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Rising Palm Oil Demand Destroying Rainforests
Nov 20th
A new Greenpeace report Cooking The Climate highlights the huge amount of carbon dioxide getting released into the atmosphere as a result of rainforest destruction. Destruction of rain forests for palm oil plantation production is a major cause of carbon dioxide emissions.
Greenpeace investigations centred on the tiny Indonesian
province of Riau on the island of Sumatra which contains 25 per cent of
Indonesia’s palm oil plantations. Its peat swamps and forests are among
the world’s most concentrated carbon stores.They contain an estimated 14.6bn tonnes of carbon and their
destruction would release the equivalent of total global greenhouse gas
emissions for a year.Greenpeace claims the burning of Indonesia’s peatlands and forests
releases 1.8bn tonnes of greenhouse gases annually – equal to four per
cent of the global total – even though it occupies 0.1 per cent of the
land on Earth.
Note that the push for biomass energy from Brazil and other
equatorial countries is leading to huge CO2 emissions as forests get
ripped down and burned. A lot of this is happening to feed a growing
population of humans. Also, Asian industrialization is increasing the
amount of spending money people have for food and so Chinese, Indians,
and others are spending more on types of foods (e.g. meats) that
require more land usage to produce. This increases food imports by
these countries and forest destruction by food exporters.
Making a bad trend even worse, some Westerners who pose as environmentalists are promoting biomass energy usage. Well, because of the CO2 released by rainforest clearing equatorial region biomass production expansion causes a net boost in CO2 emissions.
So people who worry about global warming and therefore advocate biodiesel are not just wiping out species (and I’m not trying to belittle the importance of this problem). They are increasing atmospheric concentrations of a gas whose rise they view as a big problem.
Fossil fuels burning attracts a lot of attention for its effect on global temperatures. But Greenpeace says that forest destruction is also very important for global climate warming.
About three million hectares (7.5 million acres) of
these peatland forests are earmarked for conversion to palm oil
plantations over the next decade, Greenpeace said.
This “climate bomb” is ticking loudly in the run-up to December’s
United Nations’ climate change meeting in Bali, which is expected to
debate forests’ role in accelerating — and slowing — climate change,
said Sue Connor, Greenpeace International Forests Campaigner.“(If the Riau peatlands are cleared) it would wipe out any chance we
have of keeping the temperature increase below two degrees Celsius,”
she said, referring to a threshold given by the UN’s climate panel.
Palm oil is used in anything from body lotions and toothpaste to
chocolate bars, crisps and as a component of biofuels, such as
biodiesel.
I am more concerned about the destruction of habitats and species.
My guess is that CO2 emissions will peak some time in the next 20 years
and then decline as fossil fuels reserves depletion causes fossil fuels
extraction to decline. This will happen first for oil, then natural
gas, and eventually even coal.
Rich countries to compensate poor states that preserve their rainforests
Nov 19th
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Foreign nations share the blame for the destruction of Indonesian forests and should pitch in to help restore them, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Friday.
Indonesia, host of a U.N. climate change conference in December, has been a driving force behind calls for rich
countries to compensate poor states that preserve their rainforests to soak up greenhouse gases.
“Those foreigners keep harping on our country’s high emissions. Our emissions are high, but don’t forget who created this. Where did our timber go?” Kalla told reporters.
Kala said developed countries such as Japan and the United States had been major consumers of Indonesian timber, much of which was logged illegally.
“It means they have to pay,” he said.
According to global environmental group Greenpeace, Indonesia had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, destroying an area of forest the size of 300 soccer pitches every hour.
The Indonesian government says it must be given incentives, including a payout of $5-$20 per hectare, to preserve its forests. It also wants to negotiate a fixed price for other forms of biodiversity, including coral reefs.
Indonesia has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres, or about 10 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forests.
More sustainable biodiesel feedstock via jatropha curcas trees
Nov 18th
UK oil giant BP and UK biofuels producer D1 Oils are forming a 50/50 joint venture, to be called D1-BP Fuel Crops Limited, to accelerate the planting of jatropha curcas in order to make more sustainable biodiesel feedstock available on a larger scale.
Jatropha curcas is a drought-resistant, inedible oilseed-bearing tree that does not compete with food crops for good agricultural land or adversely impact the rainforest, and will also provide employment for
local communities, BP said.
Under the terms of the agreement, BP and D1 Oils intend to invest around $160 million over the next five years. D1 Oils will contribute into its 172,000 hectares of existing plantations in India, southern Africa and southeast Asia, and the joint venture will have exclusive access to the elite jatropha seedlings produced through D1 Oils’s plant science program.
The joint venture will focus on jatropha cultivation in southeast Asia, southern Africa, Central and South America and India. It is anticipated that some one million hectares will be planted over the next four years, with an estimated 300,000 hectares per year thereafter.
Jatropha oil produced from the plantations will be used to meet both local biodiesel requirements and for export to markets such as Europe, where domestic feedstock produced from rapeseed and waste oil is unlikely to be sufficient to meet anticipated regulatory led demand for biodiesel of around 11 million tonnes a year from 2010.
“Once all the planned plantations are established, the joint venture is expected to become the world’s largest commercial producer of jatropha feedstock, producing up to two million tonnes of jatropha oil a year,” said Phil New, head of BP Biofuels.
“As this hardy crop can be grown on a wide range of land types, it can make a significant impact on employment in rural areas of developing countries where planting takes place, a benefit which fits well with BP’s aspiration to pursue relationships which are mutually advantageous,” Mr New continued.
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