Palm Oil. Winning the War But Losing the Media Battles
Update September 26, 2022
Global Witness has issued a new report on Amazon palm-Major international brands sourcing palm oil from Brazilian plantations linked to violence, torture and land fraud.
The report used typical language to frame the palm oil industry in a poor light by saying that "Palm plantations in Pará currently cover 226,834 hectares, an area almost the size of Luxembourg – much of which used to be rainforest." This comparison to geographical areas is supposed to help readers understand how bad it is.
This type of comparison is not seen in Global Witness reports on soy in Brazil, which highlights the problems that transparency in the palm oil industry can bring. The two companies named by Global Witness have bared their operations publicly. Brasil Biofuels corporate information can be accessed here. Agropalma corporate information here. This contrasts sharply with Global Witness' "investigations" into soy which offered weakly that "the European Union imported 7 million tons of Brazilian soy last year, with ADM, Bunge and Cargill being Brazil’s biggest exporters"
For Global Witness' information, if the size of Luxembourg is to be used as an indicator of deforestation simply by land footprint, Brazilian soy is grown on 42,000,0000 hectares or 185 times the size of Luxembourg.
The EU's proposed Deforestation Regulation should help Global Witness as soy producers are forced into a level of transparency to match those of the palm oil industry.
Global Witness has issued a new report on Amazon palm-Major international brands sourcing palm oil from Brazilian plantations linked to violence, torture and land fraud.
The report used typical language to frame the palm oil industry in a poor light by saying that "Palm plantations in Pará currently cover 226,834 hectares, an area almost the size of Luxembourg – much of which used to be rainforest." This comparison to geographical areas is supposed to help readers understand how bad it is.
This type of comparison is not seen in Global Witness reports on soy in Brazil, which highlights the problems that transparency in the palm oil industry can bring. The two companies named by Global Witness have bared their operations publicly. Brasil Biofuels corporate information can be accessed here. Agropalma corporate information here. This contrasts sharply with Global Witness' "investigations" into soy which offered weakly that "the European Union imported 7 million tons of Brazilian soy last year, with ADM, Bunge and Cargill being Brazil’s biggest exporters"
For Global Witness' information, if the size of Luxembourg is to be used as an indicator of deforestation simply by land footprint, Brazilian soy is grown on 42,000,0000 hectares or 185 times the size of Luxembourg.
The EU's proposed Deforestation Regulation should help Global Witness as soy producers are forced into a level of transparency to match those of the palm oil industry.
Update September 17, 2022
A report on the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Withold Release Orders (WROs) against Malaysia's FGV and Sime Darby found significant errors in the petitions.
"Over the past three years there have been two major petitions made to CBP on this issue. One came from the law firm Grant and Eisenhofer (G&E) against Felda Global Ventures (FGV), and the other was made by Liberty Shared (a U.S. NGO) against Sime Darby.
The failure to disclose is significant . Were they funded by a competitor to palm oil, or a foreign government like Norway?
Much of the information throughout the report can be taken as a wholesale indictment of the Malaysian palm oil sector.
However, a very close examination of the sources indicates that much of the material is not even relevant to palm oil nor to Malaysia.
The report by Value Walk can be read in this coverage by MENAFN
Should Amnesty International or local NGO, SUHAKAM, be blamed for not challenging Grant & Eisenhower (G&E) for filing a petition with malicious intent? Or against Liberty Shared for frivolity in its petition? Or should Malaysia highlight these errors and demand the CBP provide better reasons or just cause for the WROs?
Original commentary below:
A report on the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Withold Release Orders (WROs) against Malaysia's FGV and Sime Darby found significant errors in the petitions.
"Over the past three years there have been two major petitions made to CBP on this issue. One came from the law firm Grant and Eisenhofer (G&E) against Felda Global Ventures (FGV), and the other was made by Liberty Shared (a U.S. NGO) against Sime Darby.
The failure to disclose is significant . Were they funded by a competitor to palm oil, or a foreign government like Norway?
Much of the information throughout the report can be taken as a wholesale indictment of the Malaysian palm oil sector.
However, a very close examination of the sources indicates that much of the material is not even relevant to palm oil nor to Malaysia.
The report by Value Walk can be read in this coverage by MENAFN
Should Amnesty International or local NGO, SUHAKAM, be blamed for not challenging Grant & Eisenhower (G&E) for filing a petition with malicious intent? Or against Liberty Shared for frivolity in its petition? Or should Malaysia highlight these errors and demand the CBP provide better reasons or just cause for the WROs?
Original commentary below:
- The palm oil industry is winning the war in demanding its place in a sustainable market.
- Government policies including Malaysia’s commitment to sustainable palm oil production and Indonesia’s wider commitment to Forestry and Land Use (FoLU) are being acknowledged in major markets.
- Demands to place other vegetable oils under the same standards has seen victories as soy is being highlighted as an unsustainable source for the EU’s biofuels program.
But as global supplies ease with the export of Ukrainian agricultural products and Indonesia’s lifting of its export ban, the long term threat posed by climate change threatens food security in Europe. The global relief felt when Indonesia lifted its palm oil export ban is evidence of the importance of palm oil to keeping inflation at bay. Even the most notorious of anti-palm oil companies have back-pedaled their positions and started to use palm oil again in their products.
As premium markets for palm oil in the EU and US open up in the global recovery, the increased demand for palm oil in 2022 may not last despite its status as an affordable cooking oil.
Two key market factors stand in the way of becoming a consistent supply of vegetable oil that is less exposed to the threats of climate change.
- First factor is the pending legislations in the EU and the US to impose restrictions on the import of commodities that are linked to deforestation.
- Second factor is the ingrained prejudice held by European and American consumers against palm oil.
Legislative factors are less of a concern to palm oil producing countries. Communication efforts by the intergovernmental organization, Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC) have successfully argued that palm oil is a needed component for the sustainable development of countries. This has led to government-to-government initiatives like USAID and the Joint Working Group on Palm Oil which will be able to resolve any concerns that palm oil importing countries have.
Media a Threat to Eroding Palm Oil Sustainability Credentials
In order for these G2G initiatives to have any credibility for consumers in the EU and the US, palm oil producing countries cannot sit on judicial recognitions alone. There is an ingrained prejudice held against palm oil by consumers in Europe and the US which will require extrajudicial efforts on the part of palm oil producing countries to remove.
This will require some dirty street fighting in media, especially social media, which palm oil producing countries media campaigns must engage in. One of the key challenges for palm oil producing countries is to remove the root of all the misinformation on palm oil. This one claim against palm oil will continue to erode any confidence in the sustainable production of palm oil until it is resolved on social media.
“Every hour(?) every minute(?), 300 football fields of rainforests are destroyed to make way for palm oil”
In 2013, Rainforest Foundation US/ Global Citizen made a claim that:
"Every minute, an area the size of 300 football fields of the world’s most dense, species rich forest is destroyed to create palm oil plantations."
The claim was ridiculed by Alert-Conservation which published a piece in 2014, on football-fields of deforestation written by Erik Meijaard
Erik’s criticism of the exaggeration has been largely ignored as online media like One Green Planet claimed shortly after, that Palm Oil is Causing Football Fields Worth of Flames.
One Green Planet did tone down the exaggeration from “one minute” to “one hour” but it still does not make sense. If the editors at One Green Planet had done the math, they would have realised that reducing the exaggeration from “one minute” to “one hour” still meant that Indonesia would have been completely covered in palm oil at the time of their writing in 2016.
So how did this outrageous claim on palm oil start?
Online information indicates that the “300 football fields lost to palm oil” started the way rumours always start. Information gets twisted and bloated from one whisper to another.
The oldest reference found online is from a screenshot of WWF Australia’s Palm Oil Factsheet which slyly mentioned the United Nations to support their claim that 300 football fields are cleared every hour in Malaysia and Indonesia for palm oil.
WWF Claim on palm oil and football fields of destruction
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Forest Watch Indonesia confused the claim when it “revealed this astonishing fact in the book Portrait of the State of Indonesia's Forests for the 2009-2013 Period, Togu Manurung, Head of the FWI Association, said that during that time, the rate of forest loss was staggering. Every minute, a forest the size of three football fields disappears”
From there, the claims of football fields lost per minute per hour due to palm oil took on a life on its own. Obscure websites like Fix.Com wrote in 2016 that |
"A 2016 Greenpeace report found that in Indonesia alone, palm oil has led to the loss of 31 million hectares of forest (more than 76 million acres), an area equivalent to the entire country of Germany."
The link in the Fix.com article is bad as it looks like the Greenpeace report has been archived but as with all things published on the internet, a copy of it was found.
What the Greenpeace report actually said is pasted below
The link in the Fix.com article is bad as it looks like the Greenpeace report has been archived but as with all things published on the internet, a copy of it was found.
What the Greenpeace report actually said is pasted below
This is incredulous as most recent data from 2022, shows that Indonesia has at most, 16.4 million hectares according to this Mongabay report.
This did not stop Greenpeace from going with the now popular fake news, by declaring in 2018, that Every hour up to 300 football fields of Indonesian rainforest are destroyed to make room for palm oil plantations.
It seems like between WWF and Greenpeace, there is a disagreement whether the 300 football fields destroyed for palm oil happened only in Indonesia or if it’s spread out between Indonesia and Malaysia.
The wildly exaggerated claims made by the WWF and Greenpeace are expected as that is what they do to attract attention. It is however, inexcusable for the United Nations Environmental Program to share false information publicly as they did on Twitter
This did not stop Greenpeace from going with the now popular fake news, by declaring in 2018, that Every hour up to 300 football fields of Indonesian rainforest are destroyed to make room for palm oil plantations.
It seems like between WWF and Greenpeace, there is a disagreement whether the 300 football fields destroyed for palm oil happened only in Indonesia or if it’s spread out between Indonesia and Malaysia.
The wildly exaggerated claims made by the WWF and Greenpeace are expected as that is what they do to attract attention. It is however, inexcusable for the United Nations Environmental Program to share false information publicly as they did on Twitter
UNEP Tweet on Palm Oil
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The reputational damage that has been caused by the endorsement of 300 football fields destroyed for palm oil by the United Nations is incalculable.
Should the UNEP apologise and pay to have this tweet scrubbed from the internet? Advanced satellite mapping tools says the UNEP should. According to Bart van Assen, a Dutch national who has worked with satellite mapping in Indonesia for decades, there is a lot of misinformation on the exact land footprint of the palm oil industry in Indonesia. Read Part ll. How NGOs Are Complicit in Spreading False News on Palm Oil |
Published September, 2022. CSPO Watch
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