Pelangsi the Orangutan, the latest victim of the palm oil industry in Indonesia, is lucky to be alive. The young male was close to death when a team from International Animal Rescue cut him loose from a snare that kept him a prisoner without food or water for 10 days. (Read more)
(via galdikas)
A pregnant orangutan protects her baby from hunters in Borneo. This pair were taken to safety by an organization called Four Paws, but there’s not always a happy ending. According to the Four Paws website, ”tens of thousands of adult orangutans have been slaughtered, while their orphaned offspring is frequently being sold off as pets or left behind to die, if they aren’t killed on the spot as well”.
(via galdikas)
FYI
Knowledge is power!
So… all the companies :(
best just to eat fresh and if you need to buy branded food, just check the ingredients and avoid those products that contain palm oil.
Thank you for asking!
The demand for palm oil is going to make orangutans extinct. And very, very soon.
Orangutans are highly endangered.
In 1900, there were (give or take) 300,000 wild orangutans. A conservative estimate in 2003 numbers them at 50,000.
In just the last decade, the population has dropped by 50% - during the same time, the land used for palm oil plantations has doubled.
Orangutans have lost 90% of their habitat and the wild populations that are left are cut off from each other, left in genetic and reproductive isolation.
Orangutans live in only two places: Borneo (Indonesia and Malaysia) and Sumatra (Indonesia). Borneo has lost 50% of its rainforest and Sumatra has lost more than 70%. Orangutan habitat in Sumatra is less than 6% of the original forest.
Climate change has contributed to the loss of orangutan habitat - but, by far, the main culprit is loss of environment from recent human activity. Rainforest clearing (occasionally for human settlement, sometimes for logging, but primarily for for palm oil plantations) is accelerating at a dramatic rate. At least 87% of the rainforest clearing in Malaysia since 1985 was for palm oil plantations. In Indonesia, there were approximately 4 million hectares of palm oil plantation in 2002 - and the government intends to increase that to 11 million hectares by 2020.
If the current rate of palm oil industry expansion continues, orangutans will be extinct within the next decade - if not sooner.
Palm oil is bad for the environment.
Rainforests are cleared for palm oil plantations by burning everything down - including the peat bog below.
Not only are massive amounts of carbon released (each year, burning in Indonesia releases more carbon emission than all activity in India and Russia combined), but animals (and people) are killed in the fires the fires that grow out of control. (One fire in 1997 killed one third of the orangutans in Borneo.)
While 70% of palm oil is currently used in food (and a lot in cosmetics and household goods), there’s a growing push to use it as an alternative fuel. Sadly, once you take the peat bogs into account, it’s actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels.
Palm oil is bad for farmers, bad for the land, and bad for the economy.
Rainforests have incredibly high levels of biodiversity. Palm oil plantations have incredibly low biodiversity. (Indonesia, although it’s only 1.3% of the earth’s surface, is home to 11% of the world’s plant species, 10% of its mammal species, and 16% of its bird species.)
Biodiversity isn’t just the animals that call the forest home, but the number of plant species - and the nutrients in the soil.
Burning down the forest adds nutrients to the soil - growing palm oil trees in the land soaks the nutrients back up, depleting the soil and making it useless. Farmers have to move on to fresh soil every few years. If the patch is in the middle of the rainforest, it can be naturally reclaimed within a few decades (and re-filled with nutrients) - but, as more and more land is cleared, that becomes less likely. The cleared land is less fertile - now useless.
While the palm oil plantations may be able to sit on useless land, small farmers can’t afford to - yet, they are clearing their land of edible crops and planting palm oil in record numbers - only to starve after a few years.
Share-cropping programs, which lend money to farmers to buy supplies to begin growing palm oil trees - which do not bear fruit for 7 years. The high start up costs and the chemicals and fertilizer mean that farmers rarely manage to earn back enough money to pay the debt and are left in worse poverty than they began.
Palm oil has come to monopolize the industry and infrastructure in Indonesia and Malaysia - a highly precarious economic situation, particularly as they abandon other agricultural crops and the ability to feed their own citizens.
Palm oil is bad for the local communities.
Plantations are notorious for poor working conditions: chemicals, children, and long hours. Immigrants from other countries are brought in to work (often illegally, sometimes by force).
Human rights abuses aren’t restricted to the plantations, either.
“Plantations are often forcibly established on land traditionally owned by indigenous peoples, and plantation development has repeatedly been associated with violent
conflict.”In Indonesia, between 1998 and 2002 alone, nearly 500 were reported as having been tortured in community land conflicts and dozens killed. (An estimated 5 million more indigenous people will be evicted from their land by 2010 in West Kalimantan.)
Palm oil is bad for you.
Forget the geo-political and environmental repercussions - here’s a reason that might actually manage to get Westerners to boycott palm oil: It makes you fat.
Palm oil is a highly saturated fat - unlike most vegetable oils.
Saturated fats are bad for you: they increase cholesterol, are a leading cause of cardiovascular disease, and contribute to Type 2 diabetes.
While some saturated fat is necessary in the diet, palm oil isn’t being used to replace traditional saturated fats (from meat and dairy) - it’s being used in lieu of traditional vegetable oils, which are generally unsaturated (and healthier) than palm oil.
(via galdikas)
Palm oil is delicious. It’s used in crackers and candy. It’s a plant that’s grown in tropical areas, mostly Indonesia. Rainforests are burned down to make room to plant the crop. Tens of thousands of animals are killed by the burning. This short video shows the impacts of palm oil production on orangutans. It’s one of three tough-to-stomach documentaries on rainforest destruction.
WARNING: This video is brutal and raw. Guys, I am not messing around here. Parts are extremely graphic.
Her name is GREEN, she is alone in a world that doesn’t belong to her. She is a female orangutan, victim of deforestation and resource exploitation. This film is an emotional journey with GREEN’s final days. With no narration, it is a visual ride presenting the devastating impacts of logging and land clearing for palm oil plantations, the choking haze created by rainforest fires and the tragic end of rainforest biodiversity. We watch the effects of consumerism and are faced with our personal accountability in the loss of the world’s rainforest treasures.
More from Green Planet Films.
Reuters: Hundreds of Orangutans in Indonesia’s Aceh forest may die out in weeks
“Forest fires and land clearing by palm oil firms could kill off within weeks about 200 orangutans in a forest in western Indonesia, an environmental group said on Wednesday.
The orangutans, part of a population of around 6,600 on Sumatra island, used to live in a lush forest and peatland region called Rawa Tripa on the coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province. But more than two-thirds of the area has been divided up into palm oil concessions, said the Coalition to Save Tripa.
Graham Usher, a member of the coalition and a landscape protection specialist, said satellite images showed forest fires had been burning in Tripa since last week, and if allowed to continue they could wipe out orangutans already forced onto the edge of remaining forests.
“If there is any prolonged dry spell, which is quite likely, there’s a very good chance that the whole piece of forest and everything in it, so that’s orangutans, sun bears, tigers, and all the other protected species in it, will disappear in a few weeks and will be gone permanently,” he told a news conference.
The palm oil industry has expanded to make Indonesia the world’s top producer and exporter of the edible oil, used to make good ranging from cooking oil and biodiesel to biscuits and soap to feed growing Asian consumer demand.
Deforestation has threatened animals like the Sumatran tiger and Javan rhino and pushed up carbon dioxide emissions. The Bali tiger and the Java tiger have disappeared in the last 70 years.
A two-year moratorium on new permits to clear primary forests came into effect in Indonesia last year, part of a $1 billion deal with Norway to cut emissions and slow expansion of plantations. But the moratorium was breached in Aceh on its first days, an environmental group has said.
The last Aceh permit for palm oil was issued by former Aceh governor Irwandi Yusuf in August last year to PT Kallista Alam, prompting environmental group Walhi to file a legal suit against Yusuf. A court verdict is expected next week.”
More at Reuters.
Hundreds of orangutans killed in north Indonesian forest fires deliberately started by palm oil firms
(via galdikas)
(Sorry for the brutal pictures, but the Palm Oil and forest industries and a corrupt Indonesian government are screwing things up. By the thousands, orangutans are being killed to grow palm oil crops, a product used in crackers and candy.)
“Filmmaker’s heart-wrenching documentary shows tragic final hours of orangutan’s life as her rainforest home is ruthlessly destroyed
Lying on her back helpless and dying, Green the female orangutan is a picture of sadness as she faces her final hours.
The tragic female ape has been confined to a mattress inside a shack after her rainforest home was logged and burned to the ground through ruthless deforestation.
She clutches at her pillow and sits lifelessly on her mattress, defenceless as the lush Indonesian ecosystem she called home is destroyed, leaving her homeless.”
Mr Rouxel’s incredibly moving film aims to show how the timber, pulp and paper and palm oil industries, along with general consumerism, are combining to ravage natural resources worldwide.
The footage of Green’s final days and hours is interspersed with shots of trees being hacked down in Sumatra, Indonesia, along with shots of the wood products which result from the widespread deforestation.”
Read more: Daily Mail
This is so heartbreaking. These are our cousins and we are killing them.
Imagine teaching the next generation about the beautiful red ape that we destroyed.
Reuters: Hundreds of Orangutans in Indonesia’s Aceh forest may die out in weeks
“Forest fires and land clearing by palm oil firms could kill off within weeks about 200 orangutans in a forest in western Indonesia, an environmental group said on Wednesday.
The orangutans, part of a population of around 6,600 on Sumatra island, used to live in a lush forest and peatland region called Rawa Tripa on the coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province. But more than two-thirds of the area has been divided up into palm oil concessions, said the Coalition to Save Tripa.
Graham Usher, a member of the coalition and a landscape protection specialist, said satellite images showed forest fires had been burning in Tripa since last week, and if allowed to continue they could wipe out orangutans already forced onto the edge of remaining forests.
“If there is any prolonged dry spell, which is quite likely, there’s a very good chance that the whole piece of forest and everything in it, so that’s orangutans, sun bears, tigers, and all the other protected species in it, will disappear in a few weeks and will be gone permanently,” he told a news conference.
The palm oil industry has expanded to make Indonesia the world’s top producer and exporter of the edible oil, used to make good ranging from cooking oil and biodiesel to biscuits and soap to feed growing Asian consumer demand.
Deforestation has threatened animals like the Sumatran tiger and Javan rhino and pushed up carbon dioxide emissions. The Bali tiger and the Java tiger have disappeared in the last 70 years.
A two-year moratorium on new permits to clear primary forests came into effect in Indonesia last year, part of a $1 billion deal with Norway to cut emissions and slow expansion of plantations. But the moratorium was breached in Aceh on its first days, an environmental group has said.
The last Aceh permit for palm oil was issued by former Aceh governor Irwandi Yusuf in August last year to PT Kallista Alam, prompting environmental group Walhi to file a legal suit against Yusuf. A court verdict is expected next week.”
More at Reuters.
There are good biofuels and bad biofuels: the trick is telling one from the other. That’s particularly difficult when trying to take account of the natural forests and wetlands that can destroyed in the drive to grow some biofuel crops. But we’re getting closer, it seems, and palm oil and soy beans now appear utterly unsupportable as a source of biodiesel.
The new data comes from a leak obtained by EurActiv from the European Commission. The EC is considering what level of carbon emissions each type of biofuel causes once burned, after everything - including “indirect land-use change” - is taken into account.
…
The EU’s scheme for certifying biofuels as sustainable requires them to emit 35% less CO2 than regular fuel, increasing to 60% by 2018, making palm oil, soy bean, rapeseed and sunflower looking all but dead.
Palm oil biodiesel also received another blow on Friday, with the US Environmental Protection Agency suggesting it fails to meet the US requirement of emitting at least 20% less carbon than diesel from crude oil. [more]
