|
Grist Magazine April 26,
2014
Read the whole article
here:
http://grist.org/article/the-death-of-sustainability/
The death of
‘sustainability’
By Glenn Hurowitz
Can destroying a tropical
rainforest be
“sustainable”?
Well, according to a decision
taken yesterday by the Roundtable
on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO),
the major industry-NGO body, this
greatest of environmental crimes
is now officially
“green.”
Palm oil plantations have
driven the destruction of more
than 30,000 square miles of
tropical forest in Indonesia and
Malaysia alone, pushing species
like orangutans and Sumatran
rhinoceroses and elephants to the
edge of extinction. It’s the
biggest source of greenhouse gas
emissions in Southeast Asia, and
has propelled Indonesia to be the
world’s third largest
climate polluter behind only
China and the United States.
Nonetheless, at its
Extraordinary General Meeting in
Kuala Lumpur, the RSPO formally
rejected longstanding calls from
member companies, scientists and
nonprofit organizations to stop
certifying as
“sustainable” palm oil
produced through deforestation
and other environmentally
damaging practices like
destruction of ultra carbon rich
peatland and use of highly
poisonous chemicals like the
notorious paraquat, which is
linked to kidney failure,
respiratory failure, skin cancer,
and Parkinson’s disease.
On one level, of course, the
RSPO’s action is an exercise
in patently absurd Orwellian PR:
If something produced through
wholesale destruction of tropical
rainforests is considered
“sustainable,” the word
has lost any meaning at all. But
the decision is sadly symptomatic
of broader challenges faced by
sustainability certification
efforts across a variety of
different industries. These
persistent challenges have led
some to question the value or
applicability of the fundamental
model many companies have relied
on to prove their environmental
bona fides – and develop a
new model based more on industry
transformation than green niche
production.
Indeed, the palm oil decision
leaves dozens of major companies
including Unilever,
Kellogg’s, Dunkin Donuts,
Colgate-Palmolive, Walmart,
Carrefour, Cadbury, and others
facing something of a supply
chain and image crisis. These
companies have all pledged to
source RSPO-certified palm oil
out of an understandable desire
to ensure that their products
weren’t driving destruction
of the Earth’s tropical
rainforests and other
hyper-valuable ecosystems —
and respond to demands from their
customers and NGO campaigns that
they take the very basic step of
ending links to deforestation.
Large banks Credit Suisse,
Rabobank, Citibank, HSBC, and
Standard Chartered also have
policies aimed at channeling
investment towards RSPO
companies.
The RSPO’s action was
such a blatant affront to basic
environmental values that even
the organization’s
co-founder World Wildlife Fund,
which has always defended RSPO
even in the face of withering
criticism, issued a formal
statement saying that while it
intends to continue engaging with
the RSPO, it no longer considers
RSPO certification sufficient for
responsible companies.
Because the review failed to
accept strong, tough and clear
performance standards within the
P&Cs [RSPO Principles
& Criteria] on issues
like GHGs and pesticides, it is,
unfortunately, no longer possible
for producers or users of palm
oil to ensure that they are
acting responsibly simply by
producing or using Certified
Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO).
Therefore WWF is now asking
progressive companies to set and
report on particular performance
standards within the framework
set by the new RSPO P&Cs.
Responsible growers are those
that not only certify all of
their palm oil production against
the RSPO principles &
criteria but who also take the
following further actions:
immediate public reporting of GHG
emissions from existing and new
plantations using Palm GHG;
- for new oil palm
developments: full implementation
of the RSPO New Plantings
Procedure and zero-net land use
emissions over a single rotation,
which will exclude cultivation on
peat-soils and clearance of high
carbon stock areas;
- for existing plantations and
mills: significant annual GHG
emissions reduction targets
- essential measures should
include the treatment of mill
effluent to eliminate methane
emissions and the restoration of
any plantations on peat at the
end of the current rotation;
- an end to the use of
pesticides that are categorized
as World Health Organization
Class 1A or 1B, or that are
listed by the Stockholm or
Rotterdam Conventions, and
paraquat;
- only buying Fresh Fruit
Bunches (FFB) from known sources,
in particular no FFB originating
from land illegally occupied or
that is within any sort of
designated or protected areas
such as national parks;
WWF’s statement surprised
many long time palm oil watchers,
but the organization deserves
enormous credit for sticking to
its principles and making clear
that companies cannot claim
sustainability just by sticking
an RSPO label on their product
while continuing to destroy the
Earth’s forests.
So what are responsible
companies to do? Dozens have
dived into the RSPO’s
sustainability vat, only to float
up saturated in palm oil and
stinking of deforestation.
The good news is that RSPO is
far from the only game in town
— there are many options for
sourcing deforestation free
vegetable oil – and
it’s now time for companies
to take advantage of them.
Of course, coconut, soybean,
canola and other vegetable oils
generally have far fewer issues
with deforestation, though
responsible companies should
investigate the specific supply
chain for any of the commodities
they use.
And the Rainforest
Alliance’s Sustainable
Agriculture Network standards not
only go well beyond RSPO, but
also create incentives for
ecosystem restoration – and
have been adopted by the
Colombian organic palm oil
producer Daabon. The Brazilian
company Agropalma and New Britain
Palm Oil are also considered
leaders on reducing
deforestation.
But perhaps most exciting is
the commitment by Golden
Agri-Resources (GAR), the
world’s largest private
sector palm oil producer, to
eliminate deforestation from its
supply chain following efforts by
Greenpeace, The Forest Trust and
other groups (full disclosure: I
do some consulting work for TFT,
though this article is my
own).
As the grower of approximately
five percent of the world’s
palm oil, GAR can be an immediate
large-scale source for
deforestation free palm oil,
period. Companies that buy from
GAR or other responsible
producers and traders are sending
a signal that there is a demand
for truly deforestation free palm
oil, which will encourage other
palm oil companies to raise their
own standards.
The important point here is
that what GAR and its fellow
vegetable oil industry leaders
are doing doesn’t rely on an
amorphous term like
sustainability that can be easily
corrupted by cynical PR agents
looking to greenwash wholesale
ecological destruction.
They’re saying something
very simple: We don’t
destroy forests, we don’t
destroy peatland, and we
don’t abuse human rights or
community rights.
It’s very easy for the
public, forest communities,
journalists, civil society
organizations and others to
scrutinize them by that standard,
and when they fall short, hold
them accountable. There’s
really not much room for fudging
it.
This commitment that is simple
and affordable to implement: most
of the additional cost of
RSPO-style certification comes
from segregating the
“sustainable” product
from the “mainstream”
product in processing, shipping,
and sales – not from
changing production practices.
Indeed, a recent study by Timothy
Fairhurst and David McLaughlin
found that planting on degraded
lands actually costs several
hundred dollars less than
planting on cleared secondary
forests. With 6-10 million
hectares of available degraded
land in Indonesia and 60 million
available in Brazil, there are
massive opportunities for
affordable, deforestation free
production: companies just have
to seize them. Certification can
be a tool to help ensure that
they’re meeting their
commitments, but it’s no
substitute for action.
In short, companies should
stop proclaiming their commitment
to “sustainability”
from the stump, and just stop
buying the products of ecological
destruction. That’s what
their customers demand, and what
the Earth needs.
Glenn Hurowitz is a senior
fellow at the Center for
International Policy.
|
