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TechnoratiThe rush to palm oil and biofuels threatens to release 14 billion tonnes of carbon from Indonesia's peatlands
Many of the largest food and fuel companies risk climate change disaster by driving the demand for palm oil and biofuels grown on the world's greatest peat deposits, a report will say today.
Unilever, Cargill, Nestlé, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, as well as all leading UK supermarkets, are large users of Indonesian palm oil, much of which comes from the province of Riau in Sumatra, where an estimated 14.6bn tonnes of carbon - equivalent to nearly one year's entire global carbon emissions - is locked up in the world's deepest peat beds.
More than 1.4m hectares of virgin forest in Riau has already been converted to plantations to provide cooking oil, but a further 3m hectares is planned to be turned to biofuels, says the Greenpeace report
Carbon is released when virgin forests are felled and the swampy peatlands are drained to provide plantation land. The peat decomposes and is broken down by bacteria and the land becomes vulnerable to fires which often smoulder and release greenhouse gases for decades.
If the peatlands continue to be destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations, this will significantly add to global climate change emissions, the report says. Nearly half of Indonesia's 22m hectares of peatland has already been cleared and drained, resulting in it having the third-highest man-made carbon emissions, after the US and China. Destruction of its peatlands already accounts for nearly 4% of all global greenhouse gas emissions.
The peat soils of Riau, which are eight metres deep in areas, have the highest concentration of carbon stored per hectare anywhere in the world. "This huge store is at risk from drainage, clearance and fire," the report says. "The area of peatland is relatively small, but destroying it would be the equivalent of releasing five years' emissions from all the world's coal and gas power stations."
Riau's plantations already provide 40% of all Indonesia's palm oil, and half the province is expected to be covered in plantations within a few years.
The Indonesian plantations, which Greenpeace says provide oil used in global brands like Flora margarine, Pringles, KitKat, Cadbury's Flake and Philadelphia cream cheese, feed a rising global demand for cheap vegetable oil used in producing food, cosmetics and, increasingly, vehicle fuel. "Demand [for palm oil as a cooking oil] is predicted to double within 25 years and triple by 2050. Further expansion in Indonesia is expected to be on the wet peatlands, because most of the dry forests have already been converted", the report says.
The report accepts that retail companies and food manufacturers have virtually no way of tracing where the palm oil they use comes from. Oils from different regions, and even countries, are blended, stored and shipped in shared vessels. "Due to the logistics of this commodity market, real traceability is simply not possible at this time," a major food retailer, who asked not to be named, told Greenpeace.
But the environment group said yesterday that the companies could not be exonerated from blame. "Faced with impending climate catastrophe, the palm oil industry is grabbing available cheap land like Indonesia's carbon-rich peatlands. The big food giants are supporting the rapid growth of CO2 emissions that may render halting dangerous climate change impractical, if not impossible," said John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK.
Meeting European demand for palm oil alone would require nearly 60,000 square miles of plantations, says the report. Europe expects biofuels to make up 10% of all its transport fuel by 2010, China 20% by 2012, India 20% by 2012, and the US 10% by 2020.
"Substituting even 10% of the world demand for diesel fuel for road transport would require more than 75% of the world's total current demand for soya, palm oil and rapeseed oil," said Greenpeace.
As well as Indonesian provinces such as Riau, Asian entrepreneurs are already looking to Papua on the Indonesian island of New Guinea, one of the last great expanses of rainforest in south-east Asia. "There is already evidence of large scale land grabbing in the name of biofuel, with one company alone laying claim to nearly 3m hectares of forest," the Greenpeace report says. "Feeding the growing demand is likely to take place through expanding palm oil productions in Indonesia. It will feed off forest destruction and fuel not only cars, but climate change."
The food companies deny direct involvement in the creation of palm plantations, but accept that there is a problem sourcing sustainable oil. In a letter to Greenpeace, Nestlé, which uses 170,000 tonnes of palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia, said it sourced its supplies from "responsible" suppliers. "At present there is no palm oil that is certified as sustainable. As soon as the principles are adopted, Nestlé will do its part in promoting their adoption."
Unilever, which uses 1.2 m tonnes of palm oil a year, said it had invested a lot of time and money in ensuring that its palm oil supplies were grown in an environmentally responsible way: "Our work ... has recently been made harder by the rush into biofuels. We have lobbied hard with governments to alert them to the unintended consequences of this policy on global food supply and deforestation."
Cargill, which imports 535,000 tonnes of palm oil a year to Britain, said: "We already make impact assessments for new developments and do not develop in areas of high conservation value."
Indonesia will next month host the UN climate change conference in Bali, where countries will begin to negotiate a worldwide deal to combat global warming. At the moment, developing countries such as China and Indonesia are not required to limit emissions.
In numbers
11m The number of hectares of Indonesian peatlands already cleared and drained
4% Current share of global greenhouse gas emissions from peatland destruction
25 Years from now the demand for palm oil for cooking will be double today's rate
© 2007 The Guardian
18 Comments so far
Show AllThe reason why you are here is because you care.
Only way other people and politicians will listen to us if we start to organize protests to make necessarily changes to combat global warming.
To start we should go to Washington and shuts down the city for a day.
They will listen to 500 000 or more people on they door step.
I can't imagine if you care about our future you wont show up with your family and friends.
Lets set a day and start the change!!!
I don't think any solution to climate change existing within the framework of rapacious consumption will work. It won't work for mitigating climate change and meeting energy demands, andit won't work for preserving biodiversity and some semblance of the landscape from which we emerged and greatly need for our own mental health
The Via Campesina and member organizations have promoted changing the terminology: 'biofuels' should be replaced by the term 'agrofuels'. This avoids the confusion that there is anything 'natural' (biological?) about converting biomass, crop oils, etc... into fuel. This is primarily an agribusiness and industrial enterprise, requiring the monoculture of crops on a large scale. Agrofuels, please.
Do we call staple crops: biofood?
"I've said it before and I'll say it again. There are good biofuels and then there are BAD biofuels. Notice how Big Food REFUSES to fight for good biofuels such as INDUSTRIAL HEMP which requires no petroleum, curbs global warming, is environmentally friendly, and yields more energy in return, and does not deplete the soil. Also notice how Big Food KNOWINGLY promotes biofuels such as the ones described in the article which actually WASTE more petroleum than they'll yield in savings return. And then you wonder why PEAK OIL is hitting this planet faster than a meteorite !"
Some people here are drinking big oil's coolade. Biofules done well, are part of our ticket out of this mess.
http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/
Danna
There is a very peaceful 'weapon' that isn't used as much as it should. It is called 'the boycott' and why is it not used more??? Can't remember the last time I purchased something made by any of the manufacturers mentioned in this article.
Wello,
Wello,
Your comments are cogent and well thought and you are the sort of person that understands that we are real facing a wall that we can not climb. But you still have hope is why you recommend websites for answers. There are no answers but I do think your idea of a general strike is a good one. Yes bring the whole damn to a stop and slowly grind to a halt but who has the courage out there for the fallout. Something those in power must recognize. . .that people are fed up at least those 75% out there that think radical change is necessary for the sake of survival.
Those of us here discussing the merits of biofuels have been led astray by the straw mongers who offer( beside the point) answers for global health and a return to rational thought. The history of technology provides the ample truth to Jacque Elul thesis that it requires at least two technologies to repair the damage of the first Mining the soil for anything is counter productive. The problems for cold turkey withdrawal of hydrocarbon usage is energy production based on fuel cells (Hydrogen) production has been with us for a hundred years, and Cold fission energy production as well as wind and geothermal.
Why do you think it has not been developed? Or, the electric car for that matter? GM wiped off the face of the Earth after it was produced! The technology for sequestration of CO2 existed in the 80s. The scrubbing of smoke stacks was achieved was achieved was upwards to 90% effectiveness by the Japanese. I researched this back than for my acid rain film.
Big business is behind the destruction of this planet now through Globalization. There are no magic solutions. But if there is any help it requires two things right now!!! Different cars and the destruction of older ones that continue to pollute with tax credits offered by governments for their destruction or refit not their export to third world countries.
To save us will require an economic slowing of the economy not another war with Iran to take the emphasis away from where it should be or the resources. I don't care if Iran has a fleet of nuclear weapons. This is where the courage lies to look at the problems where they exist and not allow the Jurassic age as it exists in Washington to keep us from looking at the facts!!!
Eat local and ride a bike or walk whenever possible!
Great comments so far. And thanks for bringing hemp up. I think the "experts" should not bring up biofuels unless they are willing to talk about hemp.
Also, why is "demand" for palm oil as cooking oil a good reason to clear forests and drain absolutely necessary peat bogs? Aren't there a ton of other oils for cooking use? Don't they create the demand themselves by providing the palm oil?
This is SO WRONG. And it's going to hurt everybody. For NOTHING. Except a few products and profits here and there. But really, that is pretty much nothing. Certainly not worth environmental collapse and extinction.
PS Wello I dumpster dive to turn trash into clothing as my "job" and I ride a bike. So count me in! I'd love to see others drop out of the "rat race".
"Does anyone really believe that the corporate nightmare will end? Does anyone think that that the profit motive as it is constituted in the 'Free Market System' will somehow be modified by the need to save the planet?" - ike kay
Yes, lots of people really believe these things. That's the problem. In fact, it's probably not even a question of belief. These are axioms for most workers and managers in corporate, academic, and government bureaucracies, which are designed for self-perpetuation and the promotion of economic "growth", not change.
The real questions might be stated, "Even if people stopped believing in the folly of the corporate self-interest model, could they organize themselves to take effective action instead of symbolic gestures and half-measures?" "Has there been an instance in human history where people forestalled a catastrophe, even those that could be seen coming years ahead?"
As heartening as it is to see all the optimism about solutions here, listen to your gut, folks. Does it tell you that more technology, "science" and better government policies are going to do the trick?
Only if a majority of us just withdrew from the rat race, stopped commuting and contributing to corporate predation and enrichment, ceased jetting around to preach conservation, ignored the corporate media, and scaled back to meeting basic human needs, well, the corporate juggernaut would have little choice but to grind to a halt.
It's far more likely that we'll fall into war and chaos first. I'd never understood the (forgive me) Christian prophecy about the meek inheriting the earth until things began to decline so fast. (And wouldn't it be nice if "meek" really referred to dolphins?)
Still looking for "the" solution? Go here: www.vhemt.org
In addition to providing an abundant, sustainable, organic feedstock for production of several types of biofuels, Cannabis hemp also produces atmospheric aerosols, called "monoterpenes," that reflect solar radiation back into space and seed cloud formation. Google "global broiling" to find out more about increasing UV-B radiation, the immediate danger posed by it, and why hemp can no longer be rationally considered truly illegal.
Cannabis agriculture is, in fact, essential.
PvH
http://californiacannabisministry.blogspot.com
"With the possible exeption of Ron Paul, who rejects biofuel on economic grounds, everyone else has drunk the biofuel Kool-Aid in the hope of getting votes in Iowa." - freeranger
Ron Paul is correct on biofuels. However, he does support hemp for fuel and has in fact joined Kucinich in the House trying to get it passed for legalization, not that it has a chance of going anywhere with our fucked up MISrepresentation glued to Big Oil and the phoney "War on Drugs" NAZI propaganda ! Hemp is an exceptionally great source for biofuel most people have no clue about and I've already pointed out its advantages in my earlier comments on this article.
http://www.hemp4fuel.com
"Deforestation across the globe needs to limited and stopped right away. We are killing ourselves and all the living things, and for what, Kit Kats?" -2lyons
Then join us all in fighting to LEGALIZE hemp. Big Paper joined forces in banning hemp 70 years ago and now it's way past time to fight back.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. There are good biofuels and then there are BAD biofuels. Notice how Big Food REFUSES to fight for good biofuels such as INDUSTRIAL HEMP which requires no petroleum, curbs global warming, is environmentally friendly, and yields more energy in return, and does not deplete the soil. Also notice how Big Food KNOWINGLY promotes biofuels such as the ones described in the article which actually WASTE more petroleum than they'll yield in savings return. And then you wonder why PEAK OIL is hitting this planet faster than a meteorite !
Does anyone really believe that the corporate nightmare will end? Does anyone think that that the profit motive as it is constituted in the "Free Market System" will somehow be modified by the need to save the planet? We are entering a phase of the final meltdown of the planet. The poles are beginning to break up but that has not deterred the oil market or has it lead to the kind of conservation in the face of this catastrophe.
There are still people out there like George Will and the Republican menace that will continue the objection to scientific reality, some of the scientists saying that we are already in feedback mode.
James Lovelock says that there will be about 500 million left at the poles for a few hundred thousand years until the planet rights itself and begins to cool or it might continue to heat until all life is finished. This small period of time in Earth's evolution and geology is on the way to another life extinction episode. This time we are the catalyst for our own extinction.
We have all done it! Who has turned off life? Who has turned love to stone? Will we spin to oblivion on a dead planet? Where is the profit to be found here can some one from Wall street explain this? I need a financial adviser.
Palm oil, along with high fructose syrup are two of the ingredients that the Slow Food Movement says are ruining our food supply. And if you've read Kevin Trudeu's book (Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About) you may have started to check the labels on the food you buy from these corporate food companies. Not only are they responsible for jeapordizing the environment by supporting the destruction of virgin forest in Riau and the release of dangerous gases into our upper atmosphere (while looking the other way) but also most probably for the obesity epidemic and epidemic of illnesses in our country most likely some of which are caused by the large amount of chemicals, cheap ingredients and genetically modified ingredients in our food which affect the metabolism and health. Remember "it's all about money", thus Bushcorpco's put the cheapest ingredients in our food to maximize profits while disregarding and denying (lying) about the effects of those ingredients. Before this was being done there was no obesity epidemic (and I'm old enough to know). This detriment to our health in turn benefits the pharmaceutical industry which innundates our airwaves with their awful commercials. Pity that the pharmas never seem to find a cure for anything. The reason why is it would likely put them out of business. So they've managed to search out new markets for their often dangerous drugs. Namely children. Those children with HDD may have developed it from the palm oil, high fructose corn syrup, chemicals, etc. from our food. You see HDD was almost unheard of 50 years ago. The world could have been energy efficient long ago if all the money spent on commercials and lobbying had been spent on windmills, solar, etc. By the way, I researched palm oil and found it is in many of our foods and is higher in saturated fat than pure lard. Lord help us. I advise these food companies to immediately start using olive oil instead of palm oil and to immediately start charging less for all their food stuffs as a means to atone for the harm that has been done by them to the world to date. Will they take the advice? Fat chance. Hang in there all and keep trying to talk the truth.
We are growing our food for energy, not for our own lives and starving more people along the way. This must stop.
We must each learn how to farm and green our cities and suburbs to sutain our food supply and reduce, reuse, recycle.
Deforestation across the globe needs to limited and stopped right away. We are killing ourselves and all the living things, and for what, Kit Kats?
Most biofuels make no economic sense right now, and that's a good reason to reject them, but as fossil fuels rise in value they are becoming more feasible economically. And that is the real danger, because biofuels are an ecological disaster in the making, regardless of their economic feasibility.
I can't believe there are still people who have embraced biofuel as a "green" fuel. The negative consequences of biofuel go far beyond those mentioned in this article.
So are any of our candidates speaking the truth on this issue? With the possible exeption of Ron Paul, who rejects biofuel on economic grounds, everyone else has drunk the biofuel Kool-Aid in the hope of getting votes in Iowa.