I just started as Greenpeace's media director, in part because I wanted to help Greenpeace save the world's rainforests, a topic I've written a lot about at Grist and elsewhere. Within a week of starting the job, I knew I'd made a good decision when I got this news release from our Southeast Asian office:
Indonesian province of Riau has pledged to halt the destruction of its forests and peatlands; a move that will prevent billions of tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere.
At a ceremony in the provincial capital Pekanbaru, Riau Governor Wan Abu Bakar announced the temporary ban, which will remain in place until a law is agreed. The move follows Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's pledge at the G-8 Summit in July to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation by 50 percent by 2009.
This is very good news for the orangutans, rhinos, and elephants being killed off by Indonesia's aggressive expansion of palm oil -- and excellent news for the climate too: Burning all that rainforest for palm oil makes Indonesia the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, right behind the United States and China and right ahead of fellow forest destroyer Brazil.
The victory comes after months of effort by Greenpeace in Riau (see a video of Greenpeace's Forest Defenders Camp in Riau here) to expose the hugely disproportionate damage palm oil does to the planet. Alone, it accounts for around 8 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions.
But don't start buying Entenmann's products, Twix, Oreos, Kit Kats, Body Shop soap, Burt's Bees products, Kashi breakfast bars, or any of the other cookies, crackers, soaps, shampoos, and cosmetics that contain palm oil just yet. Food and ag giants like Cargill, ADM, and Bunge are still slipping this fattening orangutan killer into our Trader Joe's Chocolate Truffles and Whole Foods' water crackers, and the Indonesian central government is still allowing this land grab to go ahead unabated. Until deforestation for palm oil is stopped and already deforested areas restored, we need a complete ban on palm oil and rapid replacement with less ecologically damaging (and equally affordable) edible oils like canola.
We also need a long-term solution that will permanently change the financial calculus that allows palm oil, soy, and cattle ranching to take precedence over the far more valuable services forests provide such as carbon storage, clean air, and water, and shelter for indigenous people and wildlife. We can do that by giving financial credit for protecting forests under both domestic and international climate regimes. And we can finally put the deforestation era behind us once and for all.
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Comments View as Flat
Sean Casten Posted 4:13 am
18 Aug 2008
Good news, but be careful
I've not been to Riau, but have been to other parts of Sumatra and Borneo (Kalimantan) where the orangutans live. We saw lots of evidence of logging well inside the national park boundaries that were supposedly off-limits to loggers, and were told by locals that the local park rangers could always be bought off to let the loggers in for a night or two before heading back out. At which point the forest is pretty well shot. (The soils there are actually pretty lousy, rain-forest notwithstanding, and all the nutrients are trapped by the tree-roots. Cut down the trees and you very quickly get sand and desert.)
Bottom line is that the news from the Indonesian gov't is great - let's make sure it translates into equally great actions.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 5:55 am
18 Aug 2008
Question...
...I agree with Sean's assessment on this. While the concept itself is excellent, how does Indonesia plan to actually enforce the moratorium?
Are they diverting any additional manpower, energy, money, or resources, to step up enforcement? Current enforcement is lax, and that was with some logging allowed, so how bad will it be with no logging allowed? Do they have the resources to cover such an area?
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Wolverine Posted 10:33 am
18 Aug 2008
Can't Restore Tropical Rainforests
Glenn,
As the Greenpeace media director, it's important that you know this fact. Tropical rainforests evolved over the past 200 million years and the nutrients were sucked up by the vegetation long ago. (The tropics were not subject to the ice ages, so the plants have been growing constantly, giving the land no respite from their sucking of nutrients from it.) Plants in tropical rainforests grow out of other plants, not out of the soil poor ground. Once the rainforest is cut, it won't grow back.
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Wolverine Posted 10:34 am
18 Aug 2008
Correction
That should read "nutrient poor ground," not "soil poor ground."
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JoyceMajor Posted 6:05 am
19 Aug 2008
Palm Oil and Orangutans
I just got back from 5 mo of volunteering in Indonesia with the Sumatran Orangutan Society and the problem with palm oil is complex but urgently in need of a solution if orangutans are to survive the next decade. I disagree that a ban on palm oil is needed as this will affect the workers in the field drastically. We need a consumer campaign to alert people to the number of products that contain palm oil and then a followup campaign to accept only palm oil sustainably grown.Body Shop by the way switched to using Columbian sustainably produced palm oil.
The corruption in Indonesia will also need to be solved before any lasting bans on forest destruction work & who really knows how to do that? Another solution is eco-tourism development as Indonesia has the highest number of endangered species. Currently it only cost $2 to go see semi-wild rehabilitated orangutans in the wild...lots of room for development to support local people. Interested in a list of products that contain palm oil? Got to ran.org.
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Wolverine Posted 7:36 am
19 Aug 2008
What Is Sustainably Produced Palm Oil?
And if we only buy palm oil from Columbia, the Indonesian workers will still be impacted. Sorry, but if you make your living destroying the Earth, you're not entitled to consideration from those of us trying to protect ecosystems and species. The priority is to protect what little is left of the rainforests, which are more valuable than the entire human race. Impacts to workers are a secondary consideration.
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stevejohnson Posted 7:08 am
10 Sep 2008
What Is Sustainably Produced Palm Oil?
Its very good informative site which deals with the conservative forests. I really appreciated the author to post this article. So many are neglecting the forests and you have recollect all our minds to think the future without the forests.
==============steve
WoW Gold
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