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April 2008 - International — Are you a "green"
consumer? Even if your intentions are good,
your "Earth friendly" soap and
organic ice cream may be driving species
to extinction and heating up the planet,
especially if these products contain palm
oil.
Palm oil is a cheap
vegetable oil used in products such as lipstick,
soap, detergents, dry soups, ice cream and
increasingly for so-called 'biofuels'. Global
demand for palm oil is booming, and to meet
this demand, industrial agriculture giants
clear vast swaths of Paradise Forests in
Southeast Asia to create palm oil plantations.
This deforestation results in habitat loss,
harm to local people species extinction,
and global warming.
Paving Paradise
Forest destruction for
the development of the palm oil industry
is taking place primarily in the Asia/Pacific
Paradise Forests, primarily in Indonesia,
Malaysia and Papua New Guinea (PNG). When
deforestation is factored in, Indonesia
is among the world's largest emitters of
greenhouse gases. These Asian forests represent
a green wall against uncontrollable climate
change. Their destruction results in irreplaceable
biodiversity loss and increased global warming
due to the release of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere. Twenty percent of worldwide
greenhouse gas emissions are the result
of deforestation.
Enlarge Image Forest
destruction is worst where forests grow
on peatlands, like in large parts of Southeast
Asia. Peatlands store vast amounts of carbon,
globally up to 528 billion tons (70 times
the current annual global emissions from
fossil fuel burning). Emissions from current
deforestation on SE Asia's peatlands alone,
equals to almost 8 percent of global emissions
from fossil fuel burning. Riau province
in Sumatra, subject to a massive expansion
of palm oil plantations, alone comprises
4 million hectares of peatland (the size
of Taiwan), storing 14.6 billion tonnes
of carbon. If these peatlands are destroyed,
the resulting emissions would equal an entire
year of mankind's global greenhouse gas
emissions.
Magnificent animals
now threatened by this deforestation include
the Sumatran tiger, rhino, elephant, birds
of paradise, and the critically endangered
orang utan. Indonesia contains between 10-15
percent of all known species of plants,
mammals and birds that make up the world's
biodiversity. Borneo and Sumatra, now host
the world's remaining orang utans. They
depend on the forest for food and nesting
sites. According to the Centre for Orangutan
Protection, at least 1,500 orang-utans died
in 2006 as a result of deliberate attacks
by plantation workers.
Wolves guarding the
sheep
Nearly 75 percent of
Indonesia's pristine forest areas have already
been destroyed or degraded. Meanwhile, demand
for palm oil is predicted to double by 2030
and triple by 2050. To meet this demand,
the industry intends to convert more Asian
forests to plantations. The UN Environmental
Program estimates that 98 percent of Indonesian
lowland forests could be gone by 2022.
To counter bad about
disappearing forests, the palm oil industry
in Asia formed the "Roundtable on Sustainable
Palm Oil Production" (RSPO). The word
"sustainable" sounds earth-friendly,
but notice that palm oil production is enterprise
to be sustained, not the forest, the animals,
or the Earth's climate.
The chair of RSPO is
a representative from Unilever, among the
world's biggest palm oil buyers. Other corporations
on the board include plantation owners,
commodities traders, and buyers such as
Cargill, Cadbury's, Nestle, Tesco, and Golden
Hope. Together these companies control about
40 percent of the global palm oil market.
The wolves are guarding the sheep.
Greenwashing and cherry
picking
Earth Day once served
the purpose of raising awareness about the
environment. Today, few people remain unaware,
so perhaps the new purpose of Earth Day
is to help people distinguish between real
solutions and pure "Greenwashing,"
making a company or industry look green
for public relations purposes, without actually
changing environmentally harmful practices.
Corporations now realize
that consumers care about the environment,
so they have set their public relations
departments loose to sell a new, "green"
image. In 2003, Co-op America selected Starbucks
as one of the "Ten Worst Greenwashers"
for their reluctance to reduce paper waste
or purchase Fair Trade coffee. Starbucks
promised to add "up to 10 percent"
recycled material in their coffee cups,
"within five years."
Tricks of the green
spin trade include "cherry-picking"
data to look scientific while promoting
a single point of view. "Astroturfing"
is the tactic of making industry support
groups that look green. Global public relations
firm Burson-Marsteller pioneered this tactic
in the 1980s with "Forest Alliances,"
funded and controlled by the international
logging industry.
The Unilever-led RSPO
uses some of the same Astroturfing tactics,
creating an ineffective body with an environmental
sounding name to obscure the continued destruction
of the world's irreplaceable forests. Unilever
is a marketing company that distributes
some of the world's best-known brands, including
Dove soap, Vaseline skin cream, the Heartbrand
ice cream, and Slim Fast diet products.
Most of these products include palm oil.
We at Greenpeace are
asking Unilever to live up to their promise
of "sustainability," by refusing
to purchase palm oil from suppliers that
are destroying forests for plantations.
The destruction of these forests destroys
habitat for endangered species and contributes
to global warming. We are asking customers,
who buy Unilver products, to write to the
company and urge them to become authentic
good citizens, not greenwashers.
Rex Wyler
