Issue 235 January 2006, The Ram's Horn
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Ram's Horn #235: January 2006 “Sustainable Soy” was the headline of our April-May 2005 issue (The Ram’s Horn #229). The article reported on the advancing soy monoculture in Argentina and Brazil (and we would now add Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) and the efforts to label it all with the magical incantation, ‘sustainable.’ The article also described the questionable involvement of several ‘environmental’ NGOs. More recently we have learned that the Roundtable on Sustainable Soy was patterned on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). It was not that long ago the palm oil was in disgrace as an edible oil due to its ‘bad’ saturated fat content of 51%, compared to soy oil’s 15% and canola’s 7%. Biodiesel was nowhere at the time – we assumed we could count on an unlimited supply of crude oil forever. Times have changed. Now palm oil tops the ‘good’ list for containing no transfats, and biodiesel is touted as the salvation of industrial agriculture and perhaps the automobile. But the destructive character of massive monoculture production for export remains, regardless of ‘good’ fats or energy ‘needs.’ Growing production, of course, means more land devoted to oil palms. The land occupied by oil-palm plantations in Malaysia has risen from 642,000 hectares in 1975 to nearly 4 million hectares in 2004, and much of that has been carved out of primeval forest. Malaysia already has more than 800,000 small oil-palm landholdings, and the industry employs more than 1 million people – one tenth of the entire work force, yet the Malaysian government is planning to build three palm-oil biodiesel plants in the next year, and would like to export the new fuel to Europe. Indonesia has signed an $8 billion financing deal with the China Development Bank to create the world’s largest palm-oil plantation in the Indonesian part of Borneo. The crucial issue, of course, is not the wonderful possibilities of ‘renewable’ energy from plant sources, whether those be genetically engineered hybrid maize/corn, genetically engineered soy, or oil palm (not yet genetically engineered), but the absolute necessity of reducing both global energy consumption and mono-culture crop production for export. Cargill owns two palm refineries in Malaysia and in 1997 the company announced that it was “carving out its first palm plantation” in the scrub land of southern Sumatra Island, Indonesia, as well as building a crushing plant. Cargill said the project would take six years to complete and involve planting more than a million palm trees. In addition to crushing oil from those trees, Cargill planned to process oil from another 2.4 million trees grown on land owned by families who live near the mill site. – www.cargill.com, 26/9/97
Carving out a palm plantation ... The industry journal Milling and Baking News described the project in these altruistic terms: “Cargill has taken the initiative on alleviating some urban crowding and food security problems by investing in a palm plantation located approximately 75 miles north of Palembang, Indonesia. In addition to the investment, Cargill is building a palm oil plant that will provide jobs to 8500 persons [sic].” Faced with growing public concern about climate change and biodiversity, on the one hand, and growing peasant resistance on the other, the corporations involved in the palm oil industry formed the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), representing environmental, government and plantation-owner groups, including Cargill, in mid-2003. ... to make Biodiesel.
Palm oil production has historically been associated with extensive clearance of tropical forests, the (often illegal) takeover of indigenous peoples’ and farmers’ lands and the exploitation of workers and smallholders. Production of palm oil is predicted to double in the next twenty years implying at least another 4-5 million hectares of plantings. RSPO is a joint initiative of some major palm oil companies and the WWF, which is aimed at reforming the palm oil sector and limiting its negative impacts on vulnerable groups and the environment. Set up as an NGO in Switzerland, its Executive Board and membership are dominated by the private sector and it conceives itself as a ‘Business to Business’ venture. While some NGOs have been sceptical of the RSPO, others have seen it as an opportunity to push for better practice. RSPO aims to reform the sector by developing an agreed standard for ‘Sustainable Palm Oil’, getting members voluntarily to adopt this standard and monitoring members’ adherence to this standard by third party assessments. The organisation was created to counteract the campaigns of environmental organisations which present oil palm as a major threat to tropical forests and their inhabitants. The slogan on its website says “Promoting the growth and use of sustainable palm oil.” The Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Palm Oil Production, which came into effect in November, 2005, state that:
Some NGO views about the RSPO • Any scheme which includes wide-scale conversion of natural habitats into monocrops cannot, by definition, be ‘sustainable’ Other NGOs are working with the RSPO for the following reasons, inter alia: • They believe that NGO-private sector partnerships are crucial to reform, given the power of corporations and the lack of commitment or capacity of governments These positions are not all mutually contradictory, but they do reflect the challenges of corporate power and the potential of co-optation. – With thanks to Marcus Colchester, Forest Peoples Programme and Rudy Lumuru, SawitWatch,
#235: January 2006 TOC
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