Palm oil and eco devastation

[azurebird]

I thought this article was a bit sobering. Might be of interest to some of you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/palm-oil-impacts_55a4c391e4b0b8145f737dd5?

[amazondk]

From what I have read this is a problem for Indonesia for sure. Here in Brazil which has probably as much degraded tropical forest land as all of Indonesia's rain forest the cultivation of the tree is not a problem. There is an industry of palm oil and the cultivation is mostly in the state of Para. Most of the land used for palm oil trees has been from land converted from grass pasture land to palm plantations. The original forest cover was long gone before the palm oil tree appeared. I think that Costa Rica is similar as from what saw when I was there the oil palm was being cultivated in former banana plantations.

Brazil has 5.5 million square kilometers of rain forest, Indonesia has 930,000 square kilometers of rain forest About 18 percent of Brazilian amazonia has been deforested. But, for the most part it is for use as pasture and soy beans. Of course the impact in Indonesia is much greater.

dk

[Steve the palmreader]

These people need jobs and money to survive .

[Kostas]

Mankind has survived for thousands of years there, why need the jobs and money to survive now? I won't support logging or deforestation for giving a job to none. Wise choices is all that's needed from everyone to make a good living

[Pedro 65]

These people need jobs and money to survive .

Where the "Greedy" companies are cutting down "Virgin" Rainforests "where" these people "used" to live and survive , they "survived happily" and need no $ living "peacefully" in the Rainforest….. till they get "Bulldozed" out of their "home" ( The Rainforest) then they get put into squaller camps and put an "idiot box" in front of them..

Plain ans Simple , Plant oil palms on "Already" cleared land. Pete

The $$$ is in the Rainforest Trees for their timber "Not" palm oil.

[Justin]

I've seen firsthand mile after mile after mile of peninsular Malaysia devoid of rainforest, and instead full of Rubber trees and Oil Palms. I've also seen large tracts of Borneo covered in nothing but Oil Palms - sometimes just a mile or two from pristine rainforest reserves. I've also seen chunks of the Amazon rainforest torn up for cattle, soybeans, and Palm Oil.

It sucks every time, but you know who I don't particularly blame? The local people. If we lived in a country where the average salary were, say, $10 a day, and all of a sudden we could $20-30 a day by planting and harvesting palm oil, we would absolutely, 100%, do that. Hell, we're fracking Oklahoma so bad that there are now more 3.5 and above earthquakes per WEEK than there were per CENTURY until recently. We're doing oil and natural gas exploration in the Alaskan wilderness. Both of these to get energy at a slight discount to what we're paying elsewhere. Imagine if it were a more stark situation, more similar to what's going on in the rainforest. Imagine you polled the average American and said "the country could have gasoline of 50 cents a gallon, but we have to turn half of Alaska into a refinery, what do you think we should do?" You know the answer, and it wouldn't be close. We're no better, or more "green" than the people in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil.

In fact, we're much worse. It's not the local people that are using all the damn palm oil - IT'S US! It's in all our cheap, pre-packaged food that makes us fat and gives us diabetes. It's in all our cosmetics. I gotta say, I didn't see a lot of people out in the middle of the rainforest covered in lip gloss. It's very easy to post on the internet how it's such a bummer the rainforest is being depleted. And, to be fair, that's better than not caring at all. But you know what's harder? Actually doing something to prevent it, like stopping personal consumption of anything containing palm oil. Or campaigning the local politician to change labeling practices so that palm oil has to be labeled as palm oil, and not as "vegetable oil." [My personal take is that labeling would help a ton - think of all the people who buy "gluten free" without having a clue in the world what gluten is.] But one thing is for certain - if the "developed" nations of the world stopped consuming palm oil, the countries with the rainforest wouldn't be cutting it down for the hell of it.

[Justin]

And one more thing, if more people were to travel to the rainforest - to see the orangutans, to see the pygmy hippos, to see the Sumatran tigers, and made that a better economic alternative for the local people, that's a hell of a lot easier for the local people to do than all the work involved in planting, maintaining, and obtaining palm seeds. This has worked, to some extent, in the Virunga mountains in Rwanda, and a couple of places in India where there are tiger reserves. I've visited both the Virungas and the Bandhavgarh tiger reserve in India, and while far from perfect, in both instances I felt it much more likely the community was involved in maintaining the natural state of things when there were tourist dollars to be earned from it.

Okay, rant over, now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[amazondk]

Justin,

I agree with most of your points. Since I live in the middle of the largest rain forest on Earth I have a pretty close connection to at least what this reality is in Brazil. And, as I stated above it is a much different reality than that of Indonesia or Malaysia. Here palm oil plantations are a very small part of the overall land use. And, I do not believe that very much if any forest conversion is for palm oil trees. The area where they are planted for the most part is in areas preveiously degraded for pasture land. Here is an article on this - http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/11/oil-palm-expands-on-deforested-land-in-brazils-rainforest/ . In Brazilian amazonia one can legally convert forest to other uses. Which I see no harm in if the law is followed. You can use 20 percent of a track of land for other uses. That is 80 percent has to stay in native forest. And, this is 80 percent of the land aside from areas deamed permanent protection which are areas along water courses which have set backs determined by the size of the river or stream. The problem has been conversion illegally. Which in such a vast region has been a lot. My state, Amazonas, the largest state in Brazil has around 95 percent of the forest intact. And, no palm oil. I have three trees on my place in the country though. I agree that the people that live in a region really need to be first concern. And, most would love a better job, and a more comfortable life. And, each case is a case. One is for sure between raising cattle and cultivating oil palm trees more jobs and income are created by the palm trees. While walking in the park I go to in the morning for excersize, a remnant patch of climax amazonian forest in the middle of the city, a blue and gold macaw flew over my head. The other day a pair of red macaws scared me as they took off right over me. They were eating Mauritia flexuosa seeds. It is a great thing to walk on a path in the morning and smell the forest all around. Granted you can still here the traffic in the back ground. But, it is not too intrusive. One of the reasons I live here is the forest. No large primates around, but the rare sauim coleira jumps around in the canopy. One of the most endangered primates in Brazil.

A few of the palms on my morning walk. No palm oil plantations here. One thing I do not think that the industry will go away. So, certification, and proper land management has to be focused on.