Greenpeace and TheTreeMap: Nearly 15% of Palm Plantation Located Within Forest Estates

A recent report published by Greenpeace and TheTreeMap made a damning conclusion: about 3.1 million out of the 16.4 million hectares of oil palm plantations in Indonesia fall within forest estates, including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and UNESCO sites. The report further details that of that 3.1 million hectares, approximately 1.6 million are industrial plantations, claiming that this illustrates a “catastrophic failure of law enforcement to protect the forest estate.”

The report brings us back to our own geospatial analysis of Riau and Central Kalimantan while working with SIIA on the Haze Outlook 2021, although our interest lies more in the Indonesian government’s ambitious project to set up food estate programmes across the archipelago. While the exact locations of these programmes are still relatively unknown, the maps below show that much of the land of the districts earmarked for food estate projects consist of either peatland or areas protected areas recognised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and/or under moratoriums prohibiting the conversion of forest land into commercial plantations.

As experts and environmental groups continuing to play the role of the watchdog to the government, it would be interested to see how the focus would shift to food estate programmes. With organisations like Tempo and The Gecko Project revealing damnatory information, including attempts allegedly made by Defence Minister and head of the food estate project Prabowo Subianto to steer the project to a politically connected company, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more reports like the one published by Greenpeace and TheTreeMap—albeit more focused on food estate programmes—making headways into the news.

Cancer-Causing Substances Detected in 60 Biscuits

On Monday, the Hong Kong Consumer Council announced that it has detected alleged cancer-causing substances in all 60 biscuit products sampled. The consumer watchdog revealed that at least one of the main chemical culprits—glycidol and acrylamide—are present in each products tested including Hup Seng Special Cream Crackers, Ritz Crackers Cheese Flavoured Sandwich, and Oreo Mini Oreo Original. 3-MCPD was also detected in 56 products tested. The problems are associated with food manufacturing processes involving high temperatures.

Source: SCMP (Oct 2021)

51 products sampled were also found to have high fat, sugar, and/or sodium contents. 24 products also have misleading nutrition labels

---

Our comment

The news has predictably ignited food safety worries from Hong Kong on snacks with levels of acrylamide (to do with potato and other starch, mitigate by washing ingredient) and glycidol (to do with palm oil, mitigate by washing and/or chemical processing), with a problem of sugar and salt similarly mentioned. The findings has also triggered a reaction from health authorities in Malaysia (and probably elsewhere soon) to do testing too.

How many biscuits to be at risk? For a 60kg person, the industry says 18kg biscuits, presumably on a typical amount of the contentious compounds. However, on the worst findings, the media is pointing to a max of three and eight pieces a day for a child and adult respectively. This should also provide a push for high food grade ingredients.

PalmTrack: A Month's Reflection

It’s been a busy month for PalmTrack—from observations about vessel movements to weather outlooks, PalmTrack continues to offer exclusive updates surrounding the palm products trade. Some more recent topics we’ve written about include an alert for a La Niña phenomenon in the coming months; major palm oil players who have been using containers are switching to bulk shipments; the conclusion of a near three-week observation of the ports in the Dumai area.

ASMC (Oct 6, 2021): “September to November (SON) season rainfall anomaly composites (mm/day) for El Niño (left) and La Niña (right) years. Brown (green) shades show regions of drier (wetter) conditions. Note that this anomaly composite was generated using a limited number of El Niño and La Niña occurrences between 1979 and 2017 and therefore should be interpreted with caution (data: NOAA CPC CAMS_OPI).”

Subscription is free at the moment, and members will have access to relevant research data and news stories. We also offer more granular trade and vessel data mentioned in our reports for corporate subscribers.

Interested? Subscribe by clicking the button below!

• Yearly
• Monthly

Subscribe to PalmTrack

Subscribe to PalmTrack

RSPO: Malaysia National Interpretation 2019 and ILO Indicators on Labour

Yesterday, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) held a short webinar to refresh its Malaysian members on labour rights defined under its Principles and Criteria 2018 (P&C 2018).

One of the important points RSPO reminded its members about was the scope of Criterion 2.1 under the P&C 2018, which compels its members to observe “all applicable local, national, and ratified international laws and regulations.” The Criterion states that all members are to comply with “laws made pursuant to a country’s obligations under international laws or conventions,” such as the ILO Core Conventions and the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It also reminded members that “where countries have provisions to respect customary law, these will be taken into account.”

In the context of labour rights in Malaysia, standards like the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention would be highly relevant.

During the Q&A, RSPO clarified that its certification process will be only audited against RSPO standards.