EPA Underestimates Emissions from Palm-Based Biofuels

By Alexandra Stark
Scientific and environmental groups announced that they will submit comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to EPA’s proposed finding that palm oil should not qualify for inclusion in the EPA’s Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) this morning.  While the organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the National Wildlife Federation, agreed with the EPA’s conclusion not to include palm oil, they argued that EPA’s analysis actually underestimates the greenhouse gas emissions of palm oil and the serious environmental problems that palm cultivation creates.
“The emissions of palm oil based biofuels substantially exceed the emissions from conventional petroleum diesel,” said Dr. Jeremy Martin, Senior Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Despite the technical aspects of the decision, it may be one of the most critical climate and environmental decisions that the Obama administration will make, with thousands of square miles of rainforest, and the corresponding tons of greenhouse gas emissions, at stake.
The EPA’s deadline for comment submission is today, Friday, April 27, and has been pushed back twice due to lobbying from the palm oil industry.  The EPA invited comments in response to the EPA’s Notice of Data Availability (NODA), which analyzes palm oil used as a feedstock to produce biodiesel and renewable diesel.  EPA’s analysis found that palm oil-based biodiesel fails to meet the minimum qualifying standard of 20% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional petroleum based diesel for the RFS, as well as the 50% greenhouse gas emissions reduction to qualify as a renewable diesel.
The EPA is under pressure to reverse this finding from lobbying groups aligned with the Indonesian, Malaysian, and Chinese palm oil industry, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other right-wing organizations that are ideologically opposed to the Renewable Fuels Standard, yet are contradictorily lobbying the EPA to include palm oil under the RFS government mandate.

“It is a disturbing development to see a politically motivated group like ALEC join forces with the shadowy palm oil lobby from Malaysia and Indonesia as well as with huge agribusiness companies Cargill and Wilmar to pressure the EPA to overturn what is supposed to be a science-based decision made in the best interests of the American people,” said Laurel Sutherlin, with the Rainforest Action Network.  “The question the EPA is tasked with answering is whether biofuels made with palm oil meet our nation’s greenhouse gas requirements as a renewable fuel. The stark reality of the impacts of palm oil plantation expansion in Southeast Asia, where nearly 90% of the world’s palm oil comes from, makes it clear that it does not.”

Rainforests are among the largest natural storehouses, or sinks, of carbon on earth and palm oil has quickly become one of the leading drivers of rainforest destruction in the world today, making palm oil production a globally significant source of carbon pollution.  Deforestation in Indonesia alone contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than all the transportation sector in the US combined.
Analysis of EPA’s assessment by scientific groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists and the International Council on Clean Transportation found that in several important areas, EPA substantially underestimated the likely emissions of palm oil.  Primarily,  EPA’s analysis underestimates the extent to which palm oil expansion is occurring on peat soils, which leads to a substantial underestimate of heat trapping emissions. EPA bases its findings on the assumption that only nine percent of palm oil expansion will occur on peat land in Malaysia and 13 percent in Indonesia. However, a new report by the National Academy of Sciences, released today, says that 50 percent of oil palm plantations were established on peat lands through last year.  The study found that if oil palm expansion continues, with no restrictions on peat land development, almost 90 percent of palm oil’s greenhouse gas emissions will come from peat lands by 2020. EPA’s analysis also uses over-optimistic projections in a number of other places, including on yields.
“EPA should reject optimistic claims and projections that are unsupported by conclusive evidence” that they from industry and government bodies about coming improvements in yield, governance, land development policies and enforcement and palm oil mill operations, said Dr. Martin.
While the palm oil industry claims to embrace sustainability, its’ actions on the ground prove to the contrary:  in just the last few weeks, the palm oil industry moved into Sumatra’s world-famous Tripa swamp forest, home to one of the world’ densest populations of critically endangered orangutans. Plantation owners have purposely lit dozens of forest fires to clear the land, meanwhile sending the ultra carbon-rich peat soils into the atmosphere in a massive inferno – and killing an estimated one hundred of the world’s 6000 remaining Sumatran orangutans.

“The very month that the palm oil industry is burning and clearing the world famous carbon-rich Tripa forest and its orangutans, they’re trying to browbeat the EPA into declaring this fuel so sustainable that they should qualify for a massive U.S. government mandate,” said Glenn Hurowitz, Climate Advisers Director of Campaigns. “I don’t think so. If the palm oil industry wants to actually reduce its environmental impact and qualify for this mandate, the solution is simple: end deforestation for palm.”

Clearing and burning of rainforests for palm oil plantations is one of the primary drivers of deforestation in Southeast Asia, and is one of the major reasons Indonesia is the world’s third largest global GHG emitter, just behind China and the United States.
EPA’s decision will have far broader influence than just the US biofuels markets. Other governments are looking closely at EPA’s findings as a basis for their own assessments of palm oil’s impact. In particular, Europe, which uses substantially more palm biodiesel than the United States, is currently assessing the shape of its own biofuels mandate.

“U.S. consumers should not be forced to fill their gas tanks with a fuel that is pushing species like orangutans and Sumatran tigers to the brink of extinction, is one of the world’s leading drivers of climate change, and whose production involves child and slave labor,” Hurowitz said. “Palm oil is so polluting that it manages to make even dirty old oil look like an environmentalist dream.”

http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/04/epa-underestimates-emissions-palm-based-biofuels/

Palm oil is a major driver of peatlands destruction in Indonesian Borneo, finds new study

Despite 'moratorium', palm oil plantations being widely developed on peatlands in Indonesia, boosting emissions

Developers in Indonesian Borneo are increasingly converting carbon-dense peatlands for oil palm plantations, driving deforestation and boosting greenhouse gas emissions, reports a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research concludes that nearly all unprotected forests in Ketapang District in West Kalimantan will be gone by 2020 given current trends.

The study, which was led by Kim Carlson of Yale and Stanford University, is based on comprehensive socioeconomic surveys, high-resolution satellite imagery, and carbon mapping of the Ketapang, which is home to some of the most biodiverse forests on the planet including those of Gunung Palung National Park.

Carlson and colleagues found that while developers focused on lowland forest areas for conversion between 1994-2001, the subsequently focused of peatlands. By 2008 nearly 70 percent of new plantations were established on peatlands, spurring substantial carbon dioxide emissions. The study projects that up to 90 percent of emissions from palm oil plantations will come from peatlands by 2020.

The findings are timely because the Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil industries are currently making a case that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's emissions estimates for palm oil production are too high. In concluding that palm oil-based biodiesel won't sufficiently reduce emissions relative to conventional fuel, the EPA assumed that 9 percent of Malaysian and 13 percent of Indonesian palm oil is produced on peatlands. The new study suggests that future oil palm development may be concentrated of peatlands, boosting the carbon footprint of palm oil, thereby undermining the palm oil industry's protests.


Study region in Ketapang District, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. (A) 2008 land cover in oil palm leases. Whereas 6% of non-PA lands were cleared for or planted with oil palm, 91% of plantation leases sited mainly (62%) on peatlands remained undeveloped. (B) Land cover sources for oil palm, 1994–2011. Forests (intact, logged, and secondary) were the primary land cover source (49%) for oil palm. By 2011, oil palm spanned 14% of non-PA lands. (C) Business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, 2020. Forests cover only 24% of the region, and oil palm occupies 41% of non-PA lands. (D) FPSec scenario, 2020. Protection against deforestation and degradation of intact and logged forests in PAs and undeveloped oil palm leases yields 36% greater forest fraction (32% of the region) and 28% lower oil palm area (∼30% of non-PA lands) compared with BAU. Image and caption modified from Carlson et al 2012.


The findings are also significant because Indonesia has pledged to protect peatlands under its national greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitment. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last year established a moratorium on new concessions in peatland areas, a move that comes on top of an earlier ban on conversion of peat areas deeper than three meters (ten feet).

“Preventing oil palm establishment on peatlands will be critical for any greenhouse gas emissions-reduction strategy,” said Carlson in a statement.

Overall the research found that half of oil palm plantations in Ketapang were established on peatlands through 2011.

To curb emissions from projected oil palm expansion, the authors argue that Ketapang would need to protect both logged and intact forests as well as prevent agricultural fires. Even so, conversion of 280,000 acres of a million acres of community land by 2020 is virtually inevitable, according to the research. The most likely case is that 35 percent of all community lands will be cleared for oil palm by 2020.

“Unfortunately forest and peatland protection does not automatically generate benefits for local communities,” said study co-author Lisa Curran, a professor of anthropology at Stanford University. “To become truly sustainable, oil palm companies must not only protect existing forests and carbon stocks, but should ensure that any land acquired from resident smallholder farmers and communities meets the criteria for free, prior and informed consent, and is equitably and transparently compensated.”

Carlson added that it was important the research incorporate the impacts of oil palm expansion and forest conversion on local communities.

“Early on we decided to include people in our assessment,” said Carlson. “Local residents and their lands are often forgotten in conversations about forests.”


Current and projected and use in Ketapang District



Carlson et al (2011). Committed Carbon Emissions Deforestation, and Community Land Conversion from Oil Palm Plantation Expansion in West Kalimantan, Indonesia PNAS Early Edition for April 27, 2012.

Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0427-palm-oil-impact-borneo.html#ixzz1tFNk2XDA

Campaigners claim World Bank helps facilitate land grabs in Africa

Food shortages and rural deprivation exacerbated by World Bank policy, says NGO ahead of land and poverty conference

• John Vidal and Claire Provost
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 April 2012 15.00 BST

The World Bank is helping corporations and international investors snap up cheap land in Africa and developing countries worldwide at the expense of local communities, environment and farm groups said in a statement released on Monday to coincide with the bank's annual land and poverty conference in Washington DC.
According to the groups, which include NGO Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) and international peasants' group La Via Campesina, decades of World Bank policies have pushed African and other governments to privatise land and focus on industrial farming. In addition, they say, the bank is playing a "key role" in the global rush for farmland by providing capital and guarantees to big multinational investors.
"The result has often been … people forced off land they have traditionally farmed for generations, more rural poverty and greater risk of food shortages", said FOEI in a separate report launched ahead of the World Bank conference.
The event, which promises to focus on "land governance in a rapidly changing environment", is billed as a forum to discuss "innovative approaches" to land governance challenges including climate change, the growing demand for key natural resources, and rapid urbanisation. But campaigners say the conference mistakenly focuses on how to improve large-scale land deals rather than on helping local communities to secure or retain access to their land.
The FOEI report suggests land grabbing is intensifying and spreading, especially in rural areas of Africa and Asia. "High levels of demand for land have pushed up prices, bringing investment banks and speculators into farming," it says.
"The World Bank's policies for land privatisation and concentration have paved the way for corporations from Wall Street to Singapore to take upwards of 80m hectares (197.6 acres) of land from rural communities across the world in the past few years," said the groups in a statement accusing the bank of promoting "corporate-oriented rather than people-centred" policies and laws.
In 2010, the World Bank spearheaded the development of new principles for responsible agricultural investment to better ensure that land deals respect local rights, livelihoods and resources; these guidelines have also been criticised for legitimising, rather than challenging, the global rush for land.
Allegations of land-grabbing have hit countries around the world and have been accompanied by growing concern about whether large-scale land deals are delivering promised income and employment for local people. This week, a coalition of NGOs and research institutes is expected to release the latest findings of the Land Matrix project, which has attempted to systematically document recent land acquisitions.
Current estimates suggest that 80-230m hectares of land have been leased or bought in recent years, largely to produce food, feed or fuel for the international market.
World Bank money has been involved in many recent international land deals, says the FOEI report. In Uganda, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the bank's private sector lending arm, contributed $10m for a project to clear 10,000 hectares of land for palm oil plantations on Bugala Island in Lake Victoria.
But FOEI research has shown that local people were prevented from accessing water sources and grazing land, suggesting that – despite promises of employment – many people have lost their means of livelihood.
Resistance to land grabs is growing: Harvard University has come under intense pressure to ensure its investments do not contribute to land grabs in Africa, while Iowa State University has withdrawn from a deal in Tanzania that could have displaced an estimated 160,000 people. In South Sudan, the government halted a land deal after local communities erupted in protest, saying their lands had been secretly leased to an American company.
This month, farmers and land rights activists from across Sierra Leone converged on the country's capital for a national assembly of communities affected by large-scale land deals, where groups launched a new civil-society watchdog to monitor agribusiness investments. The meeting followed the first international farmers' conference to tackle land grabs, held in Selingue, southern Mali, in late 2011.
On Tuesday, food justice activists, environmental organisations, students and Occupy Wall Street groups are set to gather in front of New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel to challenge the fourth annual Global AgInvesting (GAI) conference, where institutional investors and fund managers are meeting to discuss opportunities for agricultural investments overseas.
"Governments around the world need to stop land grabbing, not just try to mitigate its worst impacts. Governments must abide by their human rights obligations on land and drastically reduce demand for commodities such as palm oil from the west," said Kirtana Chandrasekaran, FOEI's food sovereignty co-ordinator.
David Kureeba, from the Ugandan national association of professional environmentalists, said: "People's rights to land [in Uganda] are being demolished. Small-scale farming and forestry that protected unique wildlife, heritage and food is being converted to palm oil wastelands that only profit agribusinesses."
Government officials, civil society, experts and the private sector will gather at the World Bank conference, which ends on Thursday, to discuss large-scale land aquisitions, land governance in the context of climate change, and rapid urbanisation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/apr/23/world-bank-land-grabs-africa?newsfeed=true 

Landgabbing in South East Asia

"Filipino farmers decry landgrabbing in PH, other countries"

 Manila, Philippines --- Filipino farmer activists last week staged a protest action in Manila to denounce the unhampered grabbing of prime agricultural lands in the Philippines and in other develooing countries.
About 100 farmers braved the strong rain and held a mass demonstration in front of the Department of Agriculture in Quezon City.

The protest was led by the members of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) in the Philippines such as the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), AMIHAN (National Federation of Peasant Women), UMA (Union of Agricultural Workers), and the Pamalakaya (National Federation of Small Fisherfolks of the Philippines). Also present is the Anakpawis partylist and the National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates (Nnara-Youth).

The farmers are protesting global land grabbing and are calling the governments in Asia to stop devoting their lands for food security of other nations.
APC secretary general Danilo Ramos said approximately 365 million people in Asia derive their livelihoods from land. Unfortunately, the problem of global land grabbing by foreign investors and governments, extends elsewhere in Asia.

"Ever since high food prices in 2007 and 2008 raised the prospect of food insecurity for countries without much farmland, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have scoured Asia for land,” said Ramos.

The APC said in Indonesia, 288,500 hectares of agricultural lands were acquired by KS Oils (India), Noble Group (Singapore) and Wilmar International (Singapore). The KS Oils is one of India’s largest edible-oil companies.

The Noble Group, is one of the world's largest global commodity traders and local communities were reported to have been paid as little as US$2.50 per hectare when the lands were acquired by Henrison Inti Persada.

The Singapore-based Wilmar International is controlled by the Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok, one of the world's largest palm-oil companies and a major sugar producer,” Ramos added.
APC said in September 2009, Wilmar International secured a permit to convert 200,000 ha of mainly forested land in Papua, Indonesia into sugar-cane plantations, as part of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate mega-project that the Indonesian government is pursuing.

According to Zenaida Soriano, APC Coordinating Council member and President of AMIHAN (National Federation of Peasant Women), “In the Philippines, 270,000 hectares of agricultural lands were obtained by Hassan Group (Bahrain), Itochu (Japan), Far Eastern Agricultural Investment Company (Saudi Arabia), Jeonnam Feedstock (South Korea), San Carlos Bio-Energy (United Kingdom), and South Korean government for their food and bio-fuels”.

“The main issue in global land grabbing is the rights to land of peasants were violated. They are forcefully dislocated due to conversions of agricultural lands. They are pushing food production and bio-fuels mainly for profit of the capitalists,” she exclaimed.

“If left unstopped, this global land grab will further destroy the small-scale farming, and rural livelihoods, in numerous places in Asia and around the world. We want genuine land reform,” Soriano stated.
 
Solidarity action
The group said this is also their solidarity action to APC members in India demanding to halt the Russian-built Koodankulam nuclear plant in southern Tamil Nadu state.They stressed that the nuke is unprecedentedly dangerous and a threat to human existence because toxic waste from nuclear power plants continues to emit deadly radiation for up to 1 million years. They also urge the Indian government to immediately release unjustly detained anti-nuke activists.

Likewise, the APC member organizations in the Philippines also asked the Sri Lankan military government to stop the harassment against Herman Kumara, former Secretary General of the World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP) and the head of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NFSM) of Sri Lanka.
 
Protest in Indonesia
The APC member Aliansi Gerakan Reforma Agraria (AGRA), the biggest assemblage of farmers and rural people in Indoneisa led the farmers of Pandan Lagan village in a protest against global land grabbing.
According to AGRA, in 1982, people from Java and other province migrated to Pandan Lagan as part of the government program. In 1986, the government developed an irrigation within the 1,200 hectares of lands with the promise to distribute the land among the farmers (2hectares per people).
“Since then, the people cultivated their land. They planted rice, corn, vegetable and other crops. The local government gave them land ownership statement for making their land productive for some years;” AGRA said.

“‘However, in 2001 the district government t granted a permit to PT. Kaswari Unggul, a palm oil company, on the same land occupied by the people. Since then, the company started bulldozing the agricultural crops without notice and compensation,” said Rahmat Ajiguna, APC deputy secretary general and AGRA secretary general.
“In the concession letter, the company should buy the land to from the affected villagers…. The people never sold their land. Why is the company still exist in the village?”, the farmer leader added.

source:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/11834203-filipino-farmers-decry-landgrabbing-in-ph-other-countries