Show me the money

How to save the last carbon sinks

Posted by biodiversivist (Guest Contributor) at 2:17 PM on 11 Apr 2007

Hakym via Flickr Marcel Silvius recently declared in the Herald Tribune that palm oil is a failure as a biofuel. Rhett Butler over at Mongabay thinks otherwise, as he argues in an article titled, um, "Palm oil is not a failure as a biofuel." His main point is that even if America and Europe were to reject palm oil biodiesel as inherently unsustainable, the forests would still be converted to palm oil by China. We can't stop its development by refusing to use it, so we (by "we" he means Europe) need to get in there and finance the establishment of sustainable practices now or we will have no say in the matter later. China will own the industry:

China appears to be ramping up for a massive expansion of diesel car production. Where is the diesel fuel to power these vehicles going to come from? Smart bets are on oil palm in southeast Asia and soybeans in the Amazon. Why else would state-backed Chinese firms be bankrolling oil-palm development in Indonesia and infrastructure projects linking coastal South America to the heart of the Amazon?

Since demand for palm oil isn't going to go away, Europe's best approach is to convince Indonesian oil-palm producers to cultivate their crop in a manner that's less damaging to the environment.

This won't be done by hand-holding or Kumbaya circles; it will be done through financial incentives -- if no one is demanding "green" palm oil, no one will produce it. Europe should inform producers that it is willing to buy a set amount of palm oil (in billions of liters per year), provided that it is independently certified as having been produced in an environmentally friendly and socially equitable way. Europe may even want to offer a minimum price guarantee to satisfy producers that it intends to hold up its side of the bargain.

Europe should engage the Indonesian government as well. It should urge Indonesia to eliminate subsidies for oil-palm plantations grown on natural forest lands, ban development of peatlands, and set aside primary forests for conservation in exchange for funds reflecting the value of the carbon emissions avoided. (Since deforestation produces greenhouse gases, reducing forest clearing cuts global warming emissions.)

Since neither the United States nor China is going to take the lead on this issue, Europe should not miss the opportunity to do so.
Now's the time to act. Almost everyone will be better off from greener palm oil.

This article from the Guardian critiquing palm oil supports Rhett's position that Indonesia is still open to offers of financial help on a first come, first served basis:

Jakarta is increasingly aware of the dangers, highlighted by its inability to prevent continuing illegal logging. But it is keen to grab the chance and is pledging to put in place regulations to seize allocated palm oil land not planted within a time limit.

Yet as a developing country it also believes Europe must help out financially if it wants the safeguards against the downside of palm oil production that will assist in cutting greenhouse gas.

"The Indonesian government simply doesn't have the capability or the capacity to do this alone without the support of the Europeans, the US, Japanese, or whoever," said Alhilal Hamdi, chief executive of Indonesia's biofuels development board. "It's no good other countries looking to us to help cut their CO2 emissions without helping to support us in that effort."

I have to cede this debate to Rhett -- with some caveats. In the end, the free market is going to dictate how palm oil is grown. Consumers must begin applying pressure by refusing to use environmentally destructive biofuels so investors will respond by funding the establishment of sustainable production on Indonesia's vast stretches of deforested and abandoned wasteland (which I did not know existed). All consumers, including Chinese consumers, must exert this pressure. We need to get the message out to them (as well as to the United States and Europe). China has celebrities now calling for the end of shark fin soup and other environmentally destructive practices. This issue needs to be added to the list.

And let's not kid ourselves -- Indonesia is going to sell its last rainforests to the highest bidder. If we don't get in there soon and pay with some kind of carbon offset scheme to lock what remains away, the profit motive is going to convert them all into palm plantations. It is a complex world. Maybe we should get on this now while our line of credit with China is still good, essentially borrowing money from them to lock the carbon sinks away from them (and us).

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14 Comments | Post a Comment

What about land tenure?

This is a great and fascinating post. I am interested if anyone knows about the role customary land tenure (or lack thereof) plays in all of this. (I've just asked some people I know who do anthropological research in Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo, so I'll see what they say.) From what I know, one reason Indonesia's forests were logged to the teeth and then converted to palm oil was partly because the native people of the region were denied rights to the land they had worked, cared for, and cultivated for many centuries. This 1993 article in the journal Cultural Survival details this. Its old but still relevant.

Some other researchers have done interesting and related work on local peoples, logging, and oil palm--Peter Brosius and Anna Tsing come immediately to mind. Tsing's book, Friction, details how lands belonging to indigenous people were re-imagined as a logging frontier, then, once logged, re-created as oil palm plantations. (It also talks about many other things.) So in part this is a governance problem, no? If Indonesia recognized customary land rights, perhaps the people whose forests these are would be able to make decisions about how they want their land to be used, rather than allowing the Indonesian government, who of course will bow to China's demand, make the decision for them.

Stephanie

by Stephanie Paige Ogburn at 3:53 PM on 11 Apr 2007

Hrmm

Palm Oil sure is a sticky situation.

Catch with carbon offsets is that I don't know if the offsets could pay a higher price than demand for the fuel.

So it seems like the only way forward is direct international aid.

Due to greenwashing, or no education about the fact that there even is a problem, or most likely a lack of attention. Getting boycotting to work, likely won't go far.

Hell, it's hard enough to convince people corn ethanol isn't such a good idea....

I think pretty much the only way forward is

International aid (aka Bribes)
Develop something which makes these crops obsolete (i.e. Algae / Phytoplankton)

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 4:30 PM on 11 Apr 2007

Although, one way to spin it.

Now one advantage in the carbon offset arena.

Tropical rainforests, if their albedo is accounted for, and their "capping" of carbon rich soils, they have a much larger impact on reducing global warming than their mere carbon impacts.

There's certainly more benefits in maintaining rainforrests for global warming than just the carbon

(Sorry, arguing with businessmen about biodiversity doesn't fly)

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/planting_trees.ph ...
http://www.llnl.gov/pao/news/news_releases/2005/NR-05-12- ...

So maybe you could sell people on the fact that not all forests are created equal, and that conserving rainforests should be assigned higher monetary value in the offsets market.

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 4:37 PM on 11 Apr 2007

I cannot disagree with anything you said, GreyFlcn

...unfortunately. The forests hold more profit potential as plantations, but if you can reach the right power brokers, and since nothing has to be built or burnt, you might be able to lock them away with long term contracts helping to fight off the biodiesel profit takers who will never stop trying to get at that land.

I very much hope some technology will come along (like algae) to kill this looming food crop biofuel disaster.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 5:06 PM on 11 Apr 2007

Beautiful photo, BioD

Stephanie,

A couple of weeks ago I was in Indonesia and visited a palm-oil plantation that was striving for sustainable management. I included a brief description of it here. Of course, a palm oil plantation is still largely a monoculture.

Sawit Watch has produced a very good book on the land tenure issue in relation to palm oil in Indonesia.

Incidentally, one of the points they and others make is that the recent harvesting of forest from areas with deep peat soils may well have been done in the name of creating oil palm plantations, but in fact only a fraction of that land has been developed for oil palm (which would require draining the soils first). That is to say, what the permit-holders were mainly after was the timber, which was worth a lot more than the value of the land for producing palm oil.

These are only my personal opinions.

by Ron Steenblik at 5:11 PM on 11 Apr 2007

what about eco-tourism, or drug patent money?

I'm thinking of the route Samoa took. The matais in Falealupo (narrowly) opted to preserve the rainforest instead of logging - and we now have a profitable eco-tourist industry, as well as rights to some promising plant-based drug patents.

Some of it has to do with Stephanie's point - land in Samoa is communally owned, and since no Samoan is overjoyed to see the rainforest chopped down - theres a natural social obstacle to logging.

But even community leaders are not indifferent to profit - Savai'i struggles to find money to build schools and other things. The fact that Paul Cox could make a decent counter-offer to the logging companies was key in preserving the Falealupo rainforest.

by Mmimika at 5:19 PM on 11 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

In the name of...

Ron,
I completely agree. Anna Tsing and other researchers make it very clear that logging came first, then oil palm. It was originally all about the logs. The oil palm was a bit of a spin. Now it is there. So it is also something to deal with. How? It is interesting to see people trying to do neat things, like "sustainable" plantations. (is that an oxymoron?) Yet even if it is, knowing that people are trying to do some things better is heartening.

Stephanie

by Stephanie Paige Ogburn at 6:34 PM on 11 Apr 2007
[ Parent ]

Albedo

Not a problem in tropics. Again, why not direct aid instead of offsets. An offset means save an acre of rain forest, burn the equivalent in ton of coal. At which point China assumes you are more interested in cutting it off from resources than stopping emissions. A three way deal would have to involve subsidies to both Indonesia and China - with the rich nations not using the deal as an excuse to keep up their own emissions.

by Gar Lipow at 8:34 PM on 11 Apr 2007

talk about the photo, BioD

That remarkably colored insect looks like a kind of bee. And those thickish, waxy, veined, serrated-edged leaves remind me of hydrangeas. But really, I cannot say anything with any confidence. Can you shed some light?

Or maybe we should get back in touch with E.O. Wilson ...

Also, what does the latter part of this sentence refer to?:
<<
Why else would state-backed Chinese firms be bankrolling oil-palm development in Indonesia and infrastructure projects linking coastal South America to the heart of the Amazon?
>>

What part of the South American coast is he talking about? And do "infrastructure projects" mean road-building? Railroad building? Airports?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 9:27 PM on 11 Apr 2007

It is a moth

Parallel evolution has it looking like a big hornet which allows it to go about in the day. The colors may also advertise a bad taste or toxicity.

Hummingbird moths are another example of parallel evolution filling the same niche as ...hummingbirds.

Nobody seems to know what this moth is but like Wilson said, most species have yet to be discovered and we are destroying them faster than we are discovering them.

This is a borrowed photo. I can't take pictures that look this good.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 8:03 AM on 12 Apr 2007

Well one might wonder

I wonder if the Algae thing would even work ;D
Might just raise the demand for product.

I think what might make more sense is to give aid based on the ammount trees

This way the government has a direct incentive to put a stop to the "tree poaching".

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 8:33 AM on 12 Apr 2007

Don't forget about the locals!

Interesting thread, but I'd take the issue over land rights a bit further. We need to be very careful that we, as activists in the wealthy world, aren't arguing about what high-level economic policies "we" need to put in place to "save the rainforests" without involving the people who live there. Indigenous peoples' organisations and local environmental groups around the world are already mobilising on this issue, and directly challenging the loggers and plantation companies on the ground; we should be doing all we can to support their efforts, and ensuring that their voices are included in policy-making on this issue.

All too often, we fall into the habit of seeing these issues purely from our own perspective, and forgetting that millions of people in the Global South are also fighting the same battles for justice and a clean environment - but in far more dangerous, difficult and immediate conditions. We need to find ways to link up with, and both support and learn from the (often successful) struggles of grassroots activists all over the world. What's going on out there is actually really exciting and is one of the things that gives me real hope for the future. The people are not going to give up their lands and livelihoods without a fight; we should be supporting that fight, because ultimately it's the same as our own.

You can find more information on local struggles against biofuel plantations and rainforest destruction at: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

I met grassroots activists from all over the world at the World Social Forum in January, and then wrote a summary of the main things I learned there: http://adaisythroughconcrete.blogspot.com/2007/04/and-onl ...

by dannychivers at 9:34 AM on 12 Apr 2007

Gar,

How do you figure albedo is not a 'problem' in the tropics? There are definite changes in albedo with bare ground, pasture, early forest, and mature forest. Mature forest retains the most, while bare ground may or may not, depending on the soil type. I think what you might mean to say is that albedo does not cause a large variation in the heat balance in the tropics. It does matter though for water and proximately nutrient balances.

by atreyger at 10:22 AM on 12 Apr 2007

Actually in the tropics

Actually in the tropics, there's more to albedo than just whats on the ground.

Large reason tropics are valuable is that water vapor coming off the trees does a lot of reflection.

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 10:33 AM on 12 Apr 2007

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