Palm Oil Critics Moving the Goalpost

Environmental critics like the Palm Oil Group (POA), Greenpeace, the Friends of the Earth (FOE) and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) have been launching spurious allegations against the palm oil industry accusing it, inter alia, of causing massive deforestation and threatening the existence of the orang utan.

If the number of critics were to be a reliable measure, it would appear that the anti-palm oil critics are absolutely sincere in their efforts to curtail palm oil growth.

However, when the "proof of the pudding" test is applied to their collective stance, these critics appear to fall appallingly short in their sincerity quotient.

Recently, when Cadbury New Zealand announced that they were substituting cocoa fat for sustainable palm oil to make their products more palatable and affordable, the Auckland Zoo followed by the Melbourne Zoo and supported by the POA kicked up a ruckus alleging farcically that each bar of chocolate would result in more deforestation and a dead orang utan. Cadbury is a member of the RSPO and uses only sustainable certified palm oil.

It must be remembered that the RSPO and its complicated audit process was set up in response to the environmental movement's demand that palm oil be sustainably cultivated.

It was not only Cadbury, as questionable "environmental" outfits like Greenpeace and FOE had proved their insincerity on this issue with their dubious intransigence even with the first shipment of RSPO certified palm oil by United Plantations.

Says Vengeta Rao, secretary general of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO): "Less demand for premium products, resulting from the economic crisis, is having a devastating effect on the sustainable palm oil industry."

Recent estimates show the premium paid for sustainable certified palm oil has fallen to $10-15 a metric tonne - down from $50 in November when certified oil was first made available to markets.

While Rao says the global economic crisis is partly to blame for the downturn, he urged buyers to show more commitment to sustainability. If consumers don't distinguish the sustainable palm oil as being ‘green', certification efforts may slow, Rao said.

"We have been led down the path of false hope in selling environmentally-certified palm oil," said Tan Sri Dr Yusof Basiron, CEO of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, which aims to improve the image of palm oil throughout the world. The council argues that they now believe buyers are not willing to pay a premium for the sustainable product.

In an effort to boost accountability within the RSPO and increase consumer confidence in the certification, the WWF has made plans to publish a ‘buyer's scorecard' that would list companies that support sustainable palm oil, as well as those that have not fulfilled their commitments to buy.

Moving forward, Rao was optimistic that global demand for sustainable palm oil would increase. In July, major China-based producers and users of palm oil announced their intention to support the use of sustainable palm oil. Given recent challenges, a WWF representative welcomed the news saying that, "any move China makes towards using sustainable palm oil will have a big influence on protecting tropical forest resources in South East Asia and other areas."

China, along with India, is one of the world's top buyers of vegetable oils; together they import some 40 percent of global palm oil output, which stands at over 28 million tonnes annually.

However, in the view of Deforestation Watch, unless the environmental movement can stop moving the goalpost in their demands of the palm oil industry, it would only be a matter of time before their demands will lose every shred of credibility in the eyes of the objective observer. THE END
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