A Century of Commercial Oil Palm in Indonesia
Who are the Winners, Who are the losers?
An Alternative Conference of a Century of Commercial Oil Palm in Indonesia
Medan, North Sumatera, 26-29 March 2011
1. Background
Gabungan Pengusaha Kelapa Sawit Indonesia (GAPKI) or “Association of Corporations of Oil Palm in Indonesia” is in plan to celebrate a hundred years of the existence of oil palm in Indonesia that takes place in Tiara Convention Hall, Medan-North Sumatera. This celebration is aimed to counter the negative campaign against the oil palm plantation corporation.
Oil palm becoming a business purposes, as a strategic commodity in Indonesia, was first acquainted by colonial Dutch in 1911, developed in two North Sumatera’s areas namely Pulo Raja and Tanah Itam. As time goes on, the oil palm plantation has been largely increasing achieving more than 7 million hectares at the present.
More than 90 percent, today, of the world’s oil palm are mostly exported from Malaysia and Indonesia. Indonesia has been on its highly economic development by export activities, between in 2003 and 2010, which two fold increases occured from 7.8 million tons (2003/2004) to 18 million tons (2010/2011). It is assumed to the increase every year (see the table below).
The use of oil palm and palm seed, nearly 70 percent, is being used to produce the food materials, 24 percent is to produce some other daily secondary needs including soap, cosmetics, candle, etc.and 5 percent is used to energy supply (Agentur für Erneuerbare Energie 2010: 20).
Mostly European Union countries are now using 45 percent of oil palm for industrial purposes, the number comparatibly is much higher than countries outside EU. Unlike EU countries, China and some South-Eastern Asian Countries are only using 35 percent for their industrial purposes. On the other hand, the use of oil palm for food materials is mostly met in India and Midle Eastern countries (USDA 2010a: Tabelle 24-28).
More than half of the world’s import activities are brought in to countries like China, India, European Union, and Pakistan. Cina and India import the oil palm at 6.3 million tons and 7.6 million tons each (2010/2011), the number trancends to what 27 EU countries’ which only import 5.4 million tons. That number seems to have been increasing every year.
2. The Impact of Oil Palm Expansion to the Environment and Social
Degradation of the Tropical Forests
Indonesia constitutes the third largest country in the world producing gas emision which has threatened the earth climate. 85 percent of gas emisions are caused by the increasingly land use proved by on a large number of deforestations and the demolished peat land (Greenpeace 2010a: 1). Beside it, the various plants and animals are gradually perishing since they are not able to survive in a mono-cultural environment met in oil palm plantation.
According to the assesment made by World Bank, there are 70 percent of oil palm plantations developed in the forest areas, approximately 4.2 million hectares, and 25 percent in the peat land (World Bank 2010: 14). There are only one-third of existing corporations using barren soil or lands previously planted with other plants (UNEP 2009: 65). In the recent years, the total use of peat land for plantation purposes is just on increase in to at least 33 percent, in Riau and Sumatera even reach to 80 percent (Edwards/Mulligan/Marelli 2010: 141).
However, Indonesian government may have considered to enlarge the plantation until to 24 million hectares.
Food Competition
Oil palm, if phisically compared to some other plants like rice, soybean, maize, timber and livestock, is breeding very well (World Bank 2010b: 8). The increasingly oil palm use for alternative energy, so called biofuel, needs massively the expansion of plantation by doing land conversion from forest to plantation. The increase of food price, both in national and local levels, is one of many impacts of plantation expansion in order to fulfil the needs of oil palm for industrial purposes, energy and so on. That increase affects poor people not be able to afford their daily foods.
Human Rights Violation
Oil palm industrialization is considered as a new production sector that the very local community does never get advantage from the production process. The local people’s lands are rented with a very low paid, sub-standard. To convince the local or traditional communities is sophisticatedly done by the corporations which those communities are convinced with the given promises to establish educational infrastructures, electricity, new standard house, etc. But the promises are left behind. Many local residents do not understand what they have signed in and even the risk of filling out their signatures on the letter. They can not demand their rights in this regard because many company’s owners have had a good relationships or bargaining position with the political elites and local government.
The subsequent emerging conflict is the highly increases of migrants that affected by the intensively huge expansion of oil palm plantations. According to World Bank that 1000 hectares lands need 350 workers at least (World Bank 2010:28). Papua province today is inhabited with 2.9 million people. So, if the oil palm plantation there developed on 5 million hectares then it needs 1.75 million workers that must be carried out from other islands in Indonesia. It may immediately affect to the worse conflicts which the tensions between migrants and indigeneous people have been existing (EIA/Telepak 2009: 7-8).
There are approximately 3 million people in Indonesia working at the oil palm plantation areas (Teoh 2010:9). Beside working permanently, many of them also being hired as a casual workers who are only employed when the corporations have the work targets for being fulfilled. Many of them have still been facing the very bad circumstances as they are not properly paid, they are not provided with the health insurances, social security, safety work guarrantee, etc. in particular for those woman workers (Mardi 2008: 76-84).
3. The History of Struggle
GAPKI’s celebration of the palm oil sector’s economic success obscures the reality of social conflict that has characterised the plantation industry. Super profits for the companies involved are based on the appropriation of land from small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples, and on the exploitation of a labour force that becomes trapped in a cycle of poverty. Again and again indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers have resisted attempts to grab their land for commercial monocultures, and the coolies brought in to work the plantations have organised against exploitation, for a living wage and for workers rights.
Historically, the workers movement in North Sumatra played a key role in the struggle for independence, and the wave of occupations and reappropriation of land after independence was one of the most inspiring moments of the struggle of the Indonesian people (Stoler 1995). In our alternative event, we will celebrate this tradition and its relevance for the ongoing struggle for land rights, and for environmental and social justice today.
4. Purposes
This conference will be organised as a forum where the general public, media, policy makers, consumers, business can have opportunity to involve:
• to view a complete picture of the production of palm oil
• to raise awareness about the links between oil palm with issues on deforestation, climate change, food sovereignty
• to exchange and debate the alternatives and solutions
• to declare our critical views and ideas against the existence of oil palm corporations
5. Activities
• Series of Workshops and public debates (issues on land issues, forest, climate change, labour, etc.)
• Talkshow and press conference
• Happening art and exhibition
• Film screening
6. Sessions
6.1. Opening Session
Theme:
“Crime and Human Rights Violations which involve the Oil Palm Corporations: the Weakness of framework of law accountability and its effect toward the victims’ rights”
Background
The emergence and the increasingly roles and strongly power of corporation in the public lives currently have influenced the most sides of society. Corporation may be playing its fundamental role in providing the large opportunities to employment sector which absorb many work forces. But on the other hand, corporation can be a serious threat to the fulfilment and protection of human rights. Some various initiatives have been made in order to demand corporations complying the values and standard of human rights according to mechanism of internal accountability and the very market system. Some other initiatives also can be made through creating a regulation which is legally unbinding, however, it persuasively may be used as a stimulation to enhance the production and operation standards better in order to respect the environemnt and surrounding communities better. For instance in the context of oil palm, RSPO (Rountable Sustainable Palm Oil) is a criterion for a respect.
Speakers:
• Human Rights Violation and Its Impact toward the Local Community: Study Case toward the corporation in Oil Palm Plantation – by Abednego Tarigan (Sawit Watch)
• Political Economy of Oil Palm Plantation in the Large Scale – by George Djunus Aditjondro
• The Human Rights Standards and Mechanism for accountability to Right Violations Involving Corporations of Oil Palm Plantation – by Ifdal Kasim (The Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission)
• Mechanism of accountability of Corporations’ Crime at the National Law System – by Prof.Moh. Yamin (Professor in Universitas Sumatera Utara)
6.2. Workshop Series (Paralel Sessions)
6.2.1. Paralel Session I: “Labour on Reality and the Marginalisation in the Oil Palm
Plantation Sector”
This session is highly expected to deliver explanations on the reality of social and economy condition of labour in the oil palm plantation seen from the Economic, Social and Cultural perspectives. This session will also outline the problems met mostly faced by low-paid labourers, unavailable safety and health assurance, and so on.
Speakers :
• Labour on Reality and the Marginalisation in Oil Palm Plantation Sector – Drs.Manginar Situmorang,MSi (Kelompok Pelita Sejahtera)
• The Expansion of Oil Palm Plantation based on perspective of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – Ms. Indriaswati DS,LLM (ELSAM)
• The Trans-National Struggle Against the Agrofuel Industry – Dr. Oliver Pye (Bonn University, Germany)
• The Implementation of ILO Conventions on the Oil Palm Production Process in Indonesia – Peter Van Rooij (Director of ILO Jakarta, Indonesia)
• The Implementation of Labour’s Rights Protection in the Oil Palm Industry – Muhaimin Iskandar (Work Force Minister of Republic of Indonesia)
6.2.2. Paralel Session II: “The Oil palm Plantation at the Large Scale and Climate Change”
This session will more deeply outline the liason between mono-cultural oil palm plantation and its effect to the climate change. This session also will review both issues in International and National levels, and the related national regulations.
Speakers :
• The Impact of High Explosion of the World’s Oil Palm Market – Longgena Ginting (UEM)
• The Implementation and Memoratorium of Oil Palm Expansion – Elfian (Greenomics)
• The Strategy to Mitigate Climate and the Forest Preservation – Teguh Surya (WALHI Eknas)
6.2.3. Paralel Session III: “Marginalisation Toward Women and Children in the Oil Palm Plantation Area“
This session will outline the situation and reality of women, included woman workers, and children working at the plantation area. Several case studies are going to be presented in the discussion of those issues based on Human Rights perspectives.
Speakers:
• Women and Children in the Oil Palm Industry – Ms. Zubaidah (Wahana Peduli Perempuan Jambi)
• The National Law Frame on the Protection toward Women and Children in the Oil Palm Industry – Ms. Yuniyanti Chuzaifah (The Chairman of National Commission for Women)
• Testimonies: Women and Children as the victims of the exploiting Oil Palm Industry – Inong and Dewi Arios (Peasant and Plantation Labourer)
• The Exploitation Against Women and Children in the Oil Palm Industry – Leli Zaelani (HAPSARI)
6.2.4. Paralel Session IV: “The Rapid Damage of Forests and the Expansion of Oil Palm Plantation”
The high demands toward oil palm have stimulated to the larger expansion of plantation in Indonesia. This expansion not only emerges at forest areas or fead lands, but also are in some areas where the traditional lands, which normally owned by the local people, have been converted for supplying those demands. Natural ecosistems have been devastatingly distorted which marked by many unwittingly natural disasters. The business’ interests oftenly victimise the very local people surrounding the plantation areas.
Speakers:
• Implemantation of national commitment on encountering climate change to assure the forest naturality – Gusti Muhammad Hatta, Minister of Living Environment.
• The Real Portrait of devastated forests and the Expansion of Oil Palm Plantation in North Sumatera – Syahrul Isman Sagala (WALHI SUMUT)
• Reflection against International Campaign toward Oil Palm in Indonesia – Nurhidayati (Greenpeace Indonesia)
6.2.5. Paralel Session V:“Food Crisis as an effect of the Expansion of Oil Palm Plantation”
The expansion has been known about to have negatively affected on the issue of food security. The land conversions for plantation aims tend vulnerably to have influenced the availability of basic foods of the very society. Though the government seemingly can not overcome the rooted problems met in lives of society. The ruling instantions even oftenly manipulate data of the number of lands used for agriculture and the production itself, this is done in order to hide what reality is.
Speakers:
• Food Security Versus the Expansion of Oil Palm Plantation – Ir. Sukirman (The Vice Head of Serdang Bedagai District)
• The Threat of Expansion toward Food Sovereignity – Witoro (Koalisi Beras Indonesia or Rice Coallition Indonesia)
• Peasant Movement on Food Crisis – Henry Saragih (SPI)
• Strategy of Food Security in Indonesia – Ir. Effendi Lubis,MMA (Kepala Badan Ketahanan Pangan Sumatera Utara or the Head of Food Security Board in North Sumatera)
6.2.6. Closing Meeting
This meeting will be intended to deliver the main outputs resulted from all activities of conference. This meeting will also be intended to deliver the joint declaration, public statement and follow up which will be incorporated in our together platform.
Contact Peoples:
• Gindo Nadapdap – Executive Director of Kelompok Pelita, Chairperson of Steering Committee, email: gnadapdap@gmail.com
• Saurlin Siagian – BAKUMSU, Chairperson of Executive Committee, email: Saurlin@gmail.com
• Longgena Ginting-Steering Committee Member, email: Longgenaginting@gmail.com
6.2.7. Book Reviews “The National Conferention of A Century of Crime in Oil Palm Plantation”
Book Reviews reflect the recent plantation activities in which the enactment of regulation on Plantation Law, it can not be interpretated at the present, enacted once during the colonial Dutch. These book reviews are aimed to sharing and reflection toward the real circumstances addressed on the issues of oil palm plantation in order to find what actions should be directed by looking back at those real circumstances and the historical journey of plantation in Indonesia.
Books are going to be reviewed:
• “Menjinakkan Sang Koeli” - Jan Bremen
• “Kapitalisme dan Konfrontasi di Sabuk Perkebunan Sumatera 1870-1979” - Aan Laura Stoler
• “Koeli Kontrak Tempo Doeloe, dengan derita dan kemarahannya” - H. Muhammad Said
• “Sengketa Agraria, pengusaha perkebunan melawan petani” - Karl J. Pelzer
• “Toean Keboen dan Petani, Politik Kolonial dan Perjuangan Agraria” - Karl J. Perlzer
6.2.8. Film Screening
Film Titles:
• Lost in Palm Oil (Friends of the Earth International)
• Lakukan Sekarang Juga (Dewan Nasional Perubahan Iklim)
• BHL (KPS)
• Buruh perempuan di perkebunan (KPS)
• Dampak Kehadiran Perkebunan di Sumatera Utara (KPS)
• Film oleh Sawit Watch
• Rusaknya hutan dan kegagalan sawit rakyat (WABPIS)
8. Budget
All Organisations supporting this Conference will together be initiatively responsible for all the Conference’s expenses, and from the external sources which are not binding. The detail of Conference’s budget may be looked at the attachment page.
9. Organisers
All activities of this conference are organised by an Indonesia NGOs Forum, a forum comprising of NGOs working on the issues around Oil Palm Plantation, namely Lentera, KPS, Bakumsu, Elsam, Bitra, Walhi-SU, Sahdar, Sawit Watch, KOTIB, Elsaka, Hapsari, Kontras, Petra, PBHI, LBH Medan, KSPPM, KPA, SPKS, BPRPI, Sintesa, SPI (La Via Campesina Indonesia), Jala, Gemawan Kalbar, Walhi Kaltim, Setara Jambi, JKMA Aceh, Jikalahari Riau,YPMP, Formatsu, WABPIS, FOKKER LSM Papua.
Board Members:
9.1. Steering Committee (SC)
Coordinator: Gindo Nadapdap (KPS),
Members: Diapari (Lentera); Benget (Bakumsu); Indri Sapta Ningrum (Elsam); Ranto Sibarani (KOTIB); Wahyudi (Bitra); Syahrul Sagala (Walhi SU), Reza (Sahdar); Abednego (Sawit Watch); Bekmi (Elsaka), Leli Zailani (Hapsari); Diah Susilowati (Kontras); Monang Ringo (Petra); Petrus (PBHI); Nuriono (LBH Medan); Dimpos Manalu (KSPPM-KPA); Maruli Sitorus (SPKS); Idham Arsyad (KPA); Asep (Huma); Harun Nuh (BPRPI); Sofian (Sintesa); Hendrik Saragih (La Via Campesina); Wagimin (SPI); Noor Aida (Jala); Lely Khainur (Gemawan – KALBAR); Isal Wardana (WALHI – KALTIM); Rukiah (SETARA Jambi); Budi Arianto (JKMA – Aceh); Susanto (JIKALAHARI – Riau); Sefter Manufandu (Fokker – LSM Papua); Edi Suryanto Purba (YPMP); Maruli Marpaung (Formatsu); M.H Roem (WABPIS); Saurlin Siagian (Ex-Officio)
9.2. Organiser Committee (OC)
Coordinator: Saurlin (Bakumsu – Coordinator ),
Fernando Sihotang (KPS - Vice Coordinator),
Kartika Manurung (KPS – Secretary)
Wahyu Wagiman (Elsam), Lina (Bitra); Dana Tarigan (Jala);
Desk Workshop: Swaldi, Tumpak (Barsdem).
Desk Media and PR: Longgena Ginting
Finance: Victoria dan Fitri
Desk Workshop: Arif Faisal (Sahdar)
Secretariat: Kiki (KPS-Koordinator), Zidane, Juni (Bakumsu), Rhani (Lentera)
Dokumentation: Icen, Yanto, Dayat
10. Secretariat Office
10.1 Kelompok Pelita Sejahtera (KPS)
Jalan Cempaka I No. 20, Kompleks Perumahan Pemda Tk.I Tanjung Sari
Medan 20132, Sumatera Utara
Telepon: +6261 8234300, Email: pokja.sawit@gmail.com
10.2 Wahana Lingkungan Hidup (Walhi) Sumatera Utara
Jalan Sei Serapuh No. 20, Medan Baru
Telepon/Fax : (061) 4579002, Email: walhisu@indosat.net.id
10.3 Contact Persons
• Gindo Nadapdap – Executive Director of Kelompok Pelita Sejahtera and the Coordinator of Steering Committee of A Century
• Saurlin Siagian – Coordinator of Organising Committee
10.4 Bank Account
Account holders : Gindo Nadapdap,SH and Saurlin Siagian
Bank Name : BCA KCP Setiabudi
Account Number : 8205067121
INDONESIAN NGOs FORUM
ALTERNATIVE CONFERENCE AGAINST CELEBRATION OF A CENTURY OF OIL PALM IN INDONESIA
Senin, 14 Maret 2011
Senin, 24 Januari 2011
Unsustainable Palm Oil and the RSPO
Unsustainable Palm Oil and the RSPO
The Orangutan Outreach Point of View
We at Orangutan Outreach feel compelled to write this position paper
because of the recent sudden and dramatic shift by many groups and
institutions that call themselves “environmental” towards accepting oil
palms and palm oil as somehow being okay as long as it has been
certified by the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil).
We tend to differ. Certification is simply not the Panacea many believe
it to be. Not in countries where corruption is still so prevalent. Oil
Palms are in no way the great solution that they are presented to be by
skillful lobbyists. So what’s wrong? Allow us to explain.
Productivity
Oil Palms are considered the highest producing crop for biodiesel in the
world, but there are far better alternatives such as the sugar palm, an
entirely different type of palm that does not require huge amounts of
fertilizer to achieve a much higher productivity. Unlike oil palms,
sugar palms also do not require herbicides and pesticides, some of which
have been outlawed in the West and have the potential to make soil water
undrinkable for centuries, yet continue to be used freely in Indonesia.
Experts may say that there is a difference between sugar and sugar based
ethanol that is derived from the sugar palms, and the lipids derived
from the oil palm that are used to produce biofuel along with all the
products that fill supermarket shelves. But there are now new
technologies, such as those pioneered by various companies such as
Martek, which use microbial fermentation to go from sugar to lipids (C6
to C18). From there one can easily go to biodiesel, jet fuel or many
different kinds of lipid-based products for food, cosmetics, etc.
Oil Palms may produce a lot, but sugar palms-- even without
fertilization and in a mixed forest-- still outperform oil palms not
just by small percentages, but by a factor of at least twice the
productivity.
There are also other trees, like the local Southeast Asian Illipe nut
trees (several species of Shorea in the family of the Dipterocarpaceae)
that can also produce high quality fats and oils while growing in
natural forests or traditional mixed village forests in Kalimantan
(Indonesian Borneo). Those oils used to be the main source for the local
people that now have to buy increasingly expensive palm oil based
cooking oil.
Biodiversity
Some interesting publications have been brought out by groups associated
with the oil palm lobby indicating that there may be as many as 200
different organisms per hectare living in oil palm plantations, and that
oil palm plantations should, amongst others for that reason, be regarded
as forests and receive the financial forestry related incentives that
are presently under negotiation, such as carbon credits, REDD based
credits, etc. A casual observer from the temperate zones, where nature
is low in biodiversity, and who is accustomed to crop and forest
monocultures and impoverished ecosystems, may think that the people
making this claim have a point… but this is not the case. It is an
illusion.
One has to look at the baseline to make an accurate judgment. In other
words, they need to ask themselves: What was there before and what is
there after replacement with oil palms?
Not much unfortunately-- not only in terms of number of species, but
even less so in terms of what those species actually are. They are
almost the same everywhere and are for the most part common weed
species. In practice this means that oil palm plantations are indeed
monocultures that, because of their heavy fertilization and use of
herbicides and pesticides, are in actuality destroying the natural
biodiversity.
The situation is further complicated by illegal hunting and killing of
animals such as orangutans and wild boar that not only may damage or
destroy individual oil palms and then are killed contributing to loss of
animal biodiversity. But they also contribute significantly to the
dispersal and germination of seeds of other forest plant species and
maintain the species diversity in the forests they roam, and from where
they are lost.
Oil Palm biodiversity mostly consists of a relatively small number of
associated weed species such as the ferns and liana’s seen here that
vary hardly with different locations. To claim this as biodiversity in
comparison with the original vegetation is twisting the facts.
Long term soil fertility
Oil palms need the undulating low-lying lands that are of relatively
good quality, at least physically, in order to prosper. But in order to
achieve a good productivity, an average of 1,760 kilograms of fertilizer
is applied per hectare every year! Much of this is nitrogen fertilizer
that is made from natural gas, a fossil fuel, which is already a scarce
commodity. After approximately 20-25 years the oil palms are no longer
productive and for many more years no new oil palms can be planted in
the same location so that the soil can recover.
The basic issue here is that with the palm oil bunches many macro- and
micronutrients are removed from the soil. Macronutrients, although not
environmentally friendly, can for the major part be replaced, but
micronutrients are much more complicated to restore. Imbalances in their
supply can cause serious long-term side effects that will increase the
risk of diseases and instability. In the future there will be fertilizer
shortfalls. For now the huge amounts of these nutrients being flushed
out of the oil palm plantations into river systems affect not only local
ecosystems, but they also disturb downstream ecosystems, including coral
reefs in the sea.
Food security
Cooking oil is very important for local people. For many years they made
the oil themselves from the Illipe nuts or from coconuts or other local
sources. Now they depend upon the commercially produced palm oil, and
with prices of palm oil rising globally, local people have to pay hugely
more for their local cooking oil-- directly impacting their income. This
has already led to large-scale protests in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Orangutans and other wildlife entering oil palm plantations— desperate
and starving— are viewed as pests and are killed because they eat the
oil palm fruits and shoots. But there are also several places where
humans have had to force themselves to eating the fruits. Try it
yourself! It is initially good tasting, but then the dry mouth begins
and your throat starts hurting and your breathing becomes difficult from
the astringent aftertaste. Still, orangutans and humans too often have
no other choice but to eat these undesirable fruits lest they and their
families are to starve. For orangutans to be killed and local people
prosecuted for such behavior cannot and should be tolerated. So palm oil
is not just taking away land for food production, but it also has a
direct effect on the local cost of living.
Transport of oil palm bunches to the mill. On the right many poisoned
and diseased oil palms. The risk of pests and diseases becomes bigger
the longer the plantations are in place and more micro nutrients are
removed from the soil.
Pollution
Oil palm processing causes huge amounts of stinking effluents that
pollute the local waters. Now much of these pollutants can be dealt with
in practice, for instance through biodigestors, but it will still take a
long time before this will be common practice. The use of long lasting
pesticides, some of them outlawed in the West because of their long term
poisonous effects, is still very prevalent in oil palm plantations.
Again, regulations and strict law enforcement could change this, but
this will not happen very quickly. In countries like Indonesia where law
enforcement for environmental crimes is extremely weak to say the least,
we cannot realistically expect that things will change for the better
any time soon. In addition rodenticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc.
are used with numerous serious impacts upon the natural condition. The
reality on oil palm plantations is horrific. Orangutans that have been
slaughtered by plantation staff are often cut in pieces and the meat
poisoned with rat poison, such as arsenic, spread amongst the palms to
efficiently bait and kill wild boar again. All of these effluents also
reach rivers that local people use to bathe, get drinking water from,
and that flow to the coastal regions where the coastal ecosystems are
also impacted.
Helping local people?
This is one of the main arguments brought up by the oil palm supporters,
but a closer inspection of the issue reveals quite a different picture.
Oil palm plantations only generate around 0.11 jobs per hectare, which,
like sugar cane, is extremely low and in the latter case even only
seasonal. Moreover the jobs created for local people are the lowest paid
only and often involve the heavy and more dangerous work such as land
clearing with chainsaws without the use of any protection as well as
working with pesticides. Most of the time the people have had to give up
their land rights in order to get those few jobs and there are numerous
widely publicized reports of abuse of local people’s rights by oil palm
companies. Still, if one looks at some of the surveys it is possible to
find many places where people actually state that they are happy with
the oil palm development because of the jobs, despite the low incomes.
There are also some basic facilities for local people that the companies
sometimes bring to the region, such as schools, mosques and small
clinics. But how long will it last?
Technology has already begun to move in, and tools have already been
developed to mechanize harvesting of the oil palm fruit bunches. And is
it really possible that when mechanization makes the profit for the
companies even higher that they will prefer to keep the jobs of the
local people at a slightly higher expense? Competition and ruthless
business principles will ensure that as quickly as possible those few
poor jobs will be lost for the sake of “efficiency” and sound “business
principles”. And what will those people do then, when they have lost
their recently acquired somewhat higher income and just got used to a
slightly better life including often the buying of motor bikes on
credit? Naturally they will do the only thing left—they will return to
low input slash-and-burn agriculture. This will quickly lead to the
destruction of the remaining forests. And this may make it even easier
for the oil palm companies to obtain more freshly created “critical”
land for their aggressive expansion when those lands that were once
locked up in the tropical forest vegetation have lost their fertility.
We are looking at a vicious cycle.
Carbon
Many countries have set standards for mixing fossil fuels with biofuels.
By now there are many schemes in place that promote biofuels and we
already have vast areas of biofuel producing crops such as oil palms,
sugar cane, corn and others. But those biofuels that are actually
intended to reduce the use of fossil fuels and as such to contribute to
lessening the impact of carbon emissions upon the global climate, are in
fact not environmentally friendly. Especially when we look at the oil
palms and carbon issues on Borneo we see a very disturbing situation.
About half the oil palm plantations are established on land that is not
the most suitable (SarVision Indonesia, WWF Netherlands commissioned
report). And much of the oil palm plantations have replaced forest that
held great amounts of carbon stored in the vegetation. But especially
worrisome is the planting of oil palms on peat. After planting oil palms
on thick layers of peat, up to 12 cm a year of peat literally vanish
into thin air in the form of CO2 and methane emissions due to the
opening up of the forest and the application of fertilizers and the
disturbance of the hydrology. With a density of 11% organic material of
which 50% consists of C that releases 3.67 times the amount of CO2, that
12 cm represents an emission of 220 tons of CO2 per hectare per year!
This is to say that even relatively small percentages of oil palms on
peat, the last vestiges of the orangutans’ habitat, in fact make the
total effect of palm oil for biofuels a net carbon emitter.
In addition the conversion of peat swamp forests causes serious
downstream problems for local people, increasing the flooding frequency
and severity and reducing the buffering of water during the dry period
because of the lost sponge function of the peat swamps. This has a
measurable impact on the downstream agricultural productivity and
welfare of the local people. Opening up of the peat swamps for oil palms
also increases fire risks and these huge fires cause great amounts of
smoke that have an impact as far away as the ice caps and glaciers. They
also cause health problems and lead to immense economic losses
regionally. The deposition of the brown smog from these peat fires
contribute much to the deposition of the darker particles on snow and
ice, leading to increased melting with all the known negative
consequences.
RSPO
Having been involved in the first three years of the RSPO, the results
until now have been extremely disappointing. More and more studies are
done, more concepts presented to committees, but the real issue at hand
is not the standard, it is law enforcement. Satellite images can look
back many years in time and every big company can afford to check out
whether the plantations providing their so called CPO (Crude Palm Oil)
were established on land that was cleared for the purpose of planting
oil palm or not. There are already simple navigation and tracking
devices such as those used globally by UPS and by Zoll Kollekt in
Germany that enable one to track transports of trucks with extremely
high accuracy and relate them to what is happening on the ground in the
form of land use change as seen from satellite images. We at Orangutan
Outreach feel that too little is done to bring such systems into
practice—despite the relatively low cost. The issue, then, is not that
we do not have the technology. Rather, it is very much like that with
the climate debates in general: there is simply no political will to
implement and commit. So why wait again till 2015?
Some people argue that we need time to educate the local companies on
what is right. But take the case of the orangutans; they have been
protected with the highest possible conservation status in Indonesia
since the Wildordonnantie of 1924. The issue is not one that we need to
teach oil palm plantation workers the best practices to deal with
orangutans when there is really no safe place left for them to go
anyway. The issue is that we need law enforcement. Nothing teaches
better as feeling the economic impact of trespassing laws. And saying
that local people do not know that orangutans are legally protected is
simply not true. Only in some very remote villages, far away from oil
palm plantations, there might be people who may not know yet. We find
that anyone we talk to has heard of orangutans and knows that it is not
allowed to keep them as pets. But as long as high officials or members
of the army and police can get away with trespassing these conservation
laws local people will not feel enticed to take the issue of keeping
illegal wildlife very serious.
The Indonesian and Malaysian governments are avid supporters of the
RSPO. In fact, special funds have even been set up to counter the
so-called “misinformation spread by NGOs that do not understand the
issues”. Skillfully made documentaries were produced by both the palm
oil lobby and many corporate-supported NGOs. In Indonesia it was even
announced with great fanfare that all the orangutan rehabilitation
centers will be closed by 2015, which also happens to be the year by
which most international companies, of those that have agreed to
sustainable palm oil, promise to achieve this goal of only sourcing from
sustainably produced palm oil. At the same time there are efforts from
the government to make it harder for orangutans to be rescued and
released, while law enforcement is the only tool that can save them.
There are also efforts on the part of the governments of Indonesia and
Malaysia to stop the making of international documentaries about oil
palms and orangutans.
So the tools, technologically as well as judicial, are here now to take
action, but it is simply not being done. Additional rules and
regulations can be legislated—and broken. The present depressing state
of the orangutan forests is evidence of the failure to take action in
the field where it is most desperately needed. Every month new orangutan
victims coming from palm oil plantations are rescued, so the problem is
factual and real and needs to be dealt with now. By 2015, the year in
which many companies are claiming they will meet their target for
complying with the RSPO guidelines, it will already be too late for many
more orangutans and the ecosystems they inhabit. We need to act NOW--
not in 2015-- and the technology is there to achieve success!
Conclusion
Even with many improvements in the present day unsustainable practices
of the oil palm sector, the long term sustainability of oil palms is
fundamentally fraught with incompatibilities. Ecologically, socially and
climate wise it simply does not make sense to promote oil palms the way
it is being done now. When NGOs who are claiming to rescue orangutans
and support orangutan conservation in the field choose to side with the
RSPO, they are creating a false sense of belief that by doing so they
are somehow helping the orangutans. This is simply not the case. It is
completely contrary to the truth. Orangutans need our help NOW, and
anything that detracts from this immediate need cannot be positive for
orangutans. To this effect, scientifically unschooled people going
around trying to convince zookeepers-- those individuals in daily
contact with the member of the larger public who are interested in
orangutan conservation and environmental protection-- to support the
RSPO are not doing the orangutans a favor. They are in fact betraying
them. The pressure needs to be kept up to force those in charge and the
RSPO to take the lawful actions needed. There is no time to sit back and
let our efforts slow down to save our majestic and altruistic
orangutans. We are their last hope…
Orangutan Outreach
JANUARY 2011
The Orangutan Outreach Point of View
We at Orangutan Outreach feel compelled to write this position paper
because of the recent sudden and dramatic shift by many groups and
institutions that call themselves “environmental” towards accepting oil
palms and palm oil as somehow being okay as long as it has been
certified by the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil).
We tend to differ. Certification is simply not the Panacea many believe
it to be. Not in countries where corruption is still so prevalent. Oil
Palms are in no way the great solution that they are presented to be by
skillful lobbyists. So what’s wrong? Allow us to explain.
Productivity
Oil Palms are considered the highest producing crop for biodiesel in the
world, but there are far better alternatives such as the sugar palm, an
entirely different type of palm that does not require huge amounts of
fertilizer to achieve a much higher productivity. Unlike oil palms,
sugar palms also do not require herbicides and pesticides, some of which
have been outlawed in the West and have the potential to make soil water
undrinkable for centuries, yet continue to be used freely in Indonesia.
Experts may say that there is a difference between sugar and sugar based
ethanol that is derived from the sugar palms, and the lipids derived
from the oil palm that are used to produce biofuel along with all the
products that fill supermarket shelves. But there are now new
technologies, such as those pioneered by various companies such as
Martek, which use microbial fermentation to go from sugar to lipids (C6
to C18). From there one can easily go to biodiesel, jet fuel or many
different kinds of lipid-based products for food, cosmetics, etc.
Oil Palms may produce a lot, but sugar palms-- even without
fertilization and in a mixed forest-- still outperform oil palms not
just by small percentages, but by a factor of at least twice the
productivity.
There are also other trees, like the local Southeast Asian Illipe nut
trees (several species of Shorea in the family of the Dipterocarpaceae)
that can also produce high quality fats and oils while growing in
natural forests or traditional mixed village forests in Kalimantan
(Indonesian Borneo). Those oils used to be the main source for the local
people that now have to buy increasingly expensive palm oil based
cooking oil.
Biodiversity
Some interesting publications have been brought out by groups associated
with the oil palm lobby indicating that there may be as many as 200
different organisms per hectare living in oil palm plantations, and that
oil palm plantations should, amongst others for that reason, be regarded
as forests and receive the financial forestry related incentives that
are presently under negotiation, such as carbon credits, REDD based
credits, etc. A casual observer from the temperate zones, where nature
is low in biodiversity, and who is accustomed to crop and forest
monocultures and impoverished ecosystems, may think that the people
making this claim have a point… but this is not the case. It is an
illusion.
One has to look at the baseline to make an accurate judgment. In other
words, they need to ask themselves: What was there before and what is
there after replacement with oil palms?
Not much unfortunately-- not only in terms of number of species, but
even less so in terms of what those species actually are. They are
almost the same everywhere and are for the most part common weed
species. In practice this means that oil palm plantations are indeed
monocultures that, because of their heavy fertilization and use of
herbicides and pesticides, are in actuality destroying the natural
biodiversity.
The situation is further complicated by illegal hunting and killing of
animals such as orangutans and wild boar that not only may damage or
destroy individual oil palms and then are killed contributing to loss of
animal biodiversity. But they also contribute significantly to the
dispersal and germination of seeds of other forest plant species and
maintain the species diversity in the forests they roam, and from where
they are lost.
Oil Palm biodiversity mostly consists of a relatively small number of
associated weed species such as the ferns and liana’s seen here that
vary hardly with different locations. To claim this as biodiversity in
comparison with the original vegetation is twisting the facts.
Long term soil fertility
Oil palms need the undulating low-lying lands that are of relatively
good quality, at least physically, in order to prosper. But in order to
achieve a good productivity, an average of 1,760 kilograms of fertilizer
is applied per hectare every year! Much of this is nitrogen fertilizer
that is made from natural gas, a fossil fuel, which is already a scarce
commodity. After approximately 20-25 years the oil palms are no longer
productive and for many more years no new oil palms can be planted in
the same location so that the soil can recover.
The basic issue here is that with the palm oil bunches many macro- and
micronutrients are removed from the soil. Macronutrients, although not
environmentally friendly, can for the major part be replaced, but
micronutrients are much more complicated to restore. Imbalances in their
supply can cause serious long-term side effects that will increase the
risk of diseases and instability. In the future there will be fertilizer
shortfalls. For now the huge amounts of these nutrients being flushed
out of the oil palm plantations into river systems affect not only local
ecosystems, but they also disturb downstream ecosystems, including coral
reefs in the sea.
Food security
Cooking oil is very important for local people. For many years they made
the oil themselves from the Illipe nuts or from coconuts or other local
sources. Now they depend upon the commercially produced palm oil, and
with prices of palm oil rising globally, local people have to pay hugely
more for their local cooking oil-- directly impacting their income. This
has already led to large-scale protests in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Orangutans and other wildlife entering oil palm plantations— desperate
and starving— are viewed as pests and are killed because they eat the
oil palm fruits and shoots. But there are also several places where
humans have had to force themselves to eating the fruits. Try it
yourself! It is initially good tasting, but then the dry mouth begins
and your throat starts hurting and your breathing becomes difficult from
the astringent aftertaste. Still, orangutans and humans too often have
no other choice but to eat these undesirable fruits lest they and their
families are to starve. For orangutans to be killed and local people
prosecuted for such behavior cannot and should be tolerated. So palm oil
is not just taking away land for food production, but it also has a
direct effect on the local cost of living.
Transport of oil palm bunches to the mill. On the right many poisoned
and diseased oil palms. The risk of pests and diseases becomes bigger
the longer the plantations are in place and more micro nutrients are
removed from the soil.
Pollution
Oil palm processing causes huge amounts of stinking effluents that
pollute the local waters. Now much of these pollutants can be dealt with
in practice, for instance through biodigestors, but it will still take a
long time before this will be common practice. The use of long lasting
pesticides, some of them outlawed in the West because of their long term
poisonous effects, is still very prevalent in oil palm plantations.
Again, regulations and strict law enforcement could change this, but
this will not happen very quickly. In countries like Indonesia where law
enforcement for environmental crimes is extremely weak to say the least,
we cannot realistically expect that things will change for the better
any time soon. In addition rodenticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc.
are used with numerous serious impacts upon the natural condition. The
reality on oil palm plantations is horrific. Orangutans that have been
slaughtered by plantation staff are often cut in pieces and the meat
poisoned with rat poison, such as arsenic, spread amongst the palms to
efficiently bait and kill wild boar again. All of these effluents also
reach rivers that local people use to bathe, get drinking water from,
and that flow to the coastal regions where the coastal ecosystems are
also impacted.
Helping local people?
This is one of the main arguments brought up by the oil palm supporters,
but a closer inspection of the issue reveals quite a different picture.
Oil palm plantations only generate around 0.11 jobs per hectare, which,
like sugar cane, is extremely low and in the latter case even only
seasonal. Moreover the jobs created for local people are the lowest paid
only and often involve the heavy and more dangerous work such as land
clearing with chainsaws without the use of any protection as well as
working with pesticides. Most of the time the people have had to give up
their land rights in order to get those few jobs and there are numerous
widely publicized reports of abuse of local people’s rights by oil palm
companies. Still, if one looks at some of the surveys it is possible to
find many places where people actually state that they are happy with
the oil palm development because of the jobs, despite the low incomes.
There are also some basic facilities for local people that the companies
sometimes bring to the region, such as schools, mosques and small
clinics. But how long will it last?
Technology has already begun to move in, and tools have already been
developed to mechanize harvesting of the oil palm fruit bunches. And is
it really possible that when mechanization makes the profit for the
companies even higher that they will prefer to keep the jobs of the
local people at a slightly higher expense? Competition and ruthless
business principles will ensure that as quickly as possible those few
poor jobs will be lost for the sake of “efficiency” and sound “business
principles”. And what will those people do then, when they have lost
their recently acquired somewhat higher income and just got used to a
slightly better life including often the buying of motor bikes on
credit? Naturally they will do the only thing left—they will return to
low input slash-and-burn agriculture. This will quickly lead to the
destruction of the remaining forests. And this may make it even easier
for the oil palm companies to obtain more freshly created “critical”
land for their aggressive expansion when those lands that were once
locked up in the tropical forest vegetation have lost their fertility.
We are looking at a vicious cycle.
Carbon
Many countries have set standards for mixing fossil fuels with biofuels.
By now there are many schemes in place that promote biofuels and we
already have vast areas of biofuel producing crops such as oil palms,
sugar cane, corn and others. But those biofuels that are actually
intended to reduce the use of fossil fuels and as such to contribute to
lessening the impact of carbon emissions upon the global climate, are in
fact not environmentally friendly. Especially when we look at the oil
palms and carbon issues on Borneo we see a very disturbing situation.
About half the oil palm plantations are established on land that is not
the most suitable (SarVision Indonesia, WWF Netherlands commissioned
report). And much of the oil palm plantations have replaced forest that
held great amounts of carbon stored in the vegetation. But especially
worrisome is the planting of oil palms on peat. After planting oil palms
on thick layers of peat, up to 12 cm a year of peat literally vanish
into thin air in the form of CO2 and methane emissions due to the
opening up of the forest and the application of fertilizers and the
disturbance of the hydrology. With a density of 11% organic material of
which 50% consists of C that releases 3.67 times the amount of CO2, that
12 cm represents an emission of 220 tons of CO2 per hectare per year!
This is to say that even relatively small percentages of oil palms on
peat, the last vestiges of the orangutans’ habitat, in fact make the
total effect of palm oil for biofuels a net carbon emitter.
In addition the conversion of peat swamp forests causes serious
downstream problems for local people, increasing the flooding frequency
and severity and reducing the buffering of water during the dry period
because of the lost sponge function of the peat swamps. This has a
measurable impact on the downstream agricultural productivity and
welfare of the local people. Opening up of the peat swamps for oil palms
also increases fire risks and these huge fires cause great amounts of
smoke that have an impact as far away as the ice caps and glaciers. They
also cause health problems and lead to immense economic losses
regionally. The deposition of the brown smog from these peat fires
contribute much to the deposition of the darker particles on snow and
ice, leading to increased melting with all the known negative
consequences.
RSPO
Having been involved in the first three years of the RSPO, the results
until now have been extremely disappointing. More and more studies are
done, more concepts presented to committees, but the real issue at hand
is not the standard, it is law enforcement. Satellite images can look
back many years in time and every big company can afford to check out
whether the plantations providing their so called CPO (Crude Palm Oil)
were established on land that was cleared for the purpose of planting
oil palm or not. There are already simple navigation and tracking
devices such as those used globally by UPS and by Zoll Kollekt in
Germany that enable one to track transports of trucks with extremely
high accuracy and relate them to what is happening on the ground in the
form of land use change as seen from satellite images. We at Orangutan
Outreach feel that too little is done to bring such systems into
practice—despite the relatively low cost. The issue, then, is not that
we do not have the technology. Rather, it is very much like that with
the climate debates in general: there is simply no political will to
implement and commit. So why wait again till 2015?
Some people argue that we need time to educate the local companies on
what is right. But take the case of the orangutans; they have been
protected with the highest possible conservation status in Indonesia
since the Wildordonnantie of 1924. The issue is not one that we need to
teach oil palm plantation workers the best practices to deal with
orangutans when there is really no safe place left for them to go
anyway. The issue is that we need law enforcement. Nothing teaches
better as feeling the economic impact of trespassing laws. And saying
that local people do not know that orangutans are legally protected is
simply not true. Only in some very remote villages, far away from oil
palm plantations, there might be people who may not know yet. We find
that anyone we talk to has heard of orangutans and knows that it is not
allowed to keep them as pets. But as long as high officials or members
of the army and police can get away with trespassing these conservation
laws local people will not feel enticed to take the issue of keeping
illegal wildlife very serious.
The Indonesian and Malaysian governments are avid supporters of the
RSPO. In fact, special funds have even been set up to counter the
so-called “misinformation spread by NGOs that do not understand the
issues”. Skillfully made documentaries were produced by both the palm
oil lobby and many corporate-supported NGOs. In Indonesia it was even
announced with great fanfare that all the orangutan rehabilitation
centers will be closed by 2015, which also happens to be the year by
which most international companies, of those that have agreed to
sustainable palm oil, promise to achieve this goal of only sourcing from
sustainably produced palm oil. At the same time there are efforts from
the government to make it harder for orangutans to be rescued and
released, while law enforcement is the only tool that can save them.
There are also efforts on the part of the governments of Indonesia and
Malaysia to stop the making of international documentaries about oil
palms and orangutans.
So the tools, technologically as well as judicial, are here now to take
action, but it is simply not being done. Additional rules and
regulations can be legislated—and broken. The present depressing state
of the orangutan forests is evidence of the failure to take action in
the field where it is most desperately needed. Every month new orangutan
victims coming from palm oil plantations are rescued, so the problem is
factual and real and needs to be dealt with now. By 2015, the year in
which many companies are claiming they will meet their target for
complying with the RSPO guidelines, it will already be too late for many
more orangutans and the ecosystems they inhabit. We need to act NOW--
not in 2015-- and the technology is there to achieve success!
Conclusion
Even with many improvements in the present day unsustainable practices
of the oil palm sector, the long term sustainability of oil palms is
fundamentally fraught with incompatibilities. Ecologically, socially and
climate wise it simply does not make sense to promote oil palms the way
it is being done now. When NGOs who are claiming to rescue orangutans
and support orangutan conservation in the field choose to side with the
RSPO, they are creating a false sense of belief that by doing so they
are somehow helping the orangutans. This is simply not the case. It is
completely contrary to the truth. Orangutans need our help NOW, and
anything that detracts from this immediate need cannot be positive for
orangutans. To this effect, scientifically unschooled people going
around trying to convince zookeepers-- those individuals in daily
contact with the member of the larger public who are interested in
orangutan conservation and environmental protection-- to support the
RSPO are not doing the orangutans a favor. They are in fact betraying
them. The pressure needs to be kept up to force those in charge and the
RSPO to take the lawful actions needed. There is no time to sit back and
let our efforts slow down to save our majestic and altruistic
orangutans. We are their last hope…
Orangutan Outreach
JANUARY 2011
Rabu, 07 Juli 2010
The moratorium and palm oil
More than five weeks since President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono committed
to a two-year moratorium on the conversion of primary forests and
peatlands into oil palm plantations, related ministries and palm oil
companies have remained confused about how the program will be
implemented.
True, the moratorium Yudhoyono agreed on with the Norwegian government
in Oslo late in May hit the roots of the problem that has prompted
international environmentalists to label Indonesia the world’s
third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Reckless and uncontrolled deforestation and peatlands conversion for oil
palm plantations have indeed been the primary cause of greenhouse gas
emissions in Indonesia, and the US$1 billion pledged by Norway in
compensation for the moratorium could do a lot of good things for this
country.
But the commitment seems to lack credibility in the absence of support
of palm oil companies, the party that will be affected directly by it.
Last week, the palm oil industry association reiterated its opposition
to the Indonesia-Norway agreement, complaining that it would have
adverse impacts on investment plans in oil palm development.
Confusion and apprehension have persisted even though Coordinating
Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa assured palm oil companies at an
international conference in Yogyakarta last month that the Oslo
agreement would not affect plantation investment projects that had
already been approved by government. But the lack of details made his
assurances less credible.
And to the contrary, the President seemed clear cut on how he would go
about implementing the moratorium. He even announced plans for a special
authority, modeled on the Aceh Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency,
to oversee its implementation by regional governments.
We reckon part of the problem has been caused by a lack of coordination
between policy makers. Even the ministries of forestry, agriculture and
the environment, which are directly related to the moratorium, seemed to
have been caught off-guard by the Oslo deal.
Indonesia, already the world’s largest producer of palm oil, with an
annual output of almost 20 million tons, plans to steadily expand its
oil palm plantations so as to double production within 10 years, and
investors have obtained licenses to immediately open an additional 2
million hectares of plantations.
The blunt fact, however, is that the President has made an international
commitment as part of Indonesia’s participation in the global campaign
to reduce carbon emissions and to fight climate change.
It is urgent and most imperative, therefore, that all related ministries
and regional administrations work together and coordinate to implement
the moratorium properly, not only to defend our credibility in the
international community. Preventing deforestation is primarily for our
own good because Indonesia, as the world’s largest archipelago country,
will be among the hardest hit by the devastating impacts of climate
change.
However, most important is that the President show strong leadership to
ensure that all sectors in government and the public take part in the
program.
We think the remaining six months before the Oslo agreement is due to
take effect are still adequate to make all necessary technical
preparations and formulated regulatory frameworks. After all, the
government is still finalizing regulations for the enforcement of the
2009 Environment Law.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/07/05/editorial-the-moratorium-and-palm-oil.html
to a two-year moratorium on the conversion of primary forests and
peatlands into oil palm plantations, related ministries and palm oil
companies have remained confused about how the program will be
implemented.
True, the moratorium Yudhoyono agreed on with the Norwegian government
in Oslo late in May hit the roots of the problem that has prompted
international environmentalists to label Indonesia the world’s
third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Reckless and uncontrolled deforestation and peatlands conversion for oil
palm plantations have indeed been the primary cause of greenhouse gas
emissions in Indonesia, and the US$1 billion pledged by Norway in
compensation for the moratorium could do a lot of good things for this
country.
But the commitment seems to lack credibility in the absence of support
of palm oil companies, the party that will be affected directly by it.
Last week, the palm oil industry association reiterated its opposition
to the Indonesia-Norway agreement, complaining that it would have
adverse impacts on investment plans in oil palm development.
Confusion and apprehension have persisted even though Coordinating
Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa assured palm oil companies at an
international conference in Yogyakarta last month that the Oslo
agreement would not affect plantation investment projects that had
already been approved by government. But the lack of details made his
assurances less credible.
And to the contrary, the President seemed clear cut on how he would go
about implementing the moratorium. He even announced plans for a special
authority, modeled on the Aceh Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency,
to oversee its implementation by regional governments.
We reckon part of the problem has been caused by a lack of coordination
between policy makers. Even the ministries of forestry, agriculture and
the environment, which are directly related to the moratorium, seemed to
have been caught off-guard by the Oslo deal.
Indonesia, already the world’s largest producer of palm oil, with an
annual output of almost 20 million tons, plans to steadily expand its
oil palm plantations so as to double production within 10 years, and
investors have obtained licenses to immediately open an additional 2
million hectares of plantations.
The blunt fact, however, is that the President has made an international
commitment as part of Indonesia’s participation in the global campaign
to reduce carbon emissions and to fight climate change.
It is urgent and most imperative, therefore, that all related ministries
and regional administrations work together and coordinate to implement
the moratorium properly, not only to defend our credibility in the
international community. Preventing deforestation is primarily for our
own good because Indonesia, as the world’s largest archipelago country,
will be among the hardest hit by the devastating impacts of climate
change.
However, most important is that the President show strong leadership to
ensure that all sectors in government and the public take part in the
program.
We think the remaining six months before the Oslo agreement is due to
take effect are still adequate to make all necessary technical
preparations and formulated regulatory frameworks. After all, the
government is still finalizing regulations for the enforcement of the
2009 Environment Law.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/07/05/editorial-the-moratorium-and-palm-oil.html
Minggu, 11 April 2010
Ekspansi 400 Hektare per Tahun Kebun Sawit Ancam Lingkungan Hidup
Antara/Kasriadi
JAKARTA--MI: Ekspansi sekitar 400 hektare per tahun untuk perkebunan kelapa
sawit di Indonesia dinilai dapat mengancam lingkungan hidup. Terlebih lagi,
kebun sawit di Indonesia yang luasnya mencapai 9 juta hektare sebagian besar
terdiri dari lahan produktif.
Hal tersebut disampaikan Head of Department Campaign and Public Education
Sawit Watch Jefri Gideon Saragih dalam acara jumpa pers dengan lembaga
swadaya masyarakat (LSM) Indonesia tentang perkebunan kelapa sawit
Indonesia, di Jakarta, Selasa (6/4).
"Ekspansi yang kita catat 400 ribu hektare per tahun dan sekarang mulai
makin banyak ke timur," katanya.
Sebaiknya, ekspansi perkebunan sawit di Indonesia bisa menggunakan 7,3 juta
hektare lahan terlantar yang diumumkan Badan Pertanahan Nasional beberapa
waktu lalu. Namun setelah diselidiki, Jefri mengungkapkan bahwa lahan
terlantar tersebut banyak dimiliki perusahaan-perusaha an yang sulit
melepaskan haknya. Maka perusahaan sawit tidak mau susah dengan memilih
lahan produktif yang tersedia.
Jefri menyarankan agar Indonesia lebih baik mengoptimalkan perkebunan sawit
yang sudah ada daripada memperluasnya lagi.
"Kenapa kita ngotot ekspansi? Malaysia saja yang luas kebunnya cuma 4,9 juta
hektare bisa menghasilkan 18 juta ton. Kita dengan 9 juta hektare hanya bisa
menghasilkan 21 juta ton," jelasnya.
Selain itu, ia khawatir dengan banyaknya penguasaan asing di perkebunan
sawit Indonesia. Jefri melihat Indonesia hanya sebagai penyedia tenaga kerja
dan lahan. "Masalahnya kita bangga dengan luas kebun kita, hasil produksi
tiap tahun kita, padahal sebenarnya itu bukan punya kita sendiri," ujarnya.
Tidak hanya lingkungan hidup, ekspansi perkebunan sawit juga meninggalkan
masalah lainnya, seperti konflik dengan masyarakat adat sekitar daerah
perkebunan sawit setempat.
Director of International Advocacy and Foreign Affairs Aliansi Masyarakat
Adat dan Nusantara (AMAN) Mina Susana Setra menilai ekspansi perkebunan
sawit yang dilakukan perusahaan produsen crude palm oil (CPO) tidak
menghormati kepemilikan tanah adat di daerah sekitarnya. "Tidak ada
pengakuan tanah yang dimiliki masyarakat adat," katanya.
Ditambah lagi, pemerintah tidak mengawasi tata ruang lingkungan sehingga
perusahaan CPO bisa seenaknya menggunakan lahan.
"Pemerintah tidak pernah menegur Taman Nasional Danau Sentarum dilepas jadi
perkebunan sawit. Perbatasan Kalbar (Kalimantan Barat-Malaysia) juga sudah
carut marut tata ruang dan pertahanan TNI-nya," cetus Mina.
Sementara itu, buruh perusahaan produsen CPO selama ini mendapat perlakuan
tidak adil. Mereka memperoleh skema upah rendah dan tidak memiliki kenaikan
gaji secara berkala.
Berdasarkan pengamatan Direktur Pengawasan dan Perlindungan Hak Buruh
Kelompok Pelita Sejahtera Medan, Gindo Nadapdap, buruh perusahaan produsen
CPO di Sumatra Utara hanya menerima upah Rp 8-15 ribu per hari. "Jumlah ini
jauh di bawah upah minimum provinsi yang seharusnya Rp 965 ribu per bulan,"
jelasnya. (*/OL-7)
http://www.mediaind onesia.com/ read/2010/ 04/06/134196/ 89/14/Ekspansi- 400-Hektare-per-Tahun- Kebun-Sawit- Ancam-Lingkungan -Hidup
JAKARTA--MI: Ekspansi sekitar 400 hektare per tahun untuk perkebunan kelapa
sawit di Indonesia dinilai dapat mengancam lingkungan hidup. Terlebih lagi,
kebun sawit di Indonesia yang luasnya mencapai 9 juta hektare sebagian besar
terdiri dari lahan produktif.
Hal tersebut disampaikan Head of Department Campaign and Public Education
Sawit Watch Jefri Gideon Saragih dalam acara jumpa pers dengan lembaga
swadaya masyarakat (LSM) Indonesia tentang perkebunan kelapa sawit
Indonesia, di Jakarta, Selasa (6/4).
"Ekspansi yang kita catat 400 ribu hektare per tahun dan sekarang mulai
makin banyak ke timur," katanya.
Sebaiknya, ekspansi perkebunan sawit di Indonesia bisa menggunakan 7,3 juta
hektare lahan terlantar yang diumumkan Badan Pertanahan Nasional beberapa
waktu lalu. Namun setelah diselidiki, Jefri mengungkapkan bahwa lahan
terlantar tersebut banyak dimiliki perusahaan-perusaha an yang sulit
melepaskan haknya. Maka perusahaan sawit tidak mau susah dengan memilih
lahan produktif yang tersedia.
Jefri menyarankan agar Indonesia lebih baik mengoptimalkan perkebunan sawit
yang sudah ada daripada memperluasnya lagi.
"Kenapa kita ngotot ekspansi? Malaysia saja yang luas kebunnya cuma 4,9 juta
hektare bisa menghasilkan 18 juta ton. Kita dengan 9 juta hektare hanya bisa
menghasilkan 21 juta ton," jelasnya.
Selain itu, ia khawatir dengan banyaknya penguasaan asing di perkebunan
sawit Indonesia. Jefri melihat Indonesia hanya sebagai penyedia tenaga kerja
dan lahan. "Masalahnya kita bangga dengan luas kebun kita, hasil produksi
tiap tahun kita, padahal sebenarnya itu bukan punya kita sendiri," ujarnya.
Tidak hanya lingkungan hidup, ekspansi perkebunan sawit juga meninggalkan
masalah lainnya, seperti konflik dengan masyarakat adat sekitar daerah
perkebunan sawit setempat.
Director of International Advocacy and Foreign Affairs Aliansi Masyarakat
Adat dan Nusantara (AMAN) Mina Susana Setra menilai ekspansi perkebunan
sawit yang dilakukan perusahaan produsen crude palm oil (CPO) tidak
menghormati kepemilikan tanah adat di daerah sekitarnya. "Tidak ada
pengakuan tanah yang dimiliki masyarakat adat," katanya.
Ditambah lagi, pemerintah tidak mengawasi tata ruang lingkungan sehingga
perusahaan CPO bisa seenaknya menggunakan lahan.
"Pemerintah tidak pernah menegur Taman Nasional Danau Sentarum dilepas jadi
perkebunan sawit. Perbatasan Kalbar (Kalimantan Barat-Malaysia) juga sudah
carut marut tata ruang dan pertahanan TNI-nya," cetus Mina.
Sementara itu, buruh perusahaan produsen CPO selama ini mendapat perlakuan
tidak adil. Mereka memperoleh skema upah rendah dan tidak memiliki kenaikan
gaji secara berkala.
Berdasarkan pengamatan Direktur Pengawasan dan Perlindungan Hak Buruh
Kelompok Pelita Sejahtera Medan, Gindo Nadapdap, buruh perusahaan produsen
CPO di Sumatra Utara hanya menerima upah Rp 8-15 ribu per hari. "Jumlah ini
jauh di bawah upah minimum provinsi yang seharusnya Rp 965 ribu per bulan,"
jelasnya. (*/OL-7)
http://www.mediaind onesia.com/ read/2010/ 04/06/134196/ 89/14/Ekspansi- 400-Hektare-per-Tahun- Kebun-Sawit- Ancam-Lingkungan -Hidup
Audit result on SMART due in June
Mustaqim Adamrah , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 04/08/2010 9:04 AM
| Business
Crude palm oil producer PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (SMART)
expects the verification work on allegations that it illegally destroyed
forests would be finished by the end of this June.
“We have delivered the terms of reference [for the verification] to the two
consulting firms … we still need to arrange some details,” SMART president
director Daud Dharsono told reporters on Wednesday following a meeting with
Trade Ministry officials and executives of the Netherlands- based consumer
goods producer Unilever.
“Therefore, we hope the verification will be completed within the next eight
to 12 weeks — by the end of June,” he added.
For the verification process, SMART has appointed two independent
consultants, Control Union Certification (CUC) of the Netherlands and the
British Standards Institute Group (BSI) through their representative offices
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in Singapore, respectively.
Results of the verification are expected, as SMART says, to help “clarify”
environmental issues raised by the environmental group Greenpeace.
In a 2008 Greenpeace report, the organization indicated that CPO producers
had converted peat lands, natural forests and habitats of Indonesia’s
indigenous orangutan into oil palm plantations. The report was later
supported by a field investigation and satellite data.
Greenpeace has since urged CPO buyers, such as Switzerland- based food
producer Nestlé, the Unilever group and the US-based company Cargill —
producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial
products and services — to stop buying CPO from producers disregarding
sustainable plantation practices required by the Roundtable on Sustainable
Palm Oil (RSPO) sponsored by producers and buyers.
After this report Unilever suspended in December last year all future
purchases of 47,000 tons of CPO per year worth approximately US$33 million
from SMART and decided two months later to no longer source palm oil from
Indonesian supplier Duta Palma.
Following the decision of Unilever, Nestle, which consumes 4,000 tons of CPO
a year, joined the move last month, deciding also to stop buying CPO from
SMART.
Local producers now fear other large international CPO buyers such as
Cargill, Loders Croklaan, Kraft and Shell could also terminate their
contracts with SMART.
Meanwhile, Unilever Indonesia corporate secretary Sancoyo Antarikso said
Unilever would wait for the results before deciding whether to resume
buying CPO from SMART.
Indonesia is the world’s largest CPO producer and exporter, with total
production reaching 20.2 million tons last year.
http://www.thejakar tapost.com/ news/2010/ 04/08/audit- result-smart- due-june. html
| Business
Crude palm oil producer PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (SMART)
expects the verification work on allegations that it illegally destroyed
forests would be finished by the end of this June.
“We have delivered the terms of reference [for the verification] to the two
consulting firms … we still need to arrange some details,” SMART president
director Daud Dharsono told reporters on Wednesday following a meeting with
Trade Ministry officials and executives of the Netherlands- based consumer
goods producer Unilever.
“Therefore, we hope the verification will be completed within the next eight
to 12 weeks — by the end of June,” he added.
For the verification process, SMART has appointed two independent
consultants, Control Union Certification (CUC) of the Netherlands and the
British Standards Institute Group (BSI) through their representative offices
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in Singapore, respectively.
Results of the verification are expected, as SMART says, to help “clarify”
environmental issues raised by the environmental group Greenpeace.
In a 2008 Greenpeace report, the organization indicated that CPO producers
had converted peat lands, natural forests and habitats of Indonesia’s
indigenous orangutan into oil palm plantations. The report was later
supported by a field investigation and satellite data.
Greenpeace has since urged CPO buyers, such as Switzerland- based food
producer Nestlé, the Unilever group and the US-based company Cargill —
producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial
products and services — to stop buying CPO from producers disregarding
sustainable plantation practices required by the Roundtable on Sustainable
Palm Oil (RSPO) sponsored by producers and buyers.
After this report Unilever suspended in December last year all future
purchases of 47,000 tons of CPO per year worth approximately US$33 million
from SMART and decided two months later to no longer source palm oil from
Indonesian supplier Duta Palma.
Following the decision of Unilever, Nestle, which consumes 4,000 tons of CPO
a year, joined the move last month, deciding also to stop buying CPO from
SMART.
Local producers now fear other large international CPO buyers such as
Cargill, Loders Croklaan, Kraft and Shell could also terminate their
contracts with SMART.
Meanwhile, Unilever Indonesia corporate secretary Sancoyo Antarikso said
Unilever would wait for the results before deciding whether to resume
buying CPO from SMART.
Indonesia is the world’s largest CPO producer and exporter, with total
production reaching 20.2 million tons last year.
http://www.thejakar tapost.com/ news/2010/ 04/08/audit- result-smart- due-june. html
Plantation firms to produce biodiesel for Pertamina
Nani Afrida , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 04/09/2010 10:53 AM |
Business
Three state plantation firms - PT Perkebunan Nusantara (PTPN) III, IV and V
- will begin the construction of three biodiesel plants in Dumai, Riau
province, before the second half of the year starts.
The three plants are expected to absorb Rp 400 billion in total investment.
"The plants will be finished in the next 18 months. In 2012 the plants will
start producing biodiesel," PTPN IV president director Dahlan Harahap said
on the sidelines of the signing of an MoU between the three firms with state
oil and gas producer PT Pertamina on Thursday.
Pertamina has agreed to purchase the biodiesel from the plants and to
prepare a storage facility for the biodiesel at the port in Dumai.
Dahlan said each of the plants has a capacity to process 100,000 tons of oil
palm fruit bunches (TBS) annually. The capacity is expected to be doubled by
2014.
"If the demand keeps increasing, the capacity may jump to 1 million tons of
TBS every year," he said.
Dahlan said about 30 percent of the investment needed to construct the
plants would come from the companies' internal cash flow and the rest from
bank loans.
Biofuel is currently being sold to retail customers. In 2008, Pertamina had
279 petrol stations selling biofuel while PLN has also used biofuel to help
power nine of its power stations. These nine stations have a total capacity
of 96 megawatts (MW).
Currently Indonesia has produced two types of biofuel: bioethanol - made
from cassava, sugarcane and sweet sorghum, and biodiesel - made from castor,
crude palm oil and jatropha.
By 2015, Indonesia plans to have 10 million hectares of palm oil
plantations, up from 7.9 million today.
According to studies by state plantation companies, there are 44 million
hectares of land in the country ideal for palm oil plantation. Using
conservative yield estimates, this area of oil palm plantation could produce
145 billion liters per year of biodiesel, or 10 percent of current fossil
diesel demand.
Besides planning to produce biodiesel, the state plantation firms also plan
to produce electricity from biomass-generated power plants and sell it to
state electricity company PT PLN.
To produce electricity power in the CPO factories, one factory will require
between Rp 30 billion and Rp 40 billion in investment. Dahlan said PTPN IV
currently operates 50 factories, with each one potentially able to generate
3 MW of power from biomass, mostly from the Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB) and
any other available biomass waste.
PLN will be obtaining electric power from CPO plantations from power
generated from biomass (EFBs) while Pertamina will obtain biofuel processed
from the CPO itself.
"At the present, only two factories are ready to produce 6 MW in total of
electricity power," he said.
CPO is playing an increasingly important role in Indonesia today with the
demand for the product increasing which not only for food consumption and
other uses but also as an energy supply crop.
The Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (GAPKI), consists of about 370
CPO producer firms making use of about 2.4 million hectares of oil palm
plantations. They, along with many smaller farmers, are aiming to produce
at least 25 million tons of CPO this year, up by 25 percent from last year's
production target of 20 million tons.
http://www.thejakar tapost.com/ news/2010/ 04/09/plantation -firms-produce- biodiesel-pertamina. html
Business
Three state plantation firms - PT Perkebunan Nusantara (PTPN) III, IV and V
- will begin the construction of three biodiesel plants in Dumai, Riau
province, before the second half of the year starts.
The three plants are expected to absorb Rp 400 billion in total investment.
"The plants will be finished in the next 18 months. In 2012 the plants will
start producing biodiesel," PTPN IV president director Dahlan Harahap said
on the sidelines of the signing of an MoU between the three firms with state
oil and gas producer PT Pertamina on Thursday.
Pertamina has agreed to purchase the biodiesel from the plants and to
prepare a storage facility for the biodiesel at the port in Dumai.
Dahlan said each of the plants has a capacity to process 100,000 tons of oil
palm fruit bunches (TBS) annually. The capacity is expected to be doubled by
2014.
"If the demand keeps increasing, the capacity may jump to 1 million tons of
TBS every year," he said.
Dahlan said about 30 percent of the investment needed to construct the
plants would come from the companies' internal cash flow and the rest from
bank loans.
Biofuel is currently being sold to retail customers. In 2008, Pertamina had
279 petrol stations selling biofuel while PLN has also used biofuel to help
power nine of its power stations. These nine stations have a total capacity
of 96 megawatts (MW).
Currently Indonesia has produced two types of biofuel: bioethanol - made
from cassava, sugarcane and sweet sorghum, and biodiesel - made from castor,
crude palm oil and jatropha.
By 2015, Indonesia plans to have 10 million hectares of palm oil
plantations, up from 7.9 million today.
According to studies by state plantation companies, there are 44 million
hectares of land in the country ideal for palm oil plantation. Using
conservative yield estimates, this area of oil palm plantation could produce
145 billion liters per year of biodiesel, or 10 percent of current fossil
diesel demand.
Besides planning to produce biodiesel, the state plantation firms also plan
to produce electricity from biomass-generated power plants and sell it to
state electricity company PT PLN.
To produce electricity power in the CPO factories, one factory will require
between Rp 30 billion and Rp 40 billion in investment. Dahlan said PTPN IV
currently operates 50 factories, with each one potentially able to generate
3 MW of power from biomass, mostly from the Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB) and
any other available biomass waste.
PLN will be obtaining electric power from CPO plantations from power
generated from biomass (EFBs) while Pertamina will obtain biofuel processed
from the CPO itself.
"At the present, only two factories are ready to produce 6 MW in total of
electricity power," he said.
CPO is playing an increasingly important role in Indonesia today with the
demand for the product increasing which not only for food consumption and
other uses but also as an energy supply crop.
The Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (GAPKI), consists of about 370
CPO producer firms making use of about 2.4 million hectares of oil palm
plantations. They, along with many smaller farmers, are aiming to produce
at least 25 million tons of CPO this year, up by 25 percent from last year's
production target of 20 million tons.
http://www.thejakar tapost.com/ news/2010/ 04/09/plantation -firms-produce- biodiesel-pertamina. html
Selasa, 30 Maret 2010
Sumut Fokus pada Pengembangan Produk Hilir CPO
Senin, 29 Maret 2010 | 03:26 WIB
Medan, Kompas - Pengembangan produk industri hilir minyak sawit mentah
menjadi salah satu tema sentral dalam Musyawarah Perencanaan Pembangunan
Daerah untuk penyusunan Anggaran Pendapatan dan Belanja Daerah Provinsi
Sumatera Utara tahun 2011. Selain itu, peningkatan mutu produk agroindustri
dataran tinggi Bukit Barisan juga dibahas secara khusus dalam forum
tersebut.
Musyawarah Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah (Musrenbangda) Provinsi Sumut akan
digelar 30 Maret-1 April. Rencananya, Musrenbangda Provinsi Sumut dihadiri
10 menteri Kabinet Indonesia Bersatu, antara lain Menteri Keuangan Sri
Mulyani Indrawati, Kepala Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional Armida S
Alisjahbana, dan Menteri Perdagangan Mari Elka Pangestu.
Menurut Kepala Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah (Bappeda) Provinsi Sumut
Riadil Akhir Lubis, Musrebangda Provinsi Sumut tahun ini memang fokus pada
tema sentral peningkatan mutu dan daya saing produk asal Sumut. "Salah satu
yang diangkat jadi pembahasan adalah produk industri hilir minyak sawit
mentah atau CPO. Sumut harus segera menurunkan volume ekspor CPO murni,
tetapi sudah dalam bentuk industri hilir. Ada 170 industri turunan CPO yang
bisa dikembangkan di Sumut. Nantinya produk CPO Sumut untuk memenuhi
kebutuhan industri hilir di sini saja," ujar Riadil di Medan, Minggu (28/3).
Untuk pengembangan industri hilir, pemerintah pusat telah menetapkan Sumut
sebagai salah satu kluster industri hilir CPO di Indonesia. Ada dua lokasi
kluster industri CPO tengah dikembangkan di Sumut, yakni di Sei Mangke di
Kabupaten Simalungun dan Deli Serdang.
"Untuk kluster industri hilir CPO di Sei Mangke, kawasannya terintegrasi
dengan Pelabuhan Kuala Tanjung, Kabupaten Batubara. Sedangkan kluster
industri hilir di Deli Serdang nantinya terintegrasi dengan Pelabuhan
Belawan dan Bandara Kuala Namu," katanya. (BIL)
http://cetak.kompas.com/read/xml/2010/03/29/03261468/sumut.fokus.pada.pengem
Medan, Kompas - Pengembangan produk industri hilir minyak sawit mentah
menjadi salah satu tema sentral dalam Musyawarah Perencanaan Pembangunan
Daerah untuk penyusunan Anggaran Pendapatan dan Belanja Daerah Provinsi
Sumatera Utara tahun 2011. Selain itu, peningkatan mutu produk agroindustri
dataran tinggi Bukit Barisan juga dibahas secara khusus dalam forum
tersebut.
Musyawarah Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah (Musrenbangda) Provinsi Sumut akan
digelar 30 Maret-1 April. Rencananya, Musrenbangda Provinsi Sumut dihadiri
10 menteri Kabinet Indonesia Bersatu, antara lain Menteri Keuangan Sri
Mulyani Indrawati, Kepala Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional Armida S
Alisjahbana, dan Menteri Perdagangan Mari Elka Pangestu.
Menurut Kepala Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah (Bappeda) Provinsi Sumut
Riadil Akhir Lubis, Musrebangda Provinsi Sumut tahun ini memang fokus pada
tema sentral peningkatan mutu dan daya saing produk asal Sumut. "Salah satu
yang diangkat jadi pembahasan adalah produk industri hilir minyak sawit
mentah atau CPO. Sumut harus segera menurunkan volume ekspor CPO murni,
tetapi sudah dalam bentuk industri hilir. Ada 170 industri turunan CPO yang
bisa dikembangkan di Sumut. Nantinya produk CPO Sumut untuk memenuhi
kebutuhan industri hilir di sini saja," ujar Riadil di Medan, Minggu (28/3).
Untuk pengembangan industri hilir, pemerintah pusat telah menetapkan Sumut
sebagai salah satu kluster industri hilir CPO di Indonesia. Ada dua lokasi
kluster industri CPO tengah dikembangkan di Sumut, yakni di Sei Mangke di
Kabupaten Simalungun dan Deli Serdang.
"Untuk kluster industri hilir CPO di Sei Mangke, kawasannya terintegrasi
dengan Pelabuhan Kuala Tanjung, Kabupaten Batubara. Sedangkan kluster
industri hilir di Deli Serdang nantinya terintegrasi dengan Pelabuhan
Belawan dan Bandara Kuala Namu," katanya. (BIL)
http://cetak.kompas.com/read/xml/2010/03/29/03261468/sumut.fokus.pada.pengem
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