Illegal palm oil plantations are destroying protected Indonesian rainforests and other habitats — and New Zealand’s industrial dairy sector is a major beneficiary, says a new environmental report.

The daming report, released yesterday by Greenpeace Indonesia, “Deceased Estate: Illegal palm oil wiping out Indonesia’s national forest”, finds palm oil plantation expansion in national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and even UNESCO sites, across Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua.

Palm oil expansion is the largest single cause of destruction of critical Indonesian rainforests over the past two decades.

The Deceased Estate has report found that there are four palm oil producers with at least 50,000ha of oil palm plantations illegally established inside the protected forest estate.

These producers include Wilmar International which imports palm kernel expeller (PKE) to New Zealand.

PKE is a product of the palm oil industry used as supplementary feed in New Zealand’s industrial dairying.

“Back in 2020, when Fonterra handed control of its PKE imports to Wilmar International, Greenpeace warned of trouble to come,” Greenpeace Aotearoa agriculture campaigner Christine Rose said last night.

‘Illegal deforestation’
“Sadly we’re now seeing evidence of New Zealand agriculture benefiting from illegal deforestation for palm oil and PKE.”

New Zealand is the world’s largest importer of PKE, importing an estimated two million tonnes a year which is used to feed the dairy herd because there are too many cows for grass growth alone to sustain.

“New Zealand’s industrial dairying is cashing in on the destruction of endangered species, critical rainforest habitat and indigenous livelihoods in Indonesia,” said Rose.

“New Zealand’s intensive dairying benefits from ecological destruction in Indonesia while polluting rivers, the climate and drinking water at home.

“The New Zealand dairy sector’s use of PKE to support herd intensification and expansion, effectively outsources environmental costs onto some of the most diverse remaining forests and species in the world, and it has to stop.

“It’s unconscionable that New Zealand is complicit in the illegal expansion of palm oil plantations that undermine indigenous community land use and destroy the habitat of rare and endangered species such as Sumatran orangutans, tigers and elephants.”

‘Highly polluting’
Greenpeace Aotearoa is calling for an end to the importation of supplementary feed like PKE, “because it drives highly polluting dairy intensification in Aotearoa, contributes to rainforest destruction and increases climate emissions both here and in Indonesia.”

Clearance of Indonesian rainforest for palm oil released an estimated 104 Tg (million metric tons) of primary forest carbon from Indonesia’s forest estate between 2001-2019. This is equal to 60 percent of the annual emissions of international aviation.

Greenhouse gas emissions from NZ’s intensive dairy sector, supported by this illegal PKE, are 48 percent of this country’s total.

“With industrial agriculture being New Zealand’s biggest climate polluter, we need an urgent shift away from this high-input, industrial agribusiness model towards regenerative organic farming that works within the limits of nature,” said Rose.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Political uncertainty hangs over large swathes of the world’s tropical forests this year, raising the risk of more destruction and carbon emissions.

Recent leadership changes in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and presidential elections in Indonesia in April, are fuelling concerns that politics could side with industries such as palm oil, timber, mining and agriculture in the world’s three biggest rainforest countries.

Brazil’s new right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro campaigned on promises to open the Amazon up to development. In his first foray on the international stage last week, he called on international businesses to invest in the country’s natural resources.

READ MORE: France aims to ban deforestation imports by 2030

The DRC’s peaceful presidential election of Felix Tshisekedi last month was the first democratic transfer of power since independence in 1960 – although the African Union and European Union questioned the results and The Financial Times reported “massive electoral fraud”.

It now remains to be seen whether Tshisekedi’s government curbs forest clearing and cracks down on the corruption that undermines conservation efforts. He gave little indication during the campaign.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, the two presidential candidates – incumbent Joko “Jokowi” Widodo  and ex-army officer Prabowo Subianto – have given vague promises of environmental protection but few details. That said, Jokowi, who won as an outsider populist in 2014, has done more than some expected to tackle deforestation.

As of 2015, Brazil was home to 12 percent of total forest global cover, the DRC nearly 4 percent and Indonesia 2 percent, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. But tree cover in all three nations continues to shrink.

Worst effects
The actions of the new governments could determine the world’s ability to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change.

“Forests could provide about a third of the solution to climate change, but at the moment they’re more part of the problem because of deforestation,” said Tim Christophersen, head of UN Environment’s freshwater, land and climate branch in Kenya.

“If that was stopped and we could restore forests at a large scale, we could probably close about a third of the current emissions gap.”

For now, efforts to stem deforestation have mostly failed to make a dent. The tropics lost an area the size of Vietnam over 2016 and 2017, when tree cover shrunk by record levels, according to the data and monitoring website Global Forest Watch.

Brazil’s deforestation in 2017 was equivalent to 365 million tonnes of CO2 and jumped by almost 50 percent over the three months of campaigning before Bolsonaro was elected last year. The DRC’s tree cover loss was equivalent to 158Mt last year and Indonesia’s to 125Mt.

Environmentalists are particularly concerned about Brazil. In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Bolsonaro stressed Brazil’s history of environmental protection while touting its economic opportunities.

But the “wave of forest destruction and violence” started when Bolsonaro immediately removed environmental and human rights safeguards, said Christian Poirier, programme director at the NGO Amazon Watch.

Reckless moves
“These reckless moves, tailored to serve Brazil’s agribusiness and extractive industries, undermine fundamental constitutional protections that preserve forests and assure the safety of the indigenous and traditional communities who call them home,” he said.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, deforestation remains relatively high and driven by clearing for agriculture, the use of wood for energy, timber and mining, said Christophersen.

The UN’s REDD+ programme, which pays developing countries to reduce their deforestation, is starting to work in some places. But it was forced to freeze payments to the government last year amid concerns over the awarding of new logging concessions to Chinese companies. Peatlands across the Congo Basin could release huge stocks of carbon if developed for mining and fossil fuels, Christophersen added.

There is more optimism around Indonesia, although environmentalists are still wary.

Jokowi initially raised concerns that he would not follow through on his predecessor’s commitments on forestry, but then made progressive moves such as creating a new peatland restoration agency and extending a 2011 moratorium on licenses in forest and peatland, said Frances Seymour, distinguished senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.

Still, it will be up to the next president to cement that ban and push Indonesia’s large palm oil industry to become more sustainable, said Panut Hadisiswoyo, founding director of the Orangutan Information Centre in Indonesia. The country has around 69 percent of its natural forest intact, he said.

“I worry that with the current visions of the presidential candidates, they have no specific calls for the protection of this remaining forest,” Hadisiswoyo said. “This natural forest is the last limit for sustaining our biodiversity. I worry that this forest will have no guarantee to strive, to be kept as forest.”

Good signs
There are some good signs. Costa Rica’s tree cover grew from 20 perecent to around 50 percent over 30 years, Christophersen noted. And Indonesia’s loss dropped by 60 percent year-on-year in 2017, which Global Forest Watch attributed in part to a 2016 moratorium on peat drainage, educational campaigns and stronger enforcement.

“Without political leadership, we would not see with those kinds of successes,” Christophersen said.

However the potential for more damage remains strong – especially at a time of more nationalistic populist leaders such as Bolsonaro.

“A cross-cutting issue is how this global wave of populism plays out in the climate change debate, and in these countries how it plays out with respect to land use in particular,” said Seymour.

• France intends to stop importing soy, palm oil, beef, wood and other products linked to deforestation and unsustainable agriculture by 2030, shooting ahead of the rest of the European Union, reports Climate Change News.

The new national strategy to combat imported deforestation, released by the environment ministry late last year, will use trade to help decouple economic development from tree-cutting and unsustainable agriculture in poorer countries.

Sara Stefanini is a senior journalist with Climate Change News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz