Palm Oil | Deforestation Watch

Key Papers
Written by Datuk Dr. Zakri Abdul Hamid
Friday, 06 January 2012
THE virtues of oil from olives, sunflower seeds, canola, soybean and corn are familiar to consumers in the West and the affluent countries of the Middle East and North Africa. That's not the case with palm oil, even in those large markets for the product. That may be a vestige of the bitter attack on the palm oil industry mounted in the 1980s by the soybean lobby, complete with self-serving claims that palm oil could harm human health. Malaysian scientists, including Tan Sri Augustine S.H. Ong, then attached to the Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia, countered with authoritative documentation that, in addition to its numerous industrial uses, palm oil is indeed a versatile, nutritious ingredient. Now, the palm oil industry is once again confronted with new challenges, possibly more formidable and multi-faceted than the earlier one -- that of the need to be environmentally sustainable.
Read more...

Key Papers
Written by Hanim Adnan
Monday, 02 January 2012
THE proposed Malaysia Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification system should be implemented. In fact, it can be like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification, except that certain issues such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and peatland development are modified according to the national laws. The MSPO should be akin to the timber industry certification framework. There is an international scheme, the Forest Stewardship Council, and there is also the national certification scheme, the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme. Both co-exist well in Malaysia and each has strong seats on the global market.
Read more...

Key Papers
Written by Ross Spencer
Friday, 30 December 2011
At 5:00 am, still dark, a group of migrant workers started to gather in Ansan station square. No later than 5:30 am about 100 laborers were gathered. At 6:00 am, a mini-van arrived and a man selected 10 people and disappeared with them. Ten minutes later, another van came and took 5 more and left. No more van came, but people did not move away until around 9:00 am. Then, most of the people who might have their “daily bread” went back home. Five or six persons opened their suitcases and started to sell small items of souvenirs from their home countries. Three or four persons started begging. About ten people were “standing around” the square. Some were dazed by the sun. Some were sighing. In South Korea, there are about one million migrant workers. Most of them work for so-called “3D” jobs which means “dirty, difficult (physically) and dangerous”. Many of them work as unskilled laborers in construction industry. However, due to the impact of the global economic crisis in 2009 and the collapse of the housing market, many of them have no daily job to work. When you think about it, palm oil has given smallholders a chance to escape the grinding poverty that these migrant workers have to endure and count as their lot to life.
Read more...