The Great Palm Oil Deforestation Hoax

In an article entitled "Palm oil industry must get out of denial mode" written by Sean Whyte, The CEO of Nature Alert and published in the Jakarta Post and the New Straits Times, Whyte called the palm oil industry "arguably the most environmentally destructive in the world."

He further alleged that the palm oil industry is "responsible for the deaths of thousands of orang utans, tens of millions of other wildlife forms, and logging - both legal and otherwise, on an industrial scale throughout all of Kalimantan and Sumatra."

He goes on to allege: "The truth will win in the end and the public will decide with their credit cards and checkbooks, as they have done so massively with Fair Trade products, whether or not they want palm oil in their homes or cars."

Whyte continues: "The problem is not palm oil, but the methods used to develop and manage plantations throughout Indonesia and Sarawak. To visit Kalimantan, Sumatra or Sarawak is to witness the catastrophic decimation of wildlife, forests, local communities, and rivers polluted with insecticides."

"The scene resembles and feels like a Klondike gold rush, with palm oil companies grabbing what forest they can, whilst they can and, before a competitor does. Countless documentaries have shown thousands of hectares of bare land, where palm oil companies have bought a license to log a forest and convert the land to a plantation," wrote Mr Whyte.

"Once the forest is logged, many companies vanish with their quick profits from logging, leaving the land bare, only to start again under a new name not far away, time and again," alleges Whyte.

Writes Whyte: "In Sarawak, there have been innumerable reports of this same industry denying indigenous tribes their rights to their land. Although less reported, the same happens in Indonesia."

Turning to Alan Oxley, the Chairman of World Growth who argues that NGOs are opposed to poor people improving their lives, Whyte alleges that the truth is exactly the opposite.

Whyte's assertion that "Any NGO brave enough to help tribes people repel loggers making way for palm oil plantations in Sarawak runs a very serious risk to their personal safety," deserves no response for the clumsy but contemptible, sensational and melodramatic nonsense that it is.

That is the hype. Let us now examine the facts.

Whyte obviously confuses land clearing for logging and land clearing for palm oil planting. His assertion that many palm oil companies vanish with their quick profits from logging, leaving the land bare, only to start again under a new name not far away, time and again," is a reflection of his ignorance of a long term industry where harvesting can only be carried out close to a decade after planting!

It is well established that Malaysia is a small country (with a land mass roughly that of the state of New Mexico) which should tell us something - palm oil does not require quite as much land as the agitators like Whyte are trying to make it out to be.

Palm oil is also indisputably, the most productive of all oilseed crops with a yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare which is close to 10 times that of its competitors such as soy, rapeseed and sunflower.

The Palm Oil truth Foundation is compelled to ask how there can be any truth to the deforestation allegations when Malaysia, despite its insignificant land mass, have been the world's largest cultivator of palm oil for more than a century!

Yet the country still retains more than 55% forest cover, which is certainly much higher than the prevailing 20 odd per cent found in the countries of the industrialized west, from which these environmental agitators hail!

In the last 200 years, New Zealand's temperate forest is already mostly wiped out to make way for settlement and grazing land, to produce milk, meat and wool which now make up the main exports of New Zealand. It is pertinent to ask why the agricultural products, produced out of deforested land in New Zealand acceptable to the environmental NGOs and yet palm oil, an agricultural product from Malaysia is demonized?

In truth, the extent of deforestation was far more extensively carried out in New Zealand and indeed in all the countries of the industrialized west when compared to Malaysia."

Yet these NGOs have the temerity to selectively criticize developing countries when the land clearance is more widespread and starkly obvious in countries of the developed west.

Forests, be they temperate or tropical are valuable for sequestering CO2 to prevent global warming. So it is certainly intriguing that only tropical forests are singled out for preservation. Why, total world acreage planted with palm oil is less than 1% of the world agricultural area.

In the circumstances, it is certainly a stretch for the agitators to allege that palm oil is "the most environmentally destructive."

It should be observed that consumers worldwide HAVE decided with their credit carts and checkbooks in making palm oil the most popular and fastest growing edible oil in the world. Could this be the real motive behind the anti-palm oil movement?

Could the real reason for Nature Alert and other green NGOs' discomfiture with palm oil be the fact that palm oil is:

1. the most productive of all edible oils and thus inherently the most sustainable
2. inherently healthful as it is naturally rich in anti-oxidants like tocotrienols, Co Q10 and beta-carotenes (which is why the oil is naturally red in colour)
3. the cheapest cooking oil in the world due to its incredible yield and because of its price advantage is now increasingly popular as a feedstock for biodiesel.

Nature Alert is also ignorant of the recent ruling by Malaysia's highest court affirming the land rights of indigenous people exposes the lie that native people are being displaced with impunity. A panel of three Federal Court judges unanimously ruled that tribes have customary ownership of land they have lived on for generations and state governments cannot take it from them without compensation.

It is time that the main stream media wake up to the fact that these anti-palm oil campaigns are really cleverly disguised proxy trade wars conducted by these "green" NGOs.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, the palm oil deforestation charges made by these "green" NGOs is probably one of the greatest hoaxes carried out in recent time against an inherently sustainable commodity!

Alan Oxley of World Growth should be commended for having the courage to call a spade a spade and expose the "green" NGOs for their incongruous and irreconcilable stance against palm oil in trying to deny developing countries the avenue to alleviate poverty and develop their economies. This is a clear violation of Agenda 21 of the RIO Earth Summit in 1992 which prescribes that any global strategy to tackle climate change should not undermine the capacity of developing countries to raise living standards of the millions still living in poverty!

The World Growth's program is based on five principles:
1. Alleviating Poverty through Wealth Creation: Palm oil provides developing nations and the
poor a path out of poverty.
2. Sustainable Development: Sustainable development of palm oil in developing nations can
and will be achieved through collaboration with industry, growers, and the wider community.
3. Climate and the Environment: Palm oil is a highly efficient, high yielding source of food and fuel, providing an efficient way of producing fossil fuel alternatives and capturing carbon from the atmosphere.
4. Opportunity and Prosperity: Developing nations must be allowed the chance to grow and develop without political intervention by environmental groups or developed nations.
5. Property Rights: Growing demand for palm oil world-wide give smaller land holders in
developing countries greater opportunities to make a living off their land, maintain their
ownership and support their rights to property and prosperity.

Read in this context, palm oil is certainly part of the solution and not part of the problem. Are the "green" NGOs the ones in denial? THE END
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Palm Oil Truth Foundation (TRUTH Foundation) is an international non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation, without strings to the world of commerce and power. We are a people organisation, organised for the people and founded upon the principles of integrity and responsibility as a global citizen with the sole purpose of representing TRUTH to the global community about health, environmental and economic benefits of palm oil.

The TRUTH Foundation is an international network of social conscience and cooperation among peoples in industry, government, academia and the ordinary global consuming public, strengthening the forces devoted to respect, justice and equality for a more just and sustainable world and for global peace.