Focus 3 - Palm Oil and the devastation to Orangutan rainforest habitats

When I first set out the third year extended essay, my intentions were always to put a piece together about urban farming, but a chunk of the body was going to address the damage to developing countries and natural habitats, in the struggle to feed the world. I changed my mind at a point and instead chose to focus on how city communities can become more self-sustaining through community supported agriculture (CSA) schemes and Transition Town Movements.

Last night I watched BBC's Panorama program entitled 'Dying for a Biscuit'. It documents the rapid and in most cases, illegal deforestation of Borneo's rainforest - the natural habitat of the orangutan - for Palm Oil.

Undeniably terrifying for our closest cousins, it is just so sad to see what this agri-business schmizness is doing to some of the last magical places we have left on our earth. The orangutan population in this area has been estimated by the International Union for Conservation to have declined by 50% in the last few decades, while the Indonesian government has admitted that deforestation has killed 50,000.

The palm oil industry is estimated at £5 billion ($7.7 billion) in Indonesia. The Panorama team went to a plantation with a peat specialist to test the land that the plantations are grown upon. By law, any land that has a peat depth of 3 meters or more is not to be touched at all. Any interference with the soils will release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They tested the soil with a 3 meter testing pole, and what do you know, there was peat over 3.5 meters deep, on land that had palm oil plantations upon it. Duta Palma Group is responsible for this, and for logging illegally on high conservation land. The Indonesian agriculture minister gave the usual bureaucratic answers to questions posed to him by Panorama why this is happening.

Panorama has gone on to sending out questionnaires to UK supermarkets and leading product manufacturers about their use of palm oil in products. Sainsbury's is the only brand to have addressed a substantial portion of its palm oil footprint since it first began its sustainable palm oil programme in 2008. On their boxes of fish fingers they clearly state the palm oil is sourced sustainably, and a spokesman said they can go right to the source, knowing where the palm oil is from.

As a consumer, I do my damndest to ensure that the products I use are not tested on animals, and much prefer organic meat over any other, I'd rather go without if there is no choice. But when it comes to palm oil, manufacturers are so vague about ingredients in their products, stating simply that the product contains a percentage of vegetable oils. How can we as environmentally aware consumers be confident about what we are buying?? How can legislations be placed upon consumer products? There are already so many arguments about unclear salt levels, sugar levels, e numbers....etc etc.

The problem is that no price can be put upon what is being lost, until it is gone. Why is this so hard for governments to understand.

My other argument is that we wouldn't have these awful situations if it wasn't for human overpopulation. That's probably something for another day. I can feel body temperature warming rather swiftly.

+ BBC iplayer - Dying for a Biscuit

+ Orangutan survival and the shopping trolley - article

+ Palm oil products and the weekly shop - article