– Koon Yew Yin The Malaysian Insider January 30, 2014
What kind of men would cut down these ancient irreplaceable giants trees? Each of them was over one thousand years old. Over a period of a few decades around 1850, 95% of the two million acres of Redwood forest in California were cut and destroyed.
Now they say we are wrong to cut our trees to plant oil palms. What do they say when Brazil cut down their rain forest to plant soya beans? Let us examine the true situation.
Oil palm smallholdings and plantations meet the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change which defines a forest as an area of 0.5 to one hectare having more than 30 per cent canopy cover and having a potential height of two to five metres.
To accuse the industry in Malaysia and Indonesia of contributing to global warming is sheer nonsense. In fact oil palm trees just as with other forest species, produce oxygen for us to breathe and act to counter coal and oil emissions which are the major cause of global warming.
Environmental activist groups such as World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have launched many campaigns alleging that the expansion of oil palm plantations have destroyed forests, threatened endangered wildlife and robbed indigenous peoples of their land. Many of their arguments are not based on fact but are sensationalized from a small number of cases.
The anti-oil palm lobby in the west includes pro-soya bean and rape-seed groups who see oil palm as a major competitor and have recruited food lobbyists to play on fears of the health hazards of palm oil consumption. Together with environmental activists, these well-funded groups have created trade barriers to the global oil palm trade under the pretext of environmental activism.
In a fair contest amongst competing vegetable oils, palm oil will win hands down. The oil palm tree is the world’s most efficient oil crop because one can harvest five tons of oil per hectare. This is 10 times more productive than soya bean planted in the West, including United States and five times more productive than rapeseed, Europe’s main oil crop.
It is an undeniable fact that palm oil is the cheapest and most popular form of cooking oil for consumers, including many poor families in the west. Should trade barriers to benefit rapeseed farmers who are already heavily subsidised by the European Union (EU) government be successfully implemented, this will hurt consumers all over the world.
Also should alternatives to oil palm be grown, more land would be needed to produce an equivalent volume of oil to replace palm oil, resulting in more deforestation and problems for Mother Earth.
Finally, the western environmental activists’ campaign against oil palm plantation expansion, in the name of “saving rainforests”, is a violation of international norms and Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s sovereignty.
Conclusion: I believe our palm oil industry will remain competitive and profitable for a long time. – January 30, 2014.
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Loading… +1 FMN’s avatar – Go to profile FMN 93p · 1 day ago
Why can’t the Malaysian & Indonesian government take even more drastic actions against these disinformation campaign by Greenpeace, WWF & FoE?
Malaysian & Indonesian governments, including the Palm Oil growers can pool fund to setup counter-lobby group to expose their lies and sue them in court of law for damages/libel/slander/defamation and get compensation accordingly. There are cases where Greenpeace was sued for similar economical damages.
In national level, Malaysian & Indonesian governments can enact laws and rules, to punish these local branch activists of Greenpeace, WWF & FoE, everytime they caused economic disadvantage, by sentencing them to community service or hard labor, with the actual Palm Oil workers in the actual plantation.
In international level, Palm Oil producing countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, African, etc) must form a cartel OPEC-like body to defend its survival and growth opportunities. Speak with one big voice in international forums to highlight the lop-sided treatments and protectionists’ attempt to undermine Palm Oil exports.
The ultimate solution to is to lump ‘EU/US funding to green groups’ together with illegal subsidies by WTO definition, because of its similar objectives. The shady funding is just ‘another mean to justify the same end’.
Palm Oil producing countries then must take unilateral measures by imposing punitive countervailing duty as a backup plan.