Nature Alert: Indonesia beckons foreign palm oil companies

Sunday, 16 September 2007

Indonesia beckons foreign palm oil companies

The Star online, Malaysia

Thursday September 13, 2007

Indonesia beckons foreign palm oil companies

JAKARTA: Indonesia, the world's biggest palm oil producer, wants foreigners to develop new plantations and may prevent them from acquiring existing operations, the agriculture minister said yesterday.

Overseas firms should buy new land and cultivate oil palms, the fruit of which is crushed to produce crude palm oil, instead of acquiring plantations from small holders, Anton Apriantono told reporters. The government aims to limit foreign control of strategic industries.

Plantation companies in Indonesia are expanding to benefit from higher prices of edible oils. Palm oil on the Malaysia Derivatives Exchange, the benchmark contract, has risen 26% this year, and traded at RM2,518 a tonne at the end of morning trading.

“We want small-holder plantations to continue to exist,'' Apriantono said. Indonesia plans to add 1.5 million hectares of oil palm plantations in the next three years to the current area of about six million, a government official has said.

Of the planned expansion, 1.375 million hectares would come from newly cleared land, while a further 125,000 hectares would be re-plantings of existing plantations, said Rosediana Suharto, chairwoman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Committee. Oil palms last about 25 years, after which they need replacing. – Bloomberg

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.