Palm Oil Demand Fuels Climate Crisis
Urban Ecology News. 2007.11.8
Booming world demand for palm oil from Indonesia for food and biofuels is posing multiple threats to the environment as forests are being cleared, peat wetlands exposed and carbon released, says report.
The report, "Cooking the Climate", released by Greenpeace, is aimed at the meeting of UN environment ministers in Bali this December, to discuss the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
According to the report:
Every year, 1.8 billion tonnes (Gt) of climate changing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are released by the degradation and burning of Indonesia’s peatlands - 4 percent of global GHG emissions from less than 0.1 percent of the land on earth.
World tropical deforestation accounts for about a fifth of all global emissions.
Indonesia now has the fastest deforestation rate of any major forested country, losing two percent of its remaining forest every year.
On top of Indonesia's existing six million hectares of oil palms, the government has plans for another four million by 2015 just for biofuel production. Provincial governments have plans for up to 20 million hectares more.
Source: Booming Palm Oil Demand Fuelling Climate Crisis". Jeremy Lovell. Reuters. 2007.11.8
Source: Cooking the Climate (PDF). Greenpeace. 2007.11
Refer: Palm Oil: Cooking the Climate. Greenpeace. 2007.11.8