27/12/05 (The Satr)  -  Another anti-palm oil campaign is on, and this time it is linked with the endangered orang utan. Hilary Chiew reports.

It is not easy to fight a campaign that endears the public with a cuddly and impish creature. What more when the images portrayed are those of the creature being mutilated, abused, maimed and killed.

Such is the content of a four-page pamphlet detailing the destruction of the rainforest and along with it the survival of endangered orang utans in Borneo and Sumatra. 

Orang utans are losing their forested homes to oil palm plantations. – Courtesy of Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.

Ghastly images and descriptions of the killings were put together to shock consumers by two Britain-based non-governmental organisations, the Borneo Orang utan Survival Foundation and Nature Alert, in mid-October. The campaign followed a similar report launched by the Friends of the Earth Britain (FOE) a month earlier. 

Shoppers in Britain were told that their purchases from a bar of soap to a bar of chocolate were fuelling the cruel displacement and annihilation of orang utans. The campaigners hoped to mobilise consumer pressure to compel retailers into ensuring that products containing palm oil in the supermarkets were sourced from sustainable sources.

Britain is the second largest importer of palm oil in Europe, after the Netherlands. Malaysia dominates the British market, accounting for 42% of the market share. 

Malaysian palm oil producers denied the accusations. Industrial organisations – the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board and the Malaysian Palm Oil Producers Council – issued joint statements and wrote an open letter in defence of the industry’s practices.

The statements claimed that oil palm plantations are rich in bio-diversity and orang utan conservation is high on the agenda of plantation companies. The Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Project was touted as the industry’s success story in balancing development and conservation.

The industry felt the campaign was ill conceived, especially when it was preparing to adhere to a set of stringent operation practices called the ‘Principles and Criteria’ (P&C). The eight principles and 39 criteria spell out environmental and social responsibilities of growers, processors, traders and manufacturers. They were adopted by members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the industry self-regulatory initiative set up in response to criticism against unsustainable business practices. It has 95 members, representing one-third of the global palm oil players.

However, some quarters in the industry felt that the rebuttals were too reactionary. “Such rebuttals can do more damage than correct the perception. The situations described by the campaign were more of an Indonesian problem. We should have just point that out and not deny the facts flatly,” says an industry source. 

The industry said in an email interview that “some of our responses were perceived to be ‘knee-jerk reactions’ and thus may not entirely address the situation but in fact enhance the belief that we are ‘skirting’ the issues.” It plans to meet European non-governmental organisations early next year.

In fact, the pamphlet and the 50-page The oil for ape scandal: How palm oil is threatening orang utan survival report released by the FOE in September documented forest destruction and brutality against orang utans that largely happened in Indonesia.

Unlike previous campaigns that called for a boycott, the new one acknowledges the importance of palm oil as a relatively cheap source of vegetable oil and its contribution to the economy. 

The groups ask that producers operate in a sustainable manner and stop converting forested land into plantation. The report says that under the pretext of plantation development, companies were targeting virgin jungles with the sole purpose of extracting valuable timber. As much as three million ha of land were left uncultivated in Indonesia.

The campaign was strategically launched ahead of the RSPO meet in Singapore last month to encourage growers and the supply chain players to join the group. And they want the industry to implement the P&C quickly. 

A participant at the meeting is sceptical that the industry will be able to do so. “They only agreed to a two-year pilot project.” 

Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation director Michelle Desilets is concerned about the timeframe for implementation. “When they said it would take six years in Kalimantan, we want to throw up our arms and give up. The orang utans and the forest can’t wait this long!”

RSPO secretary-general Andrew Ng concurs that established companies are equipped to implement the scheme but the real task is in setting up a verification and audit system to lend credibility to the certification process.

A thorny issue surrounding the debate of sustainable palm oil is the erosion of the indigenous communities’ land rights. The industry’s claim that there is “maximum consultation” with affected indigenous communities is disputed by the Partners of Community Organisations of Sabah. Its secretary-general Adrian Lasimbang doubts that the industry can comply with the criterion of respecting land rights of the communities.

Colin Nicholas of Centre for Orang Asli Concern says a majority of the 130 land dispute cases in Sarawak involve conversion of native customary land by oil palm companies from Kuala Lumpur.

“That shows that the consent of the communities was never sought by the industry. It is also untrue that expansion of oil palm plantation in the peninsula only involved conversion from other crops such as rubber. I have photographic evidence that virgin forests are cleared to grow oil palm.” 

Instead of brushing aside the environment and social activists’ concerns, many feel the Malaysian palm oil producers should make good their promise of corporate responsibility. The industry has more to loose if it ignores their pleas now that it has found another profitable use for palm oil in bio-fuel. In fact, a fresh round of campaign labelling palm diesel to be as ‘dirty’ as fossil fuel is picking up steam.