Success of Palm Oil Brings Plantations Under Pressure to Preserve Habitats

Liz Gooch, The New York Times 17 Sep 09;

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Idyllic scenes of palm trees swaying over sandy beaches have long decorated brochures meant to lure tourists to Indonesia and Malaysia. But few visitors see the giant palm plantations away from the shore.

Each year, the plantations produce millions of tons of palm oil, which has soared in popularity since the 1970s and is now found in foods like margarine, potato chips and chocolate, as well as in soap, cosmetics and biofuel.

With these two Southeast Asian nations leading the way, the industry churned out about 43 million tons last year, making palm oil the world’s most produced vegetable oil, according to estimates by Oil World, an independent industry analyst group.

But the palm plantations are in the cross hairs of consumer groups and corporations in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United States. Echoing the longstanding concerns of environmental groups, they say palm oil producers continue to fell large tracts of forest to make way for plantations, destroying habitat for endangered species like the orangutan.

In Malaysia, the land devoted to palm oil plantations increased to 4.48 million hectares in 2008, or 11.1 million acres, from about 641,700 hectares in 1975, according to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. Reports suggest that Indonesia has about 6 million hectares (14.8 million acres) under cultivation.

Last year, the British cosmetics company Lush introduced a soap made from a base that is free of palm oil. Last month, Cadbury New Zealand bowed to consumer pressure and reversed a decision to replace cocoa butter with palm oil in its chocolates. And the Melbourne Zoo in Australia began a campaign to have palm oil clearly labeled on food products to ensure that consumers know what they are buying.

The increasingly vocal protests are not what the industry expected five years after it began developing a certification system for producing environmentally sustainable palm oil. In 2004, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil was formed, representing palm oil producers; consumer goods manufacturers including Unilever, Johnson & Johnson and Kellogg; environmental groups like the World Wide Fund for Nature; and social and development organizations.

Membership in the roundtable is voluntary, and producers must meet its criteria before their oil can be certified as sustainable. The group’s secretary general, Vengeta Rao, said new plantations could not be established on primary rain forest or lands with “high conservation values” like those with rare or endangered species.

“If the land was cleared before November 2005, irrespective of who logged it or cleared it, any plantation on that land can be certified to produce sustainable oil, provided there are no land conflicts over that land and the company has not broken any laws in establishing the plantation,” said Dr. Rao, a plant biologist. “But if planting was done after November 2005, it can only be certified if the company has done a conservation study and found that there are no conservation values present.”

The roundtable requires plantations to develop plans to protect rare or endangered species on their land and to assess whether there are cultural relics that need to be preserved.

About 700,000 tons of certified oil has been produced since the first company, United Plantations in Malaysia, was certified a year ago. Dr. Rao said that by 2015, about 10 million to 15 million tons could be certified, or perhaps a quarter of the total.

Once a company registers a plantation or mill for certification, it must create a timetable to convert all of its operations. Consumer goods manufacturers joining must also devise a timetable for switching to certified oil.

Dr. Rao said the roundtable did not dictate timetables to its members “because circumstances vary between producers.”

Some critics say the standards are not stringent enough to prevent further deforestation.

“The expansion of plantations has pushed the orangutan to the brink of extinction, with some experts predicting total extinction within 10 years,” said James Turner, a spokesman for the British branch of Greenpeace. A United Nations report in 2007 found that “the rapid increase of plantation acreage is one of the greatest threats to orangutans.”

Greenpeace says the industry also contributes to carbon emissions when producers establish plantations on peat bogs, which store carbon. Draining and burning peat bogs to establish plantations releases greenhouse gases.

Dr. Rao said although the roundtable’s guidelines did not allow extensive planting on peat bogs, limited planting was permitted in some circumstances, depending on factors like the type of peat and its depth. However, he said, this was being reviewed in the case of new plantings.

Such concerns prompted Lush to formulate its new soap, which went on sale last month in the United States. The company says it wants to eliminate palm oil from its products completely but is struggling to find suppliers who can provide such materials for ingredients other than the soap base.