On the BBC in the UK there was a program called Panorama on Monday 22nd Feb which looked into the palm oil situation and revealed many of the facts to a wider audience. Thankfully.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8523000/852
It concentrated on Borneo rather than Sumatra and showed many of the salient points, not least how damaging the plantations are to EVERYONE on the planet RIGHT NOW due to the massive amounts of trapped methane and carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.
There were a couple of points missed.
Oil Palms are hugely damaging to the immediate ecosystem because they require vast amounts of water – the trees occur naturally in swamps, yet the plantations are frequently in areas which are relatively dry and so require irrigation, water being taken from other areas for the purpose. The fertiliser placed on the trees gets washed into the water table and pollutes it, so it is a double whammy for the local environment. Then the fertiliser – urea is the main one, which is manufactured from crude oil. It takes approximately 10 tonnes of crude oil to make enough fertiliser to create less than 2 tonnes of palm oil. Wow. That’s energy efficiency, isn’t it?
The second point was regarding the incredibly sad rescue of young orang utan. The program said they were being rehabilitated. You cant. Firstly the young orang-utan were clearly physically deformed from long lack of arboreal exercise and incorrect diet, so they would always have difficulty moving about in the wild, but the main problem is one I have referred to before. Baby orang-utan spend the first 5-7 years with mum, learning where the fruit trees are. For the forest trees live in a resource poor environment, and only gather sufficient energy to fruit every other year, or even every three years. They are spread out through the forest, so the orang-utan has to be clever and remember where they are and when they will fruit so he arrives at the right place at the right time, not having visited the tree for perhaps 3 years.
If the orang-utan is either moved from his own forest or is not with his mother while he is learning where the food is, then he will not know where to find food. He cannot move into a new forest and survive – which is why it takes an incredibly long time for orang-utan to repopulate areas of forest which are regenerated. In the rehabilitation centres, they have to continue to feed released orang-utan, often for the rest of their lives. This is where you can easily visit and see ‘wild’ orang-utan.
So once again we have the real answer – preserve the forest to save the orang-utan, don’t let them go in the first place as this is one animal that you CANNOT get back once it is gone. There are 8,100 Sumatran Orang-utan left, maybe 11,000 Bornean Orang-utan. 7,500 of the Sumatran are in Leuser, which is the largest contiguous population and relatively safe. We don’t know how many sub-species there were, but the Sibolga one, a beautiful intelligent ape, very red with long fingers, has gone.
It was heartening to read that the supermarket chain Sainsburys is using palm oil from sustainable sources in all its products, though Unilever’s answers in the interview were disgraceful and evasive. However I am more than a little baffled as to who proclaims the palm oil to be sustainable. How can it be sustainable? I suppose if the plantation is in a swamp, there is a chance, but the yield will be fairly low. And something must have gone before you can plant oil palms – somehow I rather doubt it was farmland. There is supposed to be an organic oil palm plantation in Ghana, and some more in the Amazon. Malaysia claim theirs are sustainable and I fear this is where Sainsburys are getting their palm oil from. The Malaysian forests are virtually all gone – replaced with Oil Palms. Not all in swamps, either. They use a lot of fertiliser. Being the Far East, how can you tell if palm oil from Borneo and Sumatra is mixed in with the Malaysian palm oil? How can you stop that happening? I would not like to certify that. But then I would not consider Malaysian Palm Oil to be sustainable because it is a consequence of destroyed and ravished forests.
The only glimmer of light is that there are alternatives to palm oil, good alternatives which provide cheaper oil without the fertiliser requirements – which is key, but perhaps gives a clue as to why they have not been developed. Who pays for the research into new products?
Rex Sumner
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i watched half of this panorama on palm oil and was feeling physically sick by the end of it, i was disgraced at how the large companies who sanction and justify this despicable practice. i agree with this blog how can any palm oil plantation be classified as sustainable unless it is organically fertilized i am appalled to read that it takes 10 tonnes of crude oil to produce 2 tonnes of palm oil, i am almost lost for words!!!!! it is just outrageous that we justify all of this by buying the products containing palm oil, i agree with rex wholeheartedly that conservation of the forest’s is the answer but i believe that we should stop buying products with palm oil in it and send a strong message to the company’s justifying this practice.
February 23, 2010 at 10:31 pm