In Brazil, Palm Oil Plantations
Could Help Preserve Amazon

Sustainable Palm Oil:
Rainforest Savior or Fig Leaf?

The push to promote sustainable palm oil is turning into a test case for green consumerism, Fred Pearce writes. The outcome could help determine the future of the rainforests of Asia and Africa — and whether consumer pressure can really sway corporate giants.
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Thanks to Rhett for this report on palm oil prospects for Brazil. Yes, the promise is great. And, the container of idealism also holds a lot of worms.

Historically, illegal deforestation, logging, cattle ranching, land-grabbing and speculation have been an interwoven constellation of destruction in Amazônia. These forces are not going to just fold up because the more lucrative approach of palm oil plantations is being introduced. Indeed, it will increase the likelihood of land-grabbing moving into more remote and more pristine areas in a now-familiar process called "leakage."

As more valuable agricultural uses enter a biome, land in general gains value and and so does the incentive to acquire it legally or illegally. The boundary or limit is set by law and enforcement has been very weak in Brazil. Amazônia being the size of Western Europe or the Continental US west of the Mississippi, is not easy to police, nor is it easy to get local officials to embrace high-minded ideals.

Thus, we are thrust back to the two core issues facing Brazil -- revision of its national Forest Code and local enforcement of laws promulgated in Brasilia. And these challenges remain as intense as ever.

I've recently written that, "achieving the dream of 'progress without destruction' will be like trying to get a bull to balance on a ball."



http://lougold.blogspot.com/2011/06/cows-and-climate-finding-balance.html

Further, I'm persuaded along with Tom Friedman, Paul Gilding and others, that nothing fundamental is likely to change until "crisis shock" changes EVERYTHING. And, by then and if there's time for a response, the dreams of tweaking the market to give incentive to conservation will be an obsolete relic of late 20th Century optimism about "best-case" globalization.

http://lougold.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-earth-full-paul-gilding-saysyes.html

Check it out, ponder it and please share what you think.

Best to all,

lou



I would like to clarify that there are a number of responsible producers in the Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil industries. Unfortunately the actions of a limited number of bad actors tarnishes the image of palm oil as a whole.



The promise is indeed great. Some of this degraded and underused land could be used for food and tree crop production without cutting down another square inch of standing forest. In order to make this possible, governments and development agencies need to invest in more careful planning, incentives, investment and controls. Special care is needed to ensure that local communities that may be using parts of the land are respected and fully involved in decisions to intensify use or to restore forest.

Development agencies, charities, national governments and business should transfer some of their attention to the opportunity of restoring already cleared and degraded land to more productive use. This needs to be done equitably and should be driven by the local communities, who have the most to gain from the long-term potential of these efforts to contribute to enhanced food production, ecosystem services and poverty reduction.



An additional note -- the global "can of biofuel worms" is incredibly complex. The World Bank, WTO and others are now urging that support for bio-fuels be scrapped in order to hold down food prices.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/10/us-biofuels-g-idUSTRE7593ZB20110610

In addition to idealists and visionaries, there are lots nefarious characters lurking in the shadows of bio-fuel plantations as well as among the bundlers of derivatives trading in the banks.

Clearly, food,fuel and climate policies must be integrated. Piecemeal and incremental muddling through is no longer a workable approach and this is an emerging contradiction everywhere. Here is a recent study highlighting the challenge for REDD+.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/bc-rsl060611.php

Beware!



A provocative analysis. It's nice to see a different perspective on the palm oil issue. Something that departs from the rhetoric of the monkey-huggers and the palm oil companies. If Brazil can actually execute on its plan, things could get very interesting.



The article by Rhett totally disregards permaculture (sustainable practices) in FAVOR of monocrops.

Monocrops are always associated with profit seeking wealth. Monocrops destroy the biodiversity. Monocrops exploit the natural resources that took many thousands of years to establish that monocrops will reduce into depleting the soil (microorganisms) leaving desertification as a result.

This notion of transforming the rain forest into palm oil is the same like Chevron, Exxon and BP who harvest natural resources claiming the pollution left behind wasn't passed on to everyone.

By growing monocrops, it insures the highest risk to disease, the largest plight of insects, they feed on that monocrop and the whole ecology becomes unbalanced.

Who is thinking about the rain forest, and who is thinking about financial gain?




A fairly well balanced article, except for the wild and unsubstantiated claims that "The rapid expansion of palm oil plantations across Malaysia and Indonesia has left a wide swath of destruction through some of the planet’s most extensive and important rainforests."

The fact that palm oil is only planted on 0.22% of the world's agricultural land and yet produce 30% of the world's supply of edible oil should clue the reader in that something doesn't jive with all the palm oil deforestation hype!

Rhett and his site Mongabay.com, unfortunately ranks amongst a whole cabal of green loonies ranging from the Rainforest Action Network to Climate Advisers to Greenpeace to Friends of the Earth who have been guilty of contributing to the hype.

RAN, for instance was forced to quietly remove from their website their wild allegation that palm oil cultivation would lead to the extinction of the orang utan by 2011. Well 2011 is now upon us and the orang utan population in the wild has grown instead of going extinct when new tribes of more than 2000 wild apes were found in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesia, as reported by National Geographic. With roughly 50,000 orangutans thought to remain in the wild, the new find could add 5 percent to the world's known orangutan numbers, said Erik Meijaard, senior ecologist for the Nature Conservancy in Indonesia.

At the risk of sounding facetious, for Climate Advisers to forecast that "98 percent of the rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia will disappear" within 15 years due to palm oil cultivation reduces Climate Advisers to the level of those religious loons like Harold Camping and his Oakland based Family Radio who predicted that the world would end on 21st May 2011!

Malaysia has erstwhile been the world's largest producer of palm oil for more than a century. Yet, after planting palm oil for more than a hundred years, Malaysia still retains forest cover of more than 52%, many times higher than the forest cover of the countries from which these loons hail!

Indonesia has elected to preserve 20% of its forests which is the current prevailing forest cover in the EU. If 20% forest cover is acceptable to the EU, why should Indonesia be condemned for establishing similar targets, especially considering that Indonesia is a developing country with a population in excess of 300 million with poverty eradication remaining an urgent national priority for years to come?

It is ironical that Rhett now adopts a position and uses the same arguments that the Palm Oil Truth Foundation has espoused for some time now. Indeed, he could now serve as a worthy staff writer for the palmoiltruthfoundation.com.

Finally, the fact that many are making these scary predictions against palm oil DO NOT make them true. It is a sad indictment on journalistic standards when nuts and loonies are quoted by the media with gay abandon and without a closer investigation of their wild allegations instead of the application of a rigorous, sound and detailed examination of the facts. For this, the world's media stands indicted!



Lucus: This article does not promote the idea of converting of rainforest into monocrops. It raises the question of whether oil palm planted in place of cattle pasture could be better for people, climate, and biodiversity than cattle pasture alone. As Marcelo Brito states in the article, converting Amazon rainforest for oil palm would be a disaster.

I am aware of other approaches like permaculture/agroforestry which use a diverse array of crops to produce food, fiber, and fuel. But this relatively short article wasn't about general agricultural options in the Amazon, it is specifically about palm oil. If you would like an analysis of permaculture and other options in the Amazon, you may be interested in checking out mongabay.com, which has many articles on these issues.



The key assumption: "provided expansion occurs on degraded, non-forest lands, oil palm could help buffer the Amazon rainforest from further destruction."

Note that the law "Brazil’s agricultural lobby is now working to pass ... that would substantially reduce the [80/20] legal reserve requirement" has been passed. Why would farmers get rid of their cattle and plant a risky new investment of palm oil when they could *keep* their cattle and cut down more forest to plant palm oil?

I would have to see some very strong evidence about small-holder decision-making before I believed that palm oil could actually be positive for the amazon ecosystem. As for large landholders, why would more profit per hectare slow down their push to clear more forest? I would think just the opposite: greater profits lead to more capital, and hence more capacity to lobby the government and to buy equipment for forest clearing.



The Palm Oil Truth Foundation is a marketing web financed by elements of the Malaysian palm oil industry. It makes some curious claims about palm oil. Definitely check it out if you are interested in seeing some of the more extreme views pushed by the palm oil lobby. You might note that the points it makes are very similar to those used by other known lobby groups like World Growth International and the Malaysian Palm Oil Council.



(meu companheiro de amigos brasileiros)

Is saving the rain forest important?

I you believe that to be true, then please explain how any short term exploitation of the rain forest that leads to devastation and desertification would insure the rain forest in the long term?

Once the rainforest is destroyed by the short term foreign capitalist seeking exploitation of our natural resources, what will we have left, except a huge big toxic basin of chemical residuals polluting everything downstream?

Haven't we seen the harmful effects by the big oil industry to realize the results?

If anything thinks life is difficult now, imagine what it would be like to be without a rain forest! Brazil's climate will make polluted Linfen city of China look like paradise in comparison.

Without a rain forest, the world will accelerate it's global warming, leaving all of humanity struggling to cope and deal with a much greater consequence.

The truth of the matter is that the rain forest does fine on it's own, it doesn't need saving, except from the effects of humanity upon it.

So I want to ask whom are we saving the Rain Forest for? Would that be for our future generations or just money in the pockets of a few foreign investors who don't even live here?

The support of public policies that are mutually exclusive, or contrary to the country’s long-term interests should NOT be implemented for short term profits!



Open Letter from Amanda D. Isabela of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

What is the difference between palm oil and crude oil? As both are an enormous global business. In fact, both cause the destruction of the environment; be deforestation that releases carbon emissions, by the desertification and destruction of the soil through evaporation and UV penetration, the destabilization of maintaining biodiversity and so on.

The "Rain Forest", is an equilibrium, a balance of living systems participating in relationships. By disturbing the homeostasis (balance) of the rain forest you NOT only effect the disposition metabolically, but also the socially and psychological affects upon it's inhabitants. Let's be honest, deforestation causes extinction, changes to climatic conditions, desertification, and displacement of populations including human beings.

In addition, there are atmospheric, hydrological and ecological consequences to be concerned about. Example; when part of a forest is removed, the trees no longer evaporate away water, resulting in a much drier climate with greater erosion, flooding and loss of ground water (aquifers) and transpire precipitation. As a result, the presence or absence of trees can change the quantity of water on the surface, in the soil or groundwater, or in the atmosphere.

The rain forest is one of the greatest living treasures of this planet. We shouldn't convert it over into dollars, euros, or yuans for trees are the caregivers of our world, trapping carbon, regulating water, producing oxygen and cleaning the air. It's an amazing miracle if you think about the importance of how a forest of trees preserves the environment in so many ways.

We have a responsibility for our future to not ruin a good thing going here. No amount of money will replace the rain forest. Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences, right? What do you think will happen once the rain forest becomes extinct? Must we press our luck to tempt fate like that? Russian Roulette?



Europe’s Palm Oil Devastation – Scorched Earth To Save The Planet

http://notrickszone.com/2011/02/13/europes-palm-oil-devastation-scorched-earth-to-save-the-planet/

It’s the destruction of the rainforest in the name of climate protection. Clearing the land to make way for palm oil plantations. Prof. Jürgen Schmid of the Fraunhofer IWES Institute: "We have recommended the German government to completely stop its support of bio-fuels."



I think Rhett article suggest one bad choice over another. Rather than a good choice regarding the Brazilian rain forest.

It seems the decision is in the hands of the wealthy to make that decision for all of us. Certainly, the wealthy would point out the amount of wealth to be extracted that benefits them the most. However, it is the "civic duty" of every human being as shareholders of this world, to look after the interest of this world, right?

We owe it to ourselves, to develop our "conscience".

So in reflection, Rhett article really shows the great need of making moral choices in this present age of our development. After all, humanity is now effecting the world, by the amount of human activity on such a large scale, we MUST take responsibility for our actions.

We the people of this world need a conscience economy, that is sustainable, ecological and ethical.

Every country, nation and State should send forth a representative, to form a global organization. wWhere we implement and acknowledge the most needed actions to preserve the environment of this world for all people.

Humanity simply cannot AFFORD irresponsible negligent actions based upon momentary values. It has to include ethical and moral choices, our conscience!

Otherwise, human development will certainly peak and then regress, decline and dwindle all because our development failed to consider any sustainable practices because lobbyist, lawyers and politicians cannot regulate in terms of mothers, monks and priest who look beyond the momentary value.

We should be asking ourselves, just because we can do it, should we be doing it? That requires a conscience, which this article clearly has shown a lack of concern about.

It's time to stand up for what is right from wrong. If we don't who will?



Rhett Butler has been studying palm oil long enough to admit that it is indeed the best agricultural practice compared to other agro-based economic activities.

Compared to others;

- Palm oil gives the best return, thus helps alleviate poverty.
- It causes possibly the least damage to the environment, thus minimises environmental
degradation.
- It is used mostly as food, thus supplying the world population with constant and cheap form of nutrition.

Therefore it perplexes me that Mr. Butler still see it fit to apply different standards for small eastern countries like Malaysia and Indonesia and a big western country like Brazil. What do you suggest then? plant oil palm only in Brazil, let the Brazilians reap the economic rewards and enforce that Malaysia and Indonesia maintains their puny rainforest so that Malaysians and Indonesians live under a tree, eat tree bark and drink from a puddle?

Every country has a right to develop its land for the benefit of its citizen. Malaysia pledged and maintains 50% of her land as permanent forest. The rest for development. Indonesia, saddled with enormous population, unfortunately only pledged and maintains 20% of her land as permanent forest. 80% for development.

Those tree-huggers and ape-huggers never manage to present a better alternative to palm oil for proper development of the two small countries. Can you imagine if the two countries chose other agricultural activities instead? what do you reckon they should do? plant soybean? rear chicken? cattle?



Ed: Perhaps you need to read the article a little more carefully -- I am certainly not applying different standards to Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The article does not propose expanding oil palm plantations onto forest lands in Brazil, nor does it propose limiting oil palm expansion on non-forest lands in Indonesia or Malaysia. As I--and many others--have argued elsewhere, there are huge opportunities for Malaysia and Indonesia to expand palm oil production without destroying natural forests.



People like Ed, tend to justify their thinking by pointing out that if they dont do x they will live like peasants and wont develop their economy and similar rubbish. He hasn't asked nor knows what the local people of these countries want! Theres no reason why these countries cant diversify away from monocrops. Again its powerful interests developing short-term solutions to problems that will cause many new problems.



Mr. Butler,

I understand that you oppose deforestation. For Malaysia, we pledged 50 percent of our land as permanent forest (which we did in Rio, in 1992). Even as we develop our palm oil industry, we have maintained that ratio ever since and we will continue to do just that.

Would you care to comment on that?

Mr. Bobster,

Rather than jumping on the anti-palm-oil-bandwagon, would you care to present a better alternative to palm oil, for small developing countries like Malaysia and Indonesia? Please do your research thoroughly. While I doubt that you will find one, I strongly suggest that you have a go. Then, present your case.

Any Tom, Dick and Harry can criticise. The real challenge is to find a solution.



Ed is a voice of reason in a cacophony of extremist viewpoints that seeks to condemn without suggesting solutions. Rhett fortunately, is a recent convert to rational thinking.

Yes, it is reasonable for Ed to ask for alternatives. If Indonesia and Malaysia were to switch to planting soy, rapeseed or sunflower on its palm oil lands. There's no doubt that in that event, 10 times more land would have to be cleared just to produce the current quantity of palm oil, given palm oil's staggering yield advantage over the alternative crops. Then we would really have a rolling leviathan of rainforest destruction in Asia, Africa and South America!



Ed: I think it is admirable that Malaysia made this commitment and I especially hope that Malaysia's remaining primary forests continue to be maintained.

Palmhugger: I'm not sure what you mean by a "recent convert to rational thinking" but maybe someday you'll have the courage to reveal your actual identity. The Palm Oil Truth Foundation's personal smear campaign against me back in 2008 was memorable. I was especially amused when you accused me of being an agent for big oil and a "false environmentalist." So thank you.



I agree with the overall analysis of Rhett. One of the limitations not explored sufficiently by most commentators on the future of the oil palm in Brazil relates to the condition of known as Oil Palm Bud Rot. I would like to hear more on what Brazilians think of this problem. I have a website in Spanish on the issues related to OPBR if anyone is interested see:

Posted by Douglas Laing on 06 Sep 2011

How about a paragraph explaining what is likely to happen to the indigenous inhabitants within the suitable 850,000 square miles which one day could be or more likely will be cultivated?Extinction of culture and tradition, extinction of a community, extinction of a way of life, need I say more.

Posted by jim on 25 Oct 2011

Interesting article on agriculture development in Brazil, but, as some commentators pointed out,
absolutely out of the issue mentioned in the title: why should then deforestation decrease? Increased land value for agriculture would speed up deforestation. This is not my opinion. It is stated in basic economic laws confirmed by actual situations all around the world. When market mechanism make natural resource exploitable only legal prohibition and enforcement can stop the trend.

Posted by Carlo Castellani on 15 Apr 2012

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rhett Butler is the founder and editor of Mongabay.com, one of the leading sites on the Web covering tropical forests and biodiversity. In previous articles for Yale Environment 360, he has written about how a cattle ranching boom threatens the Brazilian Amazon and how activists are targeting corporations in the fight to save tropical forests.
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