KUCHING, Sarawak, Malaysia - Against charges of massive deforestation to grow oil palm, the Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities can only offer disingenuous denials.
An analysis of land use for tree crops will throw light on the matter. In 2006, there was 4.17m ha (million hectares) under oil palm and 1.21m ha under rubber. By 2010, oil palm covered 4.85m ha and rubber 1.02m ha.
This is an increase of 680,000ha for oil palm and a decrease of 190,000ha for rubber. Acreage for our other main tree crops, coconut and cocoa, increased slightly, and may be overlooked in this analysis.
Rubber plantation lands are often close to urban centers and the pressure is usually to convert them to uses that meet urban needs. So, one can assume that no more than 100,000ha of rubber land was replanted with oil palm.- This means 580,000ha of other land was found for oil palm. One can quite safely conclude that this land was made available by destroying our forests.
- Pointing to this conclusion is a recent study, based on satellite imagery, by scientists in Europe. It found that Malaysia is destroying forests at a rate more than three times faster than all of Asia.
In Sarawak, native people are often dispossessed of their customary lands by large oil palm companies looking for land to grow oil palm.- In 2010, at the International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference, Sabah’s tourism, culture and environment minister declared that forest conversion is driving our protected animals to extinction.
- Other than a rich elite, the oil palm industry benefits few people. Even the Indonesian worker that the industry depends on heavily is hard to come by these days, and a lot of unpicked fruit goes to waste.
The Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities has to stop playing the denial game but work together with organisations and citizens concerned about the loss of our natural heritage to find forward looking solutions.
And the federal Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has a duty to fulfill its mandate to safeguard our natural heritage.
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