New Britain Palm Oil to Open UK Refinery
- Angela Balakrishnan
- Monday August 04 2008 09:44 BST
Papua New Guinea's largest palm oil producer said it will invest £18m to build a processing plant in the UK to produce refined palm oil aimed at satisfying growing demand from the European Union. The site will enable customers to buy goods with "fully traceable and sustainable" palm oil down to the tree from which the oil came from, it said.. read more
Comment by SS
All these while, Malaysia had been heavily condemned by developed countries due to its effort in promoting palm oil, mainly as a source of food. Being one of the top nation's commodity, which has span around 100 years in history, it is estimated that more than 11 million hectares of palm plantations had already replaced tropical rainforest. Despite the pros of palm oil, many studies highlight the negative impacts it has on environmental, social and cultural aspects.
Although we have to admit that palm oil production would have detrimental effects on human and the earth, as any other development would, some of the effects were being exaggeratedly magnified possibly due to some hidden agendas. Some may opt to view this as politically and economically motivated. The hidden objective behind the propaganda is to undermine the advantages of palm oil products that would create an unequal competition on existing goods such as soybean and corn derivations. The latter products are produced by developed countries and they are at the losing end of the competition. Another probable motive could be that western world envies the emergence of developing countries such as Malaysia for becoming the exporter of this valuable commodity.
But that was some issues in the past. Only the unsustainable approach in opening new plantations had been heavily criticized by environmentalists. The world's view on palm oil has taken 180 degree turn in the past decade. Other than negative impacts on the environment, health issues such as cardiovascular disease concerning palm oil consumptions had been silenced along with the increasing demand of its products. This would be evident by the ever growing demand especially from EU countries on palm oil. It is said that every 1 out of 10 goods on supermarket shelves in the EU, if not in the entire world, contains palm oil.
With the conceptualizing of biofuels and bioproducts to combat global warming, palm oil is experiencing high levels of demand for energy generation purposes. The Netherlands, the world's largest single importer of palm oil, had invested hundreds of millions of euros in making power plants compatible with palm oil.
The world is now on the verge of food crisis. Many human activist organizations are against the food-for-biofuels idea. This is a challenge for palm oil producers to withstand and balance between food and biofuels demand.
Greenhouse gas emissions would be a rhetoric in palm oil production. A study indicates that Indonesia, another palm oil producer champion besides Malaysia, produces 8% of anthropogenic CO2 and the third largest contributor to global warming. This is mainly due to the destruction of peatland through slash-and-burn activities. The atmospheric air quality would also be supremely reduced as a result of this. Deforestation would also affect water catchment areas hence taking the blame of now-commonly flash flood and landslide occurrences. The endangered wild animals such as orang utans, tigers and elephants would also get their share through the abolition of their biodiversity.
In spite the setbacks we use to perceive, palm oil production is not that bad after all. Through sustainable approach in managing land exploitations, the impacts on the environment could be minimized to an acceptable degree. The greenhouse gas emissions could be counterbalanced by palm trees "afforestation". The principal belief of environmentalists is plausible; growing plants that absorb CO2, burning their products which releases CO2 and planting new palm trees creates a closed cycle. The "forest" of palm trees would offset the rainforest it replaces, if not to equate them.
Malaysia would benefit from Clean Development Mechanism under Kyoto Protocol through palm oil. Much of the recent investment in new palm plantations for biofuel has been part-funded through carbon credit projects. However the reputational risk associated with unsustainable palm plantations in Indonesia has now made many funds wary of investing there.
The developed world could buy or lease rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia, producing palm oil themselves instead of buying them. That would preserve rainforest from logging whilst also benefiting the climate and sustaining economic growth in their region. This idea squeezes Malaysian and Indonesian governments to be more careful and prudent in managing plantations to avoid mismanagement accusation. But in the end, it is rather the palm oil and timber demand of the developed countries that drives logging and the expansion of palm oil estates.
