[FLPERMACULTURE] Palm oil: the biofuel of the future driving an ecological disaster now

[kalewillprevail at riseup.net]

Palm oil: the biofuel of the future driving an ecological disaster now

By Ian MacKinnon
The Guardian

The numbers are damning. Within 15 years 98% of the rainforests of
Indonesia and Malaysia will be gone, little more than a footnote in
history. With them will disappear some of the world's most important
wildlife species, victims of the rapacious destruction of their habitat in
what conservationists see as a lost cause.

Yet this gloomy script was supposed to have included a small but
significant glimmer of hope. Oil palm for biofuel was to have been one of
the best solutions in saving the planet from greenhouse gases and global
warming. Instead the forests are being torn down in the headlong rush to
boost palm oil production.

More startling is that conservationists believe the move to clear land for
this "green fuel" is often little more than a conspiracy, providing cover
to strip out the last stands of timber not already lost to illegal
loggers. In one corner of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, a
mere 250,000 hectares or 1,000 sq miles...-... almost twice the size of
Greater London...-...of the 6m hectares of forest allocated for palm oil
by the government have actually been planted.

"When you look closely the areas where companies are getting permission
for oil palm plantations are those of high-conservation forest," said
Willie Smits, who set up SarVision, a satellite mapping service that
charts the rainforest's decline. "What they're really doing is stealing
the timber because they get to clear it before they plant. But the
timber's all they want; hit and run with no intention of ever planting.
It's a conspiracy."

The fear is that Indonesia's aim of almost doubling the 6.5m hectares
under oil palm plantation in the next five to eight years - tripling it by
2020 - to meet rocketing worldwide demand will afford ever-greater
opportunities for the timber thieves. An estimated 2.8m hectares of forest
is already lost every year.

Until now palm oil - of which 83% is produced in Indonesia and Malaysia -
was produced for food. But the European Union's aim of cutting greenhouse
gas emissions by 20% by 2020, partly by demanding that 10% of vehicles be
fuelled by biofuels, will see a fresh surge in palm oil demand that could
doom the rainforests.

That is likely to kill off the "flagship species" of wildlife such as the
Asian elephant, the Sumatran tiger and the orang-utan of Borneo which are
already under enormous pressure from habitat loss. Plantation owners
regard the orang-utan as pests because it eats the young palm oil plants
and hunt them down ruthlessly.

"In reality it's over for the tiger, the elephant and the orang-utan,"
said Mr Smits, who founded the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation.
"Their entire lowland forest habitat is essentially gone already. We find
orang-utan burned, or their heads cut off. Hunters are paid 150,000 rupiah
[£8.30] for the right hand of an orang-utan to prove they've killed them."

Two orang-utan rehabilitation centres run by the foundation on Indonesian
Borneo are overflowing with more than 800 of the primates, most rescued
from oil palm plantations. But the east Kalimantan centre, where rescued
babies are reared by hand, has been unable to release any rescued
orang-utan into the wild for four years because suitable habitat has
proved impossible to find. In central Kalimantan the picture is worse: it
has never staged a release in almost a decade.

A new UN report The Last Stand of the Orangutan: State of Emergency found
that forests in Indonesia and Malaysia are being felled so quickly that
98% could be gone by 2022. Yet the orang-utan's lowland forest could
disappear much sooner.

"We're looking at the virtual extinction of the orang-utan in 15 years, or
less," said Raffaella Commitante, primatologist at the foundation's east
Kalimantan centre. "There are between 50,000 and 60,000 on Borneo and
7,000 on Sumatra. But 5,000 -10,000 are killed each year."

Yet palm oil, mixed with diesel to produce biofuel, was hailed as a
potential saviour for the environment. Put simply, the argument runs that
the palm oil plants produce organic compounds that when burned in engines
do not add to overall carbon dioxide levels. The CO2 absorbed by the plant
in its life-cycle should balance the amount it gives out when burned.

However, the more the ecological fairytale is scrutinised the more it
begins to look like a bad dream. Researchers from the Dutch pressure group
Wetlands International found that as much as half the space created for
new palm oil plantations was cleared by draining and burning peat-land,
sending huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The sodden peat of central Kalimantan acts as a vast organic sponge that
stores huge amounts of carbon. But as it dries while being drained for
plantation, or by roads being cut through to remove timber, it releases
the stored carbon. In Indonesia alone, the peat releases 600m tonnes of
carbon a year. Worse, it is often set alight to speed clearing, adding to
the CO2 from the huge forest fires that blanket much of south-east Asia in
haze. Estimates say Indonesia's fires generate 1,400 tonnes of carbon
dioxide each year, pushing it to the world's third-largest producer of CO2
from 26th, if both factors are considered.

Conservationists also fear that placing all eggs in one basket could
prompt an ecological disaster. A palm oil monoculture would be unable to
support the rich diversity of wildlife and leave the environment
vulnerable to catastrophic disease, while local people dependent on the
crop could be left high and dry if it fell out of favour.

"There are bad biofuels in the world and palm oil is often the very
'baddest'," said Ed Matthew, biofuel specialist at Friends of the Earth.
"Europe shouldn't be setting targets until it's put a mechanism in place
to block bad biofuels. Palm oil is one of the cheapest biofuels in the
field, but by setting targets it sends the wrong signal for businessmen."

As the risks become more obvious there has been a growing clamour for
eco-labelling of "sustainable" palm oil. A "round table" of buyers,
producers and environmentalists has established several key criteria that
would prevent conversion of high-conservation rainforest to palm oil
plantations, cut the use of fires to clear land, and mitigate the conflict
of plantations with wildlife and rural communities, though it has yet to
be ratified. "It's vital we find financial backing for this now," said
Fitrian Ardiansyah, a Worldwide Fund for Nature-Indonesia programme
officer.

Jakarta is increasingly aware of the dangers, highlighted by its inability
to prevent continuing illegal logging. But it is keen to grab the chance
and is pledging to put in place regulations to seize allocated palm oil
land not planted within a time limit.

Yet as a developing country it also believes Europe must help out
financially if it wants the safeguards against the downside of palm oil
production that will assist in cutting greenhouse gas.

"The Indonesian government simply doesn't have the capability or the
capacity to do this alone without the support of the Europeans, the US,
Japanese, or whoever," said Alhilal Hamdi, chief executive of Indonesia's
biofuels development board. "It's no good other countries looking to us to
help cut their CO2 emissions without helping to support us in that
effort."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2049687,00.html