Palm Oil Controversy

So far the 21st century has not proved to be the paradise we were once told it would be. Instead of living a life based on industrialized technology that commercials, cartoons and theme parks predicted, we are struggling to devise solutions to vexing problems on a wide variety of fronts.

We're seeking out salutary foods, scrambling for alternative sources of energy and trying to keep the economic engine going while protecting a brittle environment. Wouldn't it be nice to find a solution that addressed all three concerns?

News From Malaysia

Not that many years ago some pundits claimed palm oil fit that description. As a substitute for trans fatty acids, or trans fat, palm oil is now found in thousands of products such as bread, crackers, chips, margarine, cereal, soap and even lipstick. It's a natural oil, derived from the palm tree, and serves as a feedstock for biofuel production. So one might think that palm oil is the ideal product, a savior of sorts, benefiting the planet on all fronts. But a look behind the scenes reveals a distinct story.

The use of palm oil has been a major point of controversy for the past 5 years. To some it is looked upon as an proper alternative, despite its shortcomings, while many others present it as a product with negative effects that far outweigh any inevitable attributes it may possess - a pariah of sorts.

I can't recall having ever seen such a headline for olive oil or canola oil, and while Greenpeace has a credit for taking ultimate measures to make a point, the reasons for their protest in this case bares investigation. according to Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace Southeast Asia Forest Campaigner:

"Greenpeace is taking operation to expose the disastrous impacts of the palm oil and logging industries on Indonesia's peatlands, forests and on the global climate."
Ape Habitats and Poverty

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep):

"Ape habitats are vital to all species as a source of food, water, rehabilitation and timber and as a regulator of our changing climate. Fetch local communities living in harmony with the forests are the best guardians of this precious wildlife heritage. Endangered apes co-exist with millions of poor, rural people in Africa and Asia. Salvage apes and reducing human poverty are intertwined."

Ninety percent of the world's palm oil exports come from plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, most of which are located on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. The question with palm oil output is that the palm oil business favors the same lowland forest that functions as the only remaining habitat of the orangutan.

In a article entitled Cruel Oil, published in 2005 by the center for Science in the communal Interest:

"Oil palm plantations, along with logging, fires, and other factors, destroy rainforest habitat, hinder migration patterns, and block voyage corridors. Roads and plantations fragment the rainforest, facilitate encroaching settlements, and make animals accessible to illegal hunting and poaching."
"Plantations also pollute the soil and water with pesticides and untreated palm oil-mill effluent, cause soil erosion and increased sedimentation in rivers, and cause air pollution due to forest fires."

On the condition Front

Concerns about palm oil in a salutary diet are not new. In 2005, Jeff Novick, Director of cusine at the Pritikin Longevity center & Spa in Aventura, Florida, commented on the use of palm oil in our food products.

"This is nuts! All these tropical oils are extremely saturated fats. Like butter, cheese, and meat, tropical oils raise Ldl cholesterol and clog arteries with plaque, addition your risk of a heart attack. In fact, tropical oils can have more cholesterol-raising saturated fat than even butter," emphasizes Jeff. Coconut oil is 92% saturated, development it more saturated than butter, beef tallow, or even lard. Palm oil, though it consist of less saturated fat (50%), is full of a type of saturated fat, palmitic acid, which appears to be most conducive to heart disease."

Fueling the Controversy

Unlike fossil fuels, palm oil was originally thought about to be carbon-neutral, as the carbon dioxide emitted from burning it is approximately the same as the number absorbed during the growth cycle. But the consequent of destructive farming methods has been to issue far more greenhouse gases than the number saved. It is estimated that on an every year basis 600 million tons of carbon dioxide seep into the air from drained swamps, while an further 1.4 billion tons are produced from the fires which are used to clear rainforest for planting palm tree plantations.

Jennifer Clare Mohamed-Katerere of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (Iucn) Commission on Environment, Economic, and communal procedure (Ceesp), commented in 2007:

"The primary causes of unprecedented deforestation in Indonesia consist of land clearing for agriculture and timber estate plantations, together with oil palm and pulpwood plantations. The European target for addition biofuel usage is creating a store that can drive the expansion of palm oil plantations."

What the world is studying from a proper chronicle of the biofuel business is that there is no panacea to be found when converting plants to fuel. either the product is palm oil or ethanol, a holistic view which examines the unblemished cycle, from planting to output to refining to ultimate end use, must be taken. Deforestation, pollution, erosion and water usage all yield long range effects on the wildlife, the environment, and the population.

A Hopeful time to come Ahead

To address the issues raised with regard to the creation and management of palm oil plantations, High Conservation Value Forest (Hcvf) initiatives have been implemented to identify areas for palm oil amelioration with respect to habitat conservation and sustainable land use in countries such as Borneo and Sumatra.Hcvfs are defined as having at least one of the following attributes:

Containing needful biological diversity resources. Containing rare, threatening or endangered ecosystems. Providing basic services of nature such as watershed management or erosion control. Providing basic needs of the local community, with historical and/or cultural significance.

Under severe communal pressure to remedy the serious problems being caused by palm oil production, the business finally came together. The first meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (Rspo) was held in August of 2003 in Kuala Lumpur. This meeting included over 200 delegates from fellowships and extra interest groups which represented 16 countries.While the group adopted a Statement of Intent during that meeting, and forty-seven organizations have subsequently signed on, it is still a non-legally binding document and environmental groups have criticized the member fellowships for not adhering to the document's goals, two of which state:

Sustainable output implies legal, economically viable, environmentally proper and socially beneficial management and operation. Sustainability must consequent from consultation and informed consent by all stakeholders, that may consist of residents in areas of production, palm oil plantation companies, smallholders, actors along the entire contribute chain, consumers, governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations.

So what improve has been made in the five years since the Rspo was formed? Only now is the first output of sustainable palm oil being shipped to Europe. Such improve is welcome, if not long overdue, but the sad news is that the Rspo is estimating that only 1.5 million tons of sustainable oil will be produced in 2009, a mere 4% of world production.

And the controversy on conformance continues to rage on, as Greenpeace is claiming that even this first shipment fails to meet the criteria for sustainable production.

Solutions to issues such as improving our health, protecting the environment and solving the energy accident won't come easy, and many times our first attempts won't pan out as expected, but the key from a Global Patriot perspective is to try out new options and monitor the improve of initiatives underway with the goal of continuous improvement.

What initiatives are you formulating to generate a great world?

Palm Oil Controversy

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