Palm oil shock

Happy Labour Day to you. While we are taking some time off from work today to celebrate a day of non-labour, a rather disturbing report appears in today's The Independent newspaper in the United Kingdom which alleges that the palm oil industry is displacing native people, killing off orang utan populations and destroying rain forests.

First of all, their lead article puts it crisply: "There is no shortage of ways to measure the cost of palm oil. First there is the catastrophic impact on the wildlife of Malaysia and Indonesia, whose rainforests are being cleared to grow the crop. The habitat of endangered species, from orangutans to Sumatran tigers, is being torn down at a terrifying rate to make room for the fertile oil palms."

Thr article adds: "Then there is the destruction on the livelihoods of those tribes which have traditionally lived in these ancient forests. Last, but far from least, the forest clearances, to make room for palm oil plantations, are a significant contributor to the dangerous warming of the planet. The destruction of the planet's rainforests is responsible for a fifth of global carbon dioxide emissions."

According to a report in this newspaper, the United Nations Environment Programme believes palm oil to be the major driver of deforestation in Borneo and Sumatra. As hundreds of thousands of acres of forest are cleared to make way for plantations, 90 percent of wildlife disappear. They include the orangutan whose numbers have dwindled by 90 percent since 1900 with the loss accelerating in recent decades. Emissions from the chainsawed peat-rich forests of Indonesia, says the newspaper, are also thought to generate 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The story goes on to say that satellite pictures revealed the rapid loss of rainforests which also endangered other animals like the clouded leopard, Sumatran tiger, and sun bear. It then quoted London-based human rights group Survival International as saying that palm oil producers are evicting indigenous people from their land. In a taped interview earlier this year in Borneo, a Penan villager recalled: "There were no official discussions. The company just moved in and put up signs saying the government had given them permission to plant oil palm on our land. The manager promised he would pay us whatever we wanted. But we already know that the companies lie... If oil palm is planted, we will lose our land... there will be no more forest."

There is another report by Lone Droscher-Nielsen that touches on the orang utan. She wrote that the destruction of rainforests amounted to orang utan genocide. "My biggest wish is that people in the western world could understand what is happening here in Borneo, and how the demand for palm oil is devastating the rainforests and contributing to the extinction of the orang utan. Orang utans are so much like us, yet we are killing them by the thousand. To me that is genocide and it has to stop."

Droscher-Nielsen is the founder and manager of the Nyaru Menteng rescue and rehabilitation centre of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation which operates the largest primate rescue project in the world with nearly 1000 orangutans in their care.