?

Perhaps, the armchair critics in the "green" NGOs ensconced in their comfortable offices in the developed west may not have sufficient empathy, but in the developing world, the palm oil industry serves as an important developmental sector for poverty eradication.

Eighty-Nine percent of the world's vegetable oils are grown in developing nations, making them an important way to raise incomes and standards of living for the world's poor. Of this, the Malaysian palm oil industry employs more than 570,000 people with 405,000 engaged in cultivation, whilst in Indonesia, the Palm Oil industry has been attributed with the alleviation of poverty for millions of inhabitants. Moreover, in Malaysia, 40 percent of plantations are owned by small holders, with many being allocated by the Government for settlement plots (such as FELDA projects) whilst the Indonesian Bureau of Statistics estimates that 43 percent of the total palm area was owned by small holders, rather than large private companies or the Government. Imagine, the social dislocation and economic costs to these smallholders if their palm oil smallholdings have to be cut down and replaced with alternative crops!

Palm Oil is currently the world's cheapest cooking oil because of its high yield. An inevitable corollary effect of the cessation of palm oil planting would be the spiraling of prices of vegetable oils which would cause further hunger of the world's poor as well as impact on the fragile economic recovery in the developed world as increased edible oil prices would certainly increase the costs of food manufacturing and production. Any sensible analyst would be able to see that any squeeze on the supply of palm oil would see the cost of foodstuffs increase for many of those people who can least afford it.

Taking palm oil out as a feedstock for biofuels would directly impact on and lead to higher oil prices even as the world has been counting the costs of the last oil price hike. At the height of the oil price hike in 2008, global economies were deeply affected as a whole, and not only corporate profits but the survival of companies and sectors were threatened.

Of course, in the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, even if palm oil is NOT taken out of the world equation, but production is continued subject only to a curtailment of further growth, the unintended consequences enumerated above would still occur, with the attendant social and economic costs for both the developed and developing world! Its a matter of degree, but the social and economic costs will still have to be counted!

In the circumstances, it is opportune to remind the cohort of "environmental" NGOs with their criticism and intransigence towards palm oil and their increasingly theatrical anti-palm oil campaigns: Be careful what you wish for! This is something for the "environmental' organizations like Greenpeace, FOE and RAN to think about. The learned gentlemen at the EU Commission and a growing host of fair minded and objective organizations have already seen the light. When will these "green" NGOs do? 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.