Green Options

Native Malaysian tribespeople are taking to traditional methods of battle — including the use of blowpipes — to combat the destruction of their homeland to satisfy the exploding worldwide demand for palm oil.

The rate at which virgin tropical rainforests are currently being cleared to plant palm plantations to supply the ravenous growth of worldwide palm oil demand is staggering: In Indonesia alone 4.4 million acres of rainforest disappear each year. Given that one American football field is roughly one acre, that’s just about 4.4 million football fields. Truly staggering.

Together, Malaysia and Indonesia account for 80% of worldwide palm oil production, but they also contain more than 80% of the remaining virgin rainforests in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, the only remaining lands in Southeast Asia that are also the best for palm oil production are these vast swaths of virgin rainforest.

Biological and ecological scientists around the world are waiting for stability to return to Madagascar and are using what political muscle they have to convince the new government to restore stability, and to resume and expand its eco-tourism trade. The survival of one of the world’s last, great, biodiversity hot spots depends on it.

So what is the problem with palm oil? Take a peek at this short video explaining:

To recap, palm oil is in many common supermarket products such as snacks, candy, and even soaps and detergents. Rainforest Action Network has created a site to educate consumers on the how destructive palm oil is to our global environment. Palm oil destroys vital ecosystems, contributes to global climate change, results in the displacement of Indigenous people and small family farmers, and is produced through exploitative labor practices.

Please help educate grocery shoppers about these facts and take action in anyway possible. RAN tells us: “Palm  oil  plantations  are  expanding  into  the  planet’s  most biodiverse  ecosystems,  including  rainforests,  grasslands  and  peat swamps in South America, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Africa. These regions are home to millions of plant and animal species, including highly endangered orangutans, clouded leopards, and sun bears.”

Big palm oil companies pay to have important oxygen providing rainforests clear cut for their palm crops and painfully push out the native people that rely on the land. This endangers the plants, animals and waterways that entire communities have thrived on forever.

In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8th, a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women, the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) and Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) have released three new case studies and a video on the impacts of monoculture tree plantations on women in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and Brazil.

These tree plantations provide rubber for car and bus tires, palm oil for processed foods and pulp for toilet paper - all items being used in the west. They are also destroying local communities according to WRM and FoEI.

In the case of Nigeria, in 2007, the French tire maker Michelin came in to the Iguóbazuwa Forest Reserve, a biologically diverse region supplying food for around 20,000 people. Michelin bulldozed the forest and local farm lands to convert them into rubber plantations. Women living there lost their subsistence farms and the local forest which provided medicinal herbs and plants.

With all the bad news lately about salmonella-tainted peanut butter in processed food products, isn’t it high time we had a peanut butter story we could feel good about?

MaraNatha Nut Butters offers a wide variety of natural and organic nut butters which are super-yummy.  And they are not involved in the current PCA recall.

Every day, the news is just getting worse and worse.  More and more products, including natural and organic ones, are being recalled in the US and Canada.  Our faith in our entire food supply system is being tested.

But there is some good news.  Not all food manufacturers use peanut products from the Peanut Corporation of America.  And while we certainly should not become complacent, there is also no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater… or, in this case, with the peanut butter.

Korea’s Daewoo has just completed a deal to lease an area about half the size of Belgium in Madagascar for food production. The most surprising part of this lease is that the initial cost to Daewoo is nothing. That’s right, zip, nada, zilch.

Why is a South Korean company leasing so much land on another continent?

According to a few under-the-radar reports, Korea’s industrial conglomerate Daewoo has just completed a deal with Madagascar for a 99 year lease of an area half the size of Belgium (about 1.3 million hectares). While complete terms of the lease are not yet available, the total price is: NOTHING.

The initial plan is to plant maize and palm oil for export to South Korea. The benefit to Madagascar of losing a little over half of their arable land would be the anticipated employment opportunities for farmers and other locals.

According to a Daewoo spokesperson:

We want to plant corn there to ensure our food security. Food can be a weapon in this world,” said Hong Jong-wan, a manager at Daewoo. “We can either export the harvests to other countries or ship them back to Korea in case of a food crisis.

Three tankers containing crude palm oil were halted by Greenpeace when they attempted to leave an Indonesian port for China and Europe. Activists wanted to highlight the rapidly expanding palm oil industry currently destroying rainforests, harming wildlife, and emitting greenhouse gases.

Florida authorities have announced bold plans to begin running many of the state’s trains on biodiesel. The switch will result in a significant reduction in carbon emissons and drastically reduce the chances of soil pollution in the event of a fuel spill.

[Image credit: pfly at Flickr under a Creative Commons license]

Rather than taking steps to make palm oil production more sustainable, the industry is relying on marketing tactics to fool the public. They have been running a series of ads with the tagline “Sustainably Produced Since 1917.” The ads feature lush images of the very rain forests that palm oil production pollutes and destroys. The Malaysian Palm Oil Council touts the product’s value as a sustainable oil for producting biofuel, a source of vitamin E for skin products, and a healthy oil for cooking and baking. So what’s the truth about palm oil?

As the global market for biofuels heats up, much of the demand for biodiesel is being satisfied by clearing virgin rainforests to create oil palm plantations. But, as it turns out, these plantations are an awful substitute for rainforests.

A group of British, German and Danish researchers has found that the biodiversity of oil palm plantations is far lower than that of tropical rainforests and that no amount of plantation management changes could ever possibly make them come close to replicating rainforest diversity.