The Not So Pretty Side of Palm Oil
By Helena Riley, Guest Writer
Palm oil is everywhere. It’s in the processed foods we eat, the shampoo we use everyday and it’s even used to make biodiesel. It’s cheap to produce and our insatiable appetite for it is causing destruction. Virgin rain forests are being hacked down or burnt to make way for vast plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, where more that 80 per cent of the world's palm oil trees are grown. In Sumatra alone, the development of palm oil plantations has wiped out millions of hectares since 1990.
Currently in Malaysia, there remain only 55,000 Orangutans left and less than 7,000 are left in Indonesia. When the forests are cut, or burnt down, the Orang-utan are forced out into the open where mothers are captured and tied up or beaten and killed so that they are separated from their babies for illegal trafficking. I recently interviewed some children asking them whether they knew about palm oil and the effects of it. 8 out of the 20 children, between the ages of 5-10, knew about palm oil and its effects. Although certain organisations have given talks in schools highlighting this problem, the children here generally do not seem to be aware of this situation. This is possibly because larger charities and organisations do ground work, such as buying up virgin forest to prevent plantations, but they do not have any fundraising or awareness campaigns to inform their supporters in Hong Kong.
I had the opportunity to work with the founder of Orangutan Aid, and was able to ask her questions about the organisation and their purpose. She also gave me some insight on how they help and benefit the forests in Sumatra and Borneo. During an interview I had with her, she mentioned “plasma plantations” where farmers who have sold their land are retained to cut down the trees for the wood as part of the process of land clearance. This is because palm oil trees take 5 years to develop before producing ripe fruit for oil extraction. The farmers have to buy the seeds, fertilisers and pesticides from the the companies who have bought the land. The pesticides and fertilisers pollute natural water resources. This causes the local villagers to be unable to fish and to have clean drinking water.
I asked her what Orang-utan Aid had to do with palm oil plantations, and she explained that they were a Hong Kong based organisation whose aim is to promote awareness of the plight of orangutans in the wild. Orang-utans are an endangered species and the loss of their habitat in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra is largely due to the continuing encroachment of palm oil plantations on the dwindling rainforests. This is therefore of great concern to the charity as it is currently recognised as being the greatest danger to their survival. As the forests are dwindling, this endangers orangutans, tigers, rhinos and elephants in the forest.
There is currently an organisation called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), they judge whether palm oil is sustainable or not depending on when the plantation was formed. If the plantation was formed before 2005 then the palm oil is considered sustainable, and therefore not bound by the new regulations set earlier this year (2014). Some of the members of the RSPO are Nestlé, Colgate Palm-Olive Company and HSBC. I was researching facts about the Sumatran rainforest and I found out that it is currently the second largest natural tropical forest in the world as well as the world’s sixth largest island.
There are currently 218 species of vascular plants in a single 200-square-meter plot of dry lowland forest in the Tesso Nilo landscape of central Sumatra, more than twice as many as recorded in the Amazon rain forest. Despite this, the Sumatran forest also has the highest rate of natural forest loss due to the development palm oil plantations. Despite there being a decrease in destruction of virgin rain forests in Sumatra, there has been a record of over 9 million ha in 2010. This is huge decrease in comparison to 1990 where there was over 14 million ha being destroyed, despite this, there is still a major problem and it shows in the statistics that we are still in the millions.
When I was at a fair stand for the Orang-utan Aid, the girls I surveyed saw several images of devastation and maltreated, captive orang-utans they were angry, upset and wanted to find out more so they could help. Should you want to find out more, here are a few sites you can look at :
http://www.orangutanaid.com http://www.wwf.or.id/en/news_facts/factsheets/?10681/Quick-Facts-About-Sumatra
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/palm_oil/
