THE UE Has reached the understanding for the very slow exclusion del palm from biodiesel. No longer by 2020, as the European Parliament itself requested at the time, which was part of the agreement, but by 2030
.
The
lobby
of palmocrats
Have prevailed over the common good. Easy game in this Europe. Shame!
Renewable energy and palm oil, European targets to serve Asian palmocrats
The Directive on
Renewable Energies
(Renewable Energies Directive, c.d.
RED II
),
part of the
‘Clean Energy for All Europeans’
, was adopted by agreement – reached on 06/14/2018 – between the European Commission, member states and the Parliament in Strasbourg.
A binding target of 32% renewable energy – to be achieved by all EU member states by 2030, with an upward revision clause to be agreed upon by 2023-is at the heart of the agreement. With a view to achieving the climate change goals set by the Paris Agreement.
The
gradual elimination of
palm oil
from biodiesel
is also provided for in the directive. Providing, however, for a limitation – of not exceeding the quotas of tropical oil in bio-fuels – which is referred note well not to the
status quo
, but to the productions that will be achieved in 2019 (!).
This foreshadows a further rush to the production and use of this unsustainable raw material over the next 18 months, with a view to its slow abandonment in the decade to follow. Until complete elimination, for energy uses, by 2030.
Palm oil, biodiesel and other uses. Europe’s responsibilities
The first directive
on renewable energy, RED I
, was approved by theEuropean Union in 2009. E introduced, for the transportation sector, a target ofusing 10 percent renewable energy by 2020, which also includedpalm oil among the feedstocks that could be used in biodiesel.
The consequences have been tragic, to the point that the use of tropical oil in biodiesel increased from 8 percent to 48 percent between 2010 and 2016. (1) Global palm consumption has continued to grow at a rapid pace, despite the reactions of ConsumAtors who-thanks in part to the petition launched by Great Italian Food Trade and Food Fact-have been clamoring for its elimination from food and cosmetic products. In Ital
ia,
co
me in other European countries.
European institutions
have already had a primary responsibility
In fomenting demand for this unsustainable fat. The increasing supply of which has spilled over into the production of fuels, as well as all kinds of consumer goods. From detergents to shampoos and soaps, cosmetics and lipsticks, confectionery and baked goods, frying oils, ice cream, and food additives (e.g., mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids),
pet food
and more.
The EU-Indonesia Trade Agreement, moreover, could lower duties on palm as well. So at least in the intentions of the Juncker Commission, to which a special
petition
to prevent this abomination.
On the shelves of European supermarkets meanwhile – despite the virtuous examples of national retail champions such as Coop Italy which first eliminated palm from all of its branded products, followed by other groups in France, Spain and England-one in two products still contains palm oil.
Palm oil
, violence abuse and ecocide
The
human rights violations
related to palm production are, after all, widely documented by numerous organizations. Land robbery – i.e., violent deportation of human communities from their lands (2)-and other abuses, including against minors who are in turn forced to work in slave-like conditions. (3)
An example
, to describe the so-called
l
and
grabbing
. Mekar Jaka (Langkat district, North Sumatra, Indonesia), 2017. An entire community is violently torn from the land where it has lived for generations to make way for new palm plantations by Malaysian company Langkat Nusantara Kepong. One thousand military personnel involved, 554 hectares of land robbed in a few shots. The last action on March 27, 2017, when seventy houses were razed to the ground.
Tropical forest fires, triggered by palmocrats to extend intensive monocultures, have in turn led air pollution in Southeast Asia to apocalyptic levels. Causing real genocide, expressed in some 100,300 premature deaths from respiratory diseases in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore in 2015 alone. (4)
The
greenhouse gas emissions
are therefore just some of the ‘side effects’ on the rest of the planet of the extension of oil palm monocultures. In 2015, Indonesia has tripled its emissions, even surpassing the U.S. and China.
‘We now have even more evidence that climate change is caused not just by burning coal and oil for transport and energy, but by the industrial food system itself and the corporate quest for profits that drives its expansion. Indeed, climate change and land grabs are inextricably linked’. (5)
M
hile Europe sleeps, the disaster continues
. In Papua New Guinea
More than 5.5 million hectares of forests
have gone up in smoke in the past decade
and only 5% of the natural habitat has resisted ecocide. (6) Fifty percent in Borneo, where deforestation is raging at an average annual rate of 3.9 percent.
Last but not least, the large animals of terrestrial havens are on the verge of extinction, due to palmocrats. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 100,000 orangutans, more than half of the entire population, were killed in Borneo. The Sumatran elephant and rhinoceros are themselves ‘hanging by a liana,’ a few dozen surviving. Commissioner Juncker will perhaps dedicate a cultural center to it, as he has already done for food fraud. A circus indeed suits them, even better without animals.
Dario Dongo and Giulia Torre
Notes
-
V. Amnesty International, report‘The Great Palm Oil Scandal,’ November 2016
-
V. Greenpeace, ‘The moment of truth’ report , March 2018
-
Cf. Grain, report ‘The global farmland grab in 2016: how big, how bad?‘, 14.6.16
-
The data come from research by journalists
Le Grand JD
(on YouTube) and Bernard Genier (RTS), who traveled to Borneo and documented their mission in a video produced by Swiss Radio Television (RTS), on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSm9Mw_VIb4 05/31/2018.
The reported reports find confirmation in the work of David Gaveau (Center for International Forestry Research), who analyzed thousands of satellite images of the Borneo area from the 1970s to the present day - See in this regard the research of Maria Voigt et alias, ‘Global Demand for Natural Resources Eliminated More Than 100,000 Bornean Orangutans’, on Cell – Current Biology, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.01.053
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
Graduated in law, master in European Food Law, she deals with agro-food, veterinary and agricultural legislation. She is a PhD in agrisystem.
