Palm | Kelapa Sawit

At a recent forum organized by the Palm Oil Refiners Association of Malaysia (PORAM), it was revealed that there was no moral case for Western Environmental NGOs (WENGOs) campaigns against palm oil. Data indicates that the agricultural land occupied by the world palm oil industry is miniscule as compared to the total land allocated to growing grains and oilseeds. This is shown in Fig 1 below where the segment for oil palm area is only 1.56 % of the total grain and oilseed area (see arrow) and it is hardly visible in the bar chart.
 
Figure 1 - Oil Palm VS Total Grain & Oilseed Area


Oil palm is the main agricultural crop of major palm oil producer countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia where it occupies 13% and 5% of their land area respectively. Assuming that developing countries are allowed to use part of their land area for agriculture and plant the most profitable crops to provide employment, produce food and generate income, the above figures show that there is no excessive over exploitation of forests due to planting oil palm as a cash crop. Nationally, both countries retain much higher percentages of forest as compared to developed countries as shown in Fig 2.

Figure 2 - Forest in Developed VS Developing Countries

 
If WENGOs claim that global warming is caused by loss of forests due to oil palm cultivation, it would be useful to know that oil palm share of world agricultural land is only 0.22 % as shown in Fig 3. The share of loss of carbon stock (deforestation) caused by oil palm compared to total global agriculture is thus assumed to be 0.22 %. This does not include the positive carbon sequestering effect of the oil palm trees. It is therefore morally unacceptable for WENGOs to discourage palm oil producing countries from practicing their share of agriculture which accounts for merely 0.22 % of world agricultural area.

Figure 3 - World Cultivated Area of Oilseeds

 
Even the total GHG emission of global agriculture of 17 % is considered small compared to that from the burning of fossil fuel which contributes to a high 57% of GHG emission as shown in Fig 4. The carbon foot print of the oil palm cultivation globally is therefore 0.22% x 17% of the total or 0.0374 % of global GHG emissions. This has no bearing on global warming hence making it immoral to blame oil palm as a significant contributor of global warming while facts prove otherwise.

Figure 4 - Largest Contributor to Climate Change is Fossil Fuel Usage

 
Many other economic activities are responsible for the vast amount of GHG emission. These activities are accepted as part of the economic growth processes needed to sustain the world economy. Efforts to reduce GHG emissions should be directed at these economic activities as they are the main cause of GHG emission. Curtailing the expansion of oil palm on the basis of its impact on global warming is therefore scientifically unjustified as the contribution is only 0.0374 % of global GHG emission.

If the loss of biodiversity is used as an argument to discourage oil palm cultivation, there is ample forest being conserved as shown in Fig 2 above. The UN Convention only requires 10 % of the country land area to be kept as forest for conserving biodiversity and Malaysia has far exceeded this by committing 50%.

Despite the lack of convincing evidence to pin down the palm oil industry against global warming or biodiversity loss, both producer countries have given full cooperation to comply with the needs of stakeholders and WENGOs to produce palm oil sustainably. They have fully embraced the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to enable palm oil to be certified to meet sustainability principles and criteria. The Indonesians have signed an agreement with Norway to have a moratorium on deforestation while the Malaysian government has repeatedly announced its assurance of maintaining at least 50% of its land area as permanent forest. Deforestation thus appears as a non issue.

To ensure a level playing field, it is timely that a similar certification for sustainability be required for other oils produced by various countries worldwide. Otherwise, it will be a clear reflection of the oil palm industry being victimised by being asked to comply to certification needs for sustainability when no scientific justification exist to allow the world to benefit from global warming mitigation or improved biodiversity. Without premiums given to RSPO certified palm oil it becomes a big burden for oil palm farmers to bear the added cost of certification when their counterpart farmers producing soyabean or rapeseed do not have to be certified for sustainability.

Certifying the other (low yielding and land inefficient) oilseed crops for sustainability would at least contribute to a greater amount of carbon emission reduction compared to oil palm, even though the quantum of saving is still small compared to the carbon footprint of fossil fuel and other agricultural activities.

All evidence clearly shows that there is no moral ground for the WENGOs to campaign against palm oil. Unless the WENGOs can quantify and show that there are clear benefits relating to global warming or biodiversity improvements, or economic premiums for sustainable certified palm oil, then it is only a matter of time when the palm oil producers realise that they have been hoodwink by the NGOs who only impose the no deforestation condition on palm oil but don’t bother to do likewise on other low yielding crops which occupy vast area of land.

Western Environmental NGOs (WENGOs) often attempt to undertake studies to demonstrate the impact of deforestation on climate change or biodiversity losses in collaboration with universities in order to establish credibility in the final reports generated. However, many of these studies are not based on valid experimental designs or sound methodology.

In studying deforestation activities, for example, the outcome may change drastically if you choose and pick specific cut-off periods and regions as these will highlight and include only selected data while oppressing other data sets. The deliberate omission of data may then lead to possible biasness and potentially wrong conclusions. If the study’s intention is truly to evaluate a very specific narrow objective, then the conclusions should be restricted to the limits set initially and should not be generalized to support claims over broad and multi-causal topics like deforestation or global warming.

This blog had earlier commented on the fallacy associated when study results are generalized beyond the restricted objectives of the researchers. For e.g. , a study on biodiversity in an oil palm plantation can have ‘unfavourable’ out come if it is compared to biodiversity in virgin forest but it will have ‘favourable’ effect if compared to biodiversity of other agricultural areas. It is common for WENGOs to use such studies to conclude that biodiversity in oil palm plantations is less than that in virgin forest when the logical comparison should be with biodiversity existing in other agricultural crops as oil palm is an agricultural crop. Biodiversity in an oil palm plantation should be compared with that of forest plantation as oil palm is a forest plantation crop.

A recent study using satellite imaging analysis was quoted to have found a high rate of deforestation between 1980 and 2000 period, and the result was (wrongly) interpreted to mean that such a deforestation rate will cause global warming. Since most of the deforestation occurred in the developing countries, these countries were therefore linked to the cause of global warming. In the minds of the WENGOs, this is a clear case supporting their demands for no deforestation and an attempt to stop further development in developing countries. As a result of these type of restricted studies, ministers and government opinion leaders in the EU are convinced that deforestation is bad and therefore it must be stopped at all costs without realising that such studies are biased by the selective use of specific period when developing countries were indeed developing their agricultural industries. Conclusions derived from such studies are not considered valid by government leaders, opinion makers and NGOs in the developing countries.

For these developing countries, development is an important component of economic survival and they aspire to use the examples set in the developed countries as their model of development. They would disagree if developed countries attempt to dictate on the need to curb deforestation especially if this is without any substantial compensation. Furthermore, many realize that developed countries became developed by clearing their forests to grow industrial crops and establish other industrial activities on their (previously forested) land assets. Therefore, a deforestation moratorium has to be linked to an adequate compensation mechanism so as not to stifle the development needs of developing countries.

If deforestation and forest cover are important, the trend set by the developed countries with regard to the extent of forest cover should form the basis for future guidelines. Forest cover is a reversible process of deforestation and aforestation. A developed country can re-establish its forest area to similar high standards that it desires other developing countries to have. Therefore, a developed country that has only 10 to 20 % forest cover with no serious aforestation trend and policy has no moral right to call on developing countries with a larger percentage of forest cover to start aforestation programmes or to stop deforestation without offering adequate compensation.

The developing countries have a sovereign right to develop their land for economic growth in order to become developed nations in future. If the period on which the deforestation study is undertaken is extended back by 100 or 200 years, then it will be obvious that deforestation mainly took place in the developed countries and they would be implicated as the main contributor of global warming through massive cumulative deforestation. Selective studies designed to omit consideration of past emissions was cleverly deployed to show that the USA and EU emit less carbon as compared to developing countries as only present level of deforestation was compared. They do not include the massive deforestation and emission of CO2 in the past which have accumulated in the atmosphere, causing global temperature to increase gradually over the last 100 years.

The other real major flaw in the WENGOs’ argument is to ignore the massive contribution (more than 80%) of the fossil fuel sector toward global CO2 emission and global warming. Most of the emission during the last 200 years was from fossil fuel emission of industrial activities in developed countries. Deforestation which occurred mostly in developed countries during this period was estimated to have contributed about 17 % of the emission and global warming effect.

There was no analysis to show conclusively that the 11 million hectares of oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia representing 0.1% of global agricultural areas have contributed to significant global rise in temperature even if it is assumed that these oil palm areas were originally forested land. Logically that 0.1 % of world agricultural land used for growing oil palm would not show any significant effect on global warming compared to the use of fossil fuel and the past deforestation in developed countries, as 0.1 % is far too small to have any significant effect. Even tripling the oil palm planted area to 0.3% of world agricultural land would not have any significant effect on global warming.

On the other hand, should oil palm plantations not be expanded, this will cause 10 times more forest land to be converted for growing soyabean crop to meet future world shortages in oils and fats supply as argued in my previous article. Because of the potential deforestation avoidance effects of palm oil by a factor of 10 times, it would clearly imply that the more palm oil produced to meet world shortages, much more forest areas will be saved from being cleared to plant lower yielding oilseed crops. Deforestation studies which ignore these effects will grossly underestimate the global warming mitigation effects of palm oil and researchers conducting such biased studies will do injustice by masking the excellent potential capacity of the oil palm to mitigate global warming.

The biased results of studies on deforestation have contributed to the grave mistake of focusing world attention on deforestation in developing countries while ignoring the real culprit: the huge emission of CO2 contributed by the fossil fuel sector. It is important that the focus should be to reduce fossil fuel use in the developed countries.

The above argument explains the suspicion by developing countries that WENGOs are conducting a bogus campaign against the oil palm industry. The motivation must be to divert attention away from the real culprit who contributes to global warming : the fossil fuel sector which is allowed to continue to expand as it is vital for developed countries economic performance. Another motive is to protect their indigenous oilseed sectors, which are not sustainably produced, from competition coming from cheaper and more efficiently produced palm oil.

The Western Environmental NGOs (WENGOs) are well known for their ruthlessness: they are deeply ideological, almost like religious fanatics in some cases. They are also relentless, well funded and cunning. In many instances they have no regard for facts. They shape their arguments on the basis of their effectiveness irrespective of facts, and their war aim is clear, to destroy your industry if you are the intended target.

This is the challenge faced by the oil palm industry which has been targeted by the WENGOs. Their aim is to destroy the oil palm industry starting with a day at a time, followed relentlessly by weeks, months and years of negative campaigns. For example the ruthless campaign by Zoo Victoria against the palm oil industry was based on mere exaggeration rather than on facts. A recent report by the Australian Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) finds that 10 out of 12 facts used by Zoo Victoria in its anti-palm oil campaign are either false or cannot be substantiated.The Zoo campaigner Ms Lowry later admitted working closely with the WWF.

Oil palm happens to be an agricultural crop of developing countries where farmers who were plagued by poverty may now have an opportunity to earn a decent living of up to US$ 20 per day compared to US $2 before they cultivated oil palm trees on the land. These farmers are crying for fair trade to prevail especially in the EU, USA and Australia where WENGOs campaigns have smeared the good image of their agricultural produce leading to new barriers being imposed to imports of palm oil.

In some instances the anti-palm oil campaigns have infiltrated policy makers in formulating regulations which are essentially trade barriers disguised as sustainability issues. The EU Renewable Energy Directives (RED), with their highly controversial system of default figures assigned especially to foreign raw materials like palm oil for use as biofuel is a clear example of a discriminatory trade barrier. No sound minded scientists will be able to justify assigning a pathetic low carbon emission saving figure of 19 % for palm oil, but it can happen in the EU as found in the RED regulations as a result of the influence of the WENGOs in policy making circles.

Similarly, the infiltration of WENGOs ideology in the World Bank has led to a departure of its policy which no longer promotes growth in developing countries when oil palm cultivation is involved. But WENGOs can avoid the path of destruction of developing countries agricultural industry and still contribute to a better world if their campaigns to save forest and mitigate green house gas (GHG) emissions are linked to actual sectors and countries that are truly involved in deforestation or those rampantly contributing to GHG emissions.

One area of potential progress is to focus on deforestation taking place in developed countries. I have pointed out this previously citing Canada as an example and since then some progress was observed. Recently, Canada made peace with the WENGOs by signing a moratorium on logging to reduce deforestation. This is a good example for other developed countries to follow. Deforestation moratorium alone is not sufficient. In order to increase forest cover, reforestation campaigns should be launched especially in the EU where forests have been decimated to less than 20 % of total area in many countries. They should follow the good example of Malaysia where forest cover is more than 50 % of the total country's area. Such re-establishment of forest cover will help mitigate global warming and provide habitats for animals.

Present focus by the WENGOs to restrict oil palm cultivation expansion in order to conserve forests is likely to stifle an important economic activity of developing countries. Other more feasible options should be considered. For example, deforestation in developing countries and coal mining in developed countries share common characteristics in that both are economic sectors which contribute to emission of CO2. If the WENGOs were to focus solely on no deforestation by preventing expansion of oil palm plantation in developing countries and yet allow the continuation and expansion of coal mining in developed countries, the emission of CO2 will continue undiminished.

Therefore, developed countries will continue to enjoy economic activities with substantial CO2 emission while poor farmers in developing countries are unfairly asked to make sacrifices and denied further access to an economic activity in order to save emission of CO2.

In reality, replanting of degraded forest land with oil palm is the most productive and useful thing to do, as it is the best way to reforest an area, sequester carbon and contribute to economic development. On the other hand, coal mining is a one way process of releasing locked carbon to the atmosphere causing global warming. The developing countries are also the least able to make the sacrifice to reduce their economic activity compared to developed countries.

This is where the WENGOs can re-align their campaigns by focusing on what developed countries could do in order to make a more meaningful contribution to their objective of reducing global CO2 emission and not just focus on stifling the growth of agricultural commodities of developing countries such as palm oil which will harm the income potential of the poor farmers who are only trying to earn a decent living. These oil palm farmers have a right to have a better life just like the WENGOs and they should be given a chance to improve their agricultural practices while facing the harsh realities of poverty which is common in developing countries. They are working with local NGOs to adopt the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) practices which takes time, and they need support in improving their sustainability practices instead of harassment by some WENGOs from far away lands on how best to cultivate their crops.