More bad rap on Asian
biofuels By Marwaan
Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - European Union (EU)
demand for Asian-produced biofuels, particularly
palm oil, is coming at a high social and
environmental cost, a report released on Tuesday
by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
warns.
The UN agency in its annual "Human
Development Report 2007/2008" cautioned countries
in the region against following the lead taken by
Indonesia and Malaysia, the main producers of palm
oil as a biofuel.
"Expansion of
cultivation of [oil palm] in East Asia has been
associated with widespread
deforestation and violation of human rights of
indigenous people," said the report, entitled
"Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a
divided world".
"Since 1999, EU demand for
palm oil, primarily from Malaysia and Indonesia,
has more than doubled to 4.5 million tons, or
almost one-fifth of world imports," added the
384-page report. "Opportunities for supplying an
expanding European Union market have been
reflected in a surge of investment in palm oil
production in East Asia."
UNDP climate
change advisor Martin Krause said at the launch of
the report in Bangkok: "There are a lot of
safeguards that have to be built in if you want to
make palm oil production environmentally
sustainable. The debate on this has just begun."
The concerns echo a similar red flag
raised last week by another report, "Up in Smoke:
Asia and the Pacific", released by a coalition of
British development and environmental groups. The
rapid growth of palm oil plantations has resulted
in massive deforestation in Indonesia, which has
led to large amounts of carbon dioxide trapped in
the forests being emitted into the atmosphere,
stated that report.
"As a result of
deforestation, some of which is for palm oil,
Indonesia is the third-largest emitter of carbon
dioxide, after the USA and China," it said.
"Deforestation to make way for large-scale
mono-cropping of energy crops obliterates the
'green credentials' of the biofuel."
These
cautionary views about the downside of palm oil
are expected to feed into discussions at an
international climate change meeting to be held in
early December in the Indonesian resort-island of
Bali. The United Nations Climate Change Conference
will be attended by representatives from more than
180 countries with a mission to craft a blueprint
for global action to forestall the emerging
environmental catastrophe caused by climate
change.
The global cultivation of palm oil
had reached 12 million hectares by 2005, according
to the UNDP, which was almost double the
plantation area in 1997. The agency notes that
production is dominated by Indonesia and Malaysia,
with the former registering the fastest rate of
increase anywhere in terms of forests converted
into palm oil.
According to the British
report, the Southeast Asian archipelago has nearly
6 million hectares of land under palm oil
cultivation and Jakarta has set its sights on
further expansion. "In 2007, the Indonesian
government signed 58 agreements worth US$12.4
billion in order to produce about 200,000 barrels
of oil-equivalent biofuel per day by 2010."
Environmentalists view the forests of
Indonesia and others in Asia, now under severe
threat of being converted into palm oil
plantations, as essential to absorb global carbon
dioxide emissions. As important are peatlands,
which are part of the region's natural forests and
are likewise being destroyed at a rapid rate.
"Peatland forests are traditional carbon
storehouses. Typically they store up to 30% carbon
dioxide," said Shailendra Yashwant, climate and
energy campaigner for global environmental lobby
Greenpeace in Jakarta. "A 4-million hectare
peatland forest in a province in northern Sumatra
stores 14.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide."
Greenpeace studies reveal that nearly 28
million hectares of forests have been destroyed in
places like Sumatra, Suleweisi and Kalimantan in
Indonesia since 1990. Currently thousands of
hectares of peatland are being cleared for palm
oil plantations - all of which are owned by
private companies.
The attraction to palm
oil plantations, which preceded the emerging
demand for biofuels from the EU, stems largely
from the relative ease with which they can be
grown and the economic returns they generate.
Prices for palm oil have held up well over the
years and its not a labor-intensive crop like many
other tropical commodities.
As such, other
Southeast Asian countries including Myanmar,
Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines
are beginning to follow Indonesia's and Malaysia's
slash-and-burn model of palm oil production. The
Thai government has set its sights on having 1.6
million hectares under oil palm cultivation in the
next two decades, a nearly five-fold increase from
the current 320,000 hectares.
It's still
unclear how much of that earmarked cultivation
area will require clear-cutting. The UNDP pointed
to some success stories, where environmentally
friendly and socially responsible ways of
cultivation have taken root in small-scale
agro-forestry ventures. However to date, most of
that green friendly production has taken place in
West Africa, not Asia.
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