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The European Union just made bioenergy worse for biodiversity

21 08 2018

bioenergy2 While some complain that the European Union (EU) is an enormous, cumbersome beast (just ask the self-harming Brexiteers), it generally has some rather laudable legislative checks and balances for nature conservation. While far from perfect, the rules applying to all Member States have arguably improved the state of both European environments, and those from which Europeans source their materials.

But legislation gets updated from time to time, and not always in the ways that benefit biodiversity (and therefore, us) the most. This is exactly what’s just happened with the new EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) released in June this year.

Now, this is the point where most readers’ eyes glaze over. EU policy discussions are exceedingly dry and boring (I’ve dabbled a bit in this arena before, and struggled to stay awake myself). But I’ll try to lighten your required concentration load somewhat by being as brief and explanatory as possible, but please stay with me — this shit is important.

In fact, it’s so important that I joined forces with some German colleagues with particular expertise in greenhouse-gas accounting and EU policy — Klaus Hennenberg and Hannes Böttcher¹ of Öko-Institut (Institute of Applied Ecology) in Darmstadt — to publish an article available today in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

bioenergy4 So back to the RED legislation. The original ‘RED 2009‘ covered reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions and the mitigation of negative impacts on areas of high biodiversity value, such as primary forests, protected areas, and highly biodiverse grasslands, and for areas of high carbon stock like wetlands, forests, and peatlands.

But RED 2009 was far from what we might call ‘ambitious’, because globally mandatory criteria on water, soil and social aspects for agriculture and forestry production were excluded to avoid conflicts with rules of the World Trade Organization.

Nor did RED 2009 apply to all bioenergy types, and only included biofuels used in transport, including gaseous and solid fuels, and bioliquids used for electricity, heating, and cooling. But RED 2009 requirements also applied to all raw materials sourced from agriculture and forestry, especially as forest biomass is explicitly mentioned as a raw material for the production of advanced biofuels in the RED 2009 extension from 2015.

Thus, one could conceivably call RED 2009 criteria ‘minimum safeguards’.

But as of June this year, the EU accepted a 2016 proposal to recast RED 2009 into what is now called ‘RED II’. While the revisions might look good on paper by setting new incentives in transport (advanced biofuels) and in heating and cooling that will likely increase the use of biomass sourced from forests, and by extending the directive on solid and gaseous biomass, the amendments unfortunately take some huge leaps backwards in terms of sustainability requirements.

These include the following stuff-ups: Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: bioenergy, biofuels, cultivation, deforestation, food, forestry, forests, fuel, land-use rights, maize, oil palm, palm oil, primary forests
Categories : agriculture, biocarbon, biodiversity, biosequestration, biowealth, boreal, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, climate shift, conservation, deforestation, economics, environmental policy, Europe, fragmentation, governance, habitat loss, harvest, logging, oil palm, palm oil, protected area, sustainability, vegetation

Primate woes where the oil palm grows

16 08 2018

gorilla

A new article just published in PNAS reveals how future expansion of the palm-oil industry could have terrible consequences for African primates.

Researchers from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, CIRAD, Liverpool John Moores University, and ETH Zurich searched for “areas of compromise” combining high oil palm suitability with low primate vulnerability, as possible locations where to accommodate new oil-palm plantations while reducing detrimental effects on primate populations.

Results show that there is small room for compromise. In fact, potential areas of compromise are rare across the whole African continent, covering a total extent of 0.13 Mha of land highly suited to oil palm cultivation where primate vulnerability is low, rising to just 3.3 Mha if all land with at least minimum suitability to grow oil palm is taken into account.

Palm oil production is steadily rising, and expected to accelerate in response to growing world’s population, with future demand driven not only by the food industry, but also by the biofuel market. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Africa, agriculture, biodiversity, deforestation, oil palm, palm oil, sustainability
Categories : Africa, agriculture, biodiversity, carbon, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, food, fragmentation, habitat loss, human overpopulation, IUCN, modelling, oil palm, palm oil, prioritisation, rain forests, threatened species

Incentivise to keep primary forests intact

7 02 2014

The Amazon rainforest. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

I know – ‘incentivise’ is one of those terrible wank words of business speak. But to be heard by the economically driven, one must learn their guttural and insensitive language. I digress …

Today’s post is merely a repost of an interview I did for the new Mongabay.com series ‘Next Big Idea in Forest Conservation‘. I’m honoured to have been selected for an interview along with the likes of Bill Laurance and Stuart Pimm.

Consider this my conservation selfie.

An Interview with Corey Bradshaw

Mongabay.com: What is your background?

Corey Bradshaw: I have a rather eclectic background in conservation ecology. I grew up in the wilds of western Canada, the son of a trapper. My childhood experiences initially gave me a primarily consumptive view of the environment from trapping, fishing and hunting, but I learned that without intact environmental functions, these precious resources quickly degrade or disappear. This ironic appreciation of natural processes would later lead me into academia and the pursuit of reducing the rate of the extinction crisis.

I completed my first degrees in ecology in Montréal and the University of Alberta, followed by a PhD in New Zealand at the University of Otago. After deciding to pursue the rest of my career in the Southern Hemisphere, I completed my postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tasmania. Multiple field seasons in the subantarctic and Antarctica probably assisted in a giving me a burgeoning desire to change gears, so I left for the tropics of northern Australia to begin a position at Charles Darwin University. Being introduced there to conservation greats like Navjot Sodhi (sadly, now deceased), Barry Brook and David Bowman turned my research interests on their ear. I quickly became enamoured with quantitative conservation ecology, applying my skills in mathematics to the plight of the world’s ecosystems. Nowhere did the problems seem more intractable than in the tropics.

I am now based at the University of Adelaide (since 2008) and have a vibrant research lab where we apply our quantitative skills to everything from conservation ecology, climate change, energy provision, human population trends, ecosystem services, sustainable agriculture, human health, palaeoecology, carbon-based conservation initiatives and restoration techniques.

Mongabay.com: How long have you worked in tropical forest conservation and in what geographies? What is the focus of your work? Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: conservation, Corey Bradshaw, finance, forestry, forests, iREDD, primary forest, REDD, tropics
Categories : Amazon, Asia, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, deforestation, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, logging, Malaysia, oil palm, palm oil, rain forests, REDD, reforestation, reserve, tropical

Improving the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil

23 11 2012

RSPO – don’t be guilty of this

Laurance & Pimm organise another excellent tropical conservation open-letter initiative. This follows our 2010 paper (Improving the performance of the Roundtable on Sustainable Oil Palm for nature conservation) in Conservation Biology.

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Scientists Statement on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil’s Draft Revised Principles and Criteria for Public Consultation – November 2012

As leading scientists with prominent academic and research institutions around the world, we write to encourage the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to use this review of the RSPO Principles and Criteria as an opportunity to ensure that RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil is grown in a manner that protects tropical forests and the health of our planet. We applaud the RSPO for having strong social and environmental standards, but palm oil cannot be considered sustainable without also having greenhouse gas standards. Nor can it be considered sustainable if it drives species to extinction.

Tropical forests are critical ecosystems that must be conserved. They are home to millions of plant and animal species, are essential for local water-cycling, and store vast amounts of carbon. When they are cleared, biodiversity is lost and the carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change.

Moreover, tropical areas with peat soils store even larger amounts of carbon and when water is drained and the soils exposed, carbon is released into the atmosphere for several decades, driving climate changeⁱ. In addition, peat exposed to water in drainage canals may decay anaerobically, producing methane – a greenhouse more potent than carbon dioxide.

Palm oil production continues to increase in the tropics, and in some cases that production is directly driving tropical deforestation and the destruction of peatlandsⁱⁱ. Given the large carbon footprint and irreparable biodiversity loss such palm oil production cannot be considered sustainable. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: biodiveristy, deforestation, High Conservation Value Areas, palm oil, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO, tropics
Categories : agriculture, biodiversity, cartoon, climate change, conservation, conservation scholars, deforestation, extinction, food, fragmentation, habitat loss, oil palm, palm oil, rain forests, tropical

Worlds collide: greenwashed development to kill biodiversity

15 03 2012

Another development fiasco that, if it goes ahead, will devastate a Biodiversity Hotspot and ultimately, reduce the livelihood prospects of millions of West Africans.

In yet another move to expose and shame the greedy developers behind another massive (and superlatively greenwashed) oil palm development in the tropics (see our previous Open Letter), Bill Laurance and Josh Linder have organised another Open Letter from some of the world’s top conservation scientists (again, I count myself fortunate to be included in that group) denouncing the project. The press release is below, followed by the letter itself:

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Eleven of the world’s top scientists have produced an open letter to the public urging the Cameroon government to stop a giant oil palm plantation that they say will threaten some of Africa’s most important protected areas.

The project, sponsored by a subsidiary of U.S. agribusiness giant Herakles Farms in collaboration with a U.S. nonprofit organization, All for Africa, would span 70,000 hectares (154,000 acres), an area nearly the size of New York City.

“It’s simply frightening in scope,” said Thomas Struhsaker, a leading expert on African primates and rainforest ecology at Duke University in North Carolina, USA, who has worked in the region for nearly a half-century.

The project would destroy a critical forested area that currently links five national parks or protected areas in Cameroon, say the scientists.

“These forests are vital for wildlife, including the African elephant, chimpanzee and drill, all threatened or endangered species,” said anthropologist Joshua Linder of James Madison University in Virginia, USA, who has helped coordinate the protest. “These animals rely on the forests that would be destroyed to survive and move among the parks.”

“This area is a biodiversity hotspot, some of the world’s most biologically important real estate,” said tropical ecologist William Laurance of James Cook University in Australia, who studies threats to wildlife in the Congo Basin.

“There’s no way a project like this would be allowed in most countries, because the price for biodiversity is just too high,” said Laurance.

The project has been promoted in Cameroon as environmentally sustainable, but the scientists heatedly disagree. “Those promoting this project are misleading everyone—especially the people and government of Cameroon,” said Linder. “They claim the forests they want to clear are mostly logged and degraded, but we’ve shown clearly that they include lots of tall, dense forest that’s vital for wildlife and nature conservation.” Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: Africa, biodiversity, biodiversity hotspots, Cameroon, Congo Basin, deforestation, oil palm, palm oil, RSPO, William Laurance
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, deforestation, economics, environmental policy, habitat loss, harvest, oil palm, palm oil, propaganda, rain forests, reserve, tropical

No substitute for primary forest

15 09 2011

A little over five years ago, a controversial and spectacularly erroneous paper appeared in the tropical ecology journal Biotropica, the flagship journal of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. Now, I’m normally a fan of Biotropica (I have both published there several times and acted as a Subject Editor for several years), but we couldn’t let that paper’s conclusions go unchallenged.

That paper was ‘The future of tropical forest species‘ by Joseph Wright and Helene Muller-Landau, which essentially concluded that the severe deforestation and degradation of tropical forests was not as big a deal as nearly all the rest of the conservation biology community had concluded (remind you of climate change at all?), and that regenerating, degraded and secondary forests would suffice to preserve the enormity and majority of dependent tropical biodiversity.

What rubbish.

Our response, and those of many others (including from Toby Gardner and colleagues and William Laurance), were fast and furious, essentially destroying the argument so utterly that I think most people merely moved on. We know for a fact that tropical biodiversity is waning rapidly, and in many parts of the world, it is absolutely [insert expletive here]. However, the argument has reared its ugly head again and again over the intervening years, so it’s high time we bury this particular nonsense once and for all.

In fact, a few anecdotes are worthy of mention here. Navjot once told me one story about the time when both he and Wright were invited to the same symposium around the time of the initial dust-up in Biotropica. Being Navjot, he tore off strips from Wright in public for his outrageous and unsubstantiated claims – something to which Wright didn’t take too kindly. On the way home, the two shared the same flight, and apparently Wright refused to acknowledge Navjot’s existence and only glared looks that could kill (hang on – maybe that had something to do with Navjot’s recent and untimely death? Who knows?). Similar public stoushes have been chronicled between Wright and Bill Laurance.

Back to the story. I recall a particular coffee discussion at the National University of Singapore between Navjot Sodhi (may his legacy endure), Barry Brook and me some time later where we planned the idea of a large meta-analysis to compare degraded and ‘primary’ (not overly disturbed) forests. The ideas were fairly fuzzy back then, but Navjot didn’t drop the ball for a moment. He immediately went out and got Tien Ming Lee and his new PhD student, Luke Gibson, to start compiling the necessary studies. It was a thankless job that took several years.

However, the fruits of that labour have now just been published in Nature: ‘Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity‘, led by Luke and Tien Ming, along with Lian Pin Koh, Barry Brook, Toby Gardner, Jos Barlow, Carlos Peres, me, Bill Laurance, Tom Lovejoy and of course, Navjot Sodhi [side note: Navjot died during the review and didn’t survive to hear the good news that the paper was finally accepted].

Using data from 138 studies from Asia, South America and Africa comprising 2220 pair-wise comparisons of biodiversity ‘values’ between forests that had undergone some sort of disturbance (everything from selective logging through to regenerating pasture) and adjacent primary forests, we can now hammer the final nails into the coffin containing the putrid remains of Wright and Muller-Landau’s assertion – there is no substitute for primary forest. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 24 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, biodiversity loss, conservation biology, deforestation, degraded forest, Forest, tropical forests, tropics
Categories : agriculture, Amazon, Asia, biodiversity, Borneo, Central America, conservation, deforestation, endemism, environmental policy, extinction, habitat loss, Indonesia, living dead, logging, Malaysia, mammal, oil palm, palm oil, prioritisation, protected area, rain forests, reforestation, reserve, restoration, Sarawak, South America, South East Asia, threatened species, tropical

When you have no idea, you should shut up

12 09 2011

Last week, The Conversation published a particularly wonderful example of uninformed drivel that requires a little bit of a reality injection.

Like our good friend, the Destroyer of Forests (a.k.a. Alan Oxley), a new pro-deforestation, pro-development cheerleader on the scene, a certain Phillip Lawrence apparently undertaking a PhD entitled ‘Ecological Modernization of the Indonesian Economy: A Political, Cultural and Historical Economic Study‘ at Macquarie University in Sydney (The Conversation mistakenly attributes him to the University of Sydney, unless of course, he’s moved recently), has royally stuck his foot in it with respect to the dangers of oil palm in South-East Asia.

Mr. Lawrence runs an interestingly titled blog ‘Eco Logical Strategies‘, especially considering there is nothing whatsoever regarding ‘ecology’ on the site, and this ignorance comes forth in a wonderful array of verbal spew in his latest Conversation piece. He’s also a consultant for one of the most destructive forces in Indonesia – Asia Pulp and Paper – a company with a more depressive environmental track record than the likes of Monsanto, General Electric and BP combined. That preface of conflict of interest now explained, I will now expose Mr. Lawrence for the wolf in sheep’s clothing he really is.

Banging the development and anti-poverty drum like Oxley, albeit with much less panache and linguistic flourish, Mr. Lawrence boldly claims, without a shred of evidence, that “There is ample peer-reviewed research that is supportive of the palm oil industry in Indonesia.”

Excuse me? Supportive of just what component of the palm oil industry, Mr. Lawrence? Would that be that it makes a shit-load of cash for a preciously small component of Indonesian (and foreign) society? Let’s just look at the peer-reviewed literature, shall we? Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 11 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, Borneo, environment, oil palm, palm oil, Southeast Asia
Categories : agriculture, conservation, deforestation, environmental policy, habitat loss, Indonesia, Malaysia, oil palm, palm oil, South East Asia, tropical

How buggered are our hairy red cousins?

23 08 2011

Here’s a post from one of our lab’s post-doctoral fellows, Dr. Stephen Gregory. Stephen just got back from Borneo (jammy bastard), and will now regale you with his exploits.

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When asked to name a Bornean animal, I’ll bet the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) would top a public survey. This charismatic animal shares over 95 % of its genome with Homo sapiens, and so it’s little wonder that we find their infants so adorable and their popularity in the pet trade so deplorable.

Yet, I wonder how many people know that the biggest threat to our hairy red cousin is actually human eating and hygiene habits? Palm oil (oil extracted from the kernel of Elaeis spp.) is used in many foods – particularly snack foods – and hygiene products. It is our addiction to these convenient products that is destroying the orangutan’s habitat.

I’ve just returned from a trip to Sabah, the northernmost Malaysian state on Borneo, where I witnessed this distressing truth firsthand. I was meeting with the Sabah Wildlife Department, French NGO Hutan and staff at the Danau Girang Field Centre to discuss early results from my Sabah orangutan project and seek their expert opinions. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : Asia, Borneo, conservation, deforestation, food, fragmentation, habitat loss, Indonesia, logging, Malaysia, oil palm, palm oil, South East Asia, The University of Adelaide, tropical

Recognising differing viewpoints in a rapidly changing world

18 08 2011

Is oil palm bad? Is protecting tropical forests more important than converting them for economic development? Should we spike trees to make sure no one cuts them down?

Answers to these questions depend on which side of the argument you’re on. But often people on either side of debates hardly know what their opponents are thinking.

A recent paper by us in the journal Biotropica, of which parts were published on this blog, points out that the inability to recognise differing viewpoints undermines progress in environmental policy and practice.

The paper in Biotropica takes an unusual approach to get its message across, one rarely applied in science, but nevertheless dating back to 1729. In that year, Jonathan Swift, the first satirist, wrote an essay suggesting the English should eat Irish children, “whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled”, to reduce the growing population of Irish poor.

We similarly use satire to highlight the viewpoint problem. Our paper uses a spoof press release by the Coalition of Financially Challenged Countries with Lots of Trees, aka “CoFCCLoT”. CoFCCLoT proposes that in return for nor cutting down their tropical rainforests, wealthy countries should reforest at least half their land. This would provide the world with a level playing field, restore the ecological health of wealthy countries, provide job opportunities for their citizens, and even allow lions to thrive in Greece and gorillas in Spain. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, Brazil, conservation, environment, Indonesia, oil palm, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
Categories : agriculture, conservation, oil palm, palm oil, tropical

Reforesting wealthy countries for the common good

29 06 2011

The Coalition of Financially Challenged Countries with Lots of Trees, known as ‘CoFCCLoT’, representing most of the world’s remaining tropical forests, is asking wealthy nations to share global responsibilities and reforest their land for the common good of stabilizing climate and protecting biodiversity.

“We are willing to play our part, but we require a level playing field in which we all commit to equal sacrifices,” a coalition spokeswoman says. “Returning forest cover in the G8 countries and the European Union back to historic coverage will benefit all of us in the long-term.”

Seventy-five per cent of Europe was once forested. Now it is 45 per cent. Some countries such as Ireland saw forest cover reduced to near zero. Most forest cover in the developed world is now often planted with stands of alien trees, turning them into deserts for biodiversity. Remaining natural forests are often highly fragmented and have few native species. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, Central Africa, CoFCCLoT, environment, European Union, Forest, Indonesia, reforestation
Categories : Africa, agriculture, biosequestration, carbon, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem services, Europe, human overpopulation, oil palm, palm oil, protected area, reforestation

A very pissed-off New Guinean versus the Destroyer of Forests

31 03 2011

I really don’t know where this came from (weird e-mail trail), but it was too good not to share.

For those of you who follow ConservationBytes.com, you might remember a fairly recent post where a group of leading conservation biologists exposed one of the most dangerous men in the world – Alan Oxley, the (very embarrassing to admit) Australian destroyer of tropical biodiversity and future welfare of hundreds of millions of people.

It seems he and his commercial interests (and my, do those fellas lay it on thick) have turned their attention to destroying the last tracts of intact South-East Asian forests (and associated biodiversity) in Papua New Guinea. Kiss some of the most endemic, biodiverse and biowealthy areas on the planet good-bye.

So it was interesting to receive this email that had been sent to Oxley’s front-company, International Trade Strategies (ITS) Global, by one very pissed off Papua New Guinean. I have no idea who ‘Bush Kanaka Mangi’ is, but he sounds the real deal and I wouldn’t want to be Oxley if he ever came across him. I cite verbatim¹:

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Mr Alan Oxley,

HONESTLY : I am sick of getting this bloody rubbish, bullshit from you and your company ITS Global about palm oil is good for PNG, logging is good for PNG. Who the hell do you think you are ????, you seem in all your articles and consultancy reports as the expert about our country and more knowledgeable about the Melanesian society very well. My assessment of all your electronic newsletter which you circulate widely, your reflections and recommendations all are in no way closer or nearer to the way we Papua New Guineans think and want to do things and develop our nation, all of what you say are totally and purely and absolutely RUBBISH and yet you claim to know everything and know the problems of PNG and our people and on ways to solve our problems and continue your bullshit campaign in support of R&H and all its doing here destroying our forests, our society, manipulating our systems and creating confusion and hell is loose here. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: Alan Oxley, biodiversity, deforestation, ITS Global, Livelihoods, oil palm, Papua New Guinea
Categories : agriculture, biodiversity, carbon, conservation, corruption, deforestation, exploitation, oil palm, palm oil, poverty, propaganda, rain forests, tropical

Wolves masquerading as sheep: the fallout

29 10 2010

Well, we’ve managed to stimulate quite a lively conversation after dropping the Open Letter about Scientific Credibility and the Conservation of Tropical Forests regarding the questionable tactics employed by Alan Oxley and his industrial lobbyist organisations.

Mr. Oxley has responded with vitriol, hand-waving, red herrings and straw men, and failed to address even a single one of our accusations. I am particularly amused by his insinuation that we, the proven scientists, don’t know what science is – but that he does.

Below I reproduce Mr. Oxley’s reaction to our original letter, followed by our response.

I’ll let you, the reader, decide who is most reasonable.

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REACTION FROM ALAN OXLEY

There is too much pseudo-scientific hype today about environmentalism and forestry and not enough fact.

I put this double-barrelled question to the Group of 12 scientists who have rather laboriously wandered over the work of World Growth: What biodiversity is expressly protected by a global cessation of conversion of forest land to other purposes and how is that biodiversity scientifically measured? And let’s have some technical response, not political blather. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: Alan Oxley, biodiversity, deforestation, Forest, greenwashing, Paul Ehrlich, World Growth Institute
Categories : Borneo, carbon, climate change, conservation, conservation scholars, deforestation, environmental policy, fragmentation, habitat loss, Indonesia, logging, Malaysia, oil palm, palm oil, poverty, propaganda, protected area, rain forests, South East Asia, tropical

Wolves in sheep’s clothing: industrial lobbyists and the destruction of tropical forests

25 10 2010

As of this morning, a group of distinguished scientists (which I have had the honour of being invited to join) has released an Open Letter to be published in various media outlets worldwide. The letter addresses some of our major concerns over the misinterpretation of facts, and openly misleading statements, by proponents of deforestation in the Asian tropical region. Professor Bill Laurance, an old favourite on ConservationBytes.com, has led the charge and organised a most impressive and shocking list of assertions. I produce the letter below – I encourage all my readers to distribute it as far and wide as possible in the social media-verse.

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An Open Letter about Scientific Credibility and the Conservation of Tropical Forests

To whom it may concern:

As professional scientists employed by leading academic and research institutions, we are writing to alert the general public about some of the claims and practices being used by the World Growth Institute (WGI) and International Trade Strategies Global (ITS), and their affiliated leadership.

WGI and ITS operate in close association. ITS is owned by Alan Oxley, an Australian industrial lobbyist, former trade representative, and former Ambassador who also heads WGI. According to its website¹, ITS also has “close associations” with several politically conservative US think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation.

In our personal view, WGI and ITS — which are frequently involved in promoting industrial logging and oil palm and wood pulp plantations internationally — have at times treaded a thin line between reality and a significant distortion of facts. Specifically, we assert that: Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 26 Comments »
Tags: Alan Oxley, American Enterprise Institute, biodiversity, Climate Change Denial, Competitive Enterprise Institute, deforestation, Heritage Foundation, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, International Trade Strategies Global, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, World Growth Institute
Categories : agriculture, Asia, Borneo, carbon, climate change, conservation, corruption, deforestation, environmental policy, habitat loss, Indonesia, Malaysia, oil palm, palm oil, poverty, propaganda, rain forests, Sarawak, South East Asia, tropical

Greenwash, blackwash: two faces of conservation evil

21 11 2009

Beware false prophets, and especially those masquerading as conservationists (or at least ‘green’) when they are not, in fact, doing anything for conservation at all. But this blog site isn’t about typical greenie evil-corporation-making-a-mess-of-the-Earth sermons (there are plenty of those); it’s instead about real conservation science that has/should/could have a real biodiversity benefits. This is why I highlight the bitey and the toothless together.

With the slow (painfully, inadequately, insufficiently slow) maturation of environmental awareness and the rising plight of biodiversity in general (including our own health and prosperity), it has become almost chic to embrace a so-called ‘green’ perspective. This approach has blown out into a full-scale business model where in many wealthier nations especially, it’s just plain good business to attract the green-conscious consumer to buy more ‘environmentally friendly’ products. Problem is, so many of these products are the farthest thing from green you can imagine (see examples here, here & here). This stimulated the environmentalist Jay Westerveld to coin the term greenwashing in 1986. Greenwashing is basically defined as activities that misleadingly give the impression of environmentally sound management that thereby deflect attention away from the continued pursuit of environmentally destructive activities.

Well, not that the problem has disappeared, or even dissipated (if anything, it’s growing), but I don’t want to focus on that here. Instead, I want to highlight a recent paper in which I was involved that outlines too how environmental groups can be guilty of almost the same sin – claiming businesses, practices, individuals, corporations, etc. are far more environmentally destructive than they really are. This, we termed blackwashing.

The paper by Koh and colleagues entitled Wash and spin cycle threats to tropical biodiversity just came out online in the journal Biotropica, and therein we describe the greenwashing-blackwashing twin conservation evils using the oil palm controversy as an excellent example case. Just in case you didn’t know, much of the tropical world (especially South East Asia) is undergoing massive conversion of native forests to oil palm plantations, to the overwhelming detriment of biodiversity. I’ve covered the issue in several posts on ConservationBytes.com before (see for example Tropical forests worth more standing, Indonesia’s precious peatlands under oil palm fire & More greenwashing from the Malaysian oil palm industry).

Briefly, we demonstrate how the palm oil industry is guilty of the following greenwashes:

Palm oil plantations are safe for tropical biodiversity – They are most definitely not (see Fitzherbert et al. 2008, Koh & Wilcove 2008, Brüle & Eltz 2009, Danielson et al. 2009, Venter et al. 2009)
Oil palm is planted forest – It is not, either in terms of the amount of carbon it sequesters or the biodiversity it supports (see above point).
Native forest conversion no longer occurs – An outright lie (Chazdon 2008, Butler 2008).

On the either side, various environmental groups such as Greenpeace, have promoted the following blackwashes:

Orang-utan will be extinct imminently – A gross exaggeration, although something we believe is eventually possible.
Avoided deforestation schemes (e.g., REDD) will crash carbon-trading – Again, even economists don’t believe this.

For details, see the paper online.

Now, I’d probably tend to believe some of the less outrageous claims made by some environmental groups because if anything, the state of biodiversity is probably overall worse than what most people realise. However, when environmental groups are exposed for exaggerations, or worse, lies, then their credibility goes out the window and even those essentially promoting their cause (e.g., conservation biologists like myself) will have nothing to do with them. The quasi-religious zealotry of anti-whaling campaigns is an example of a terrible waste of funds, goodwill and conservation resources that could be otherwise spent on real conservation gains. Instead, political stunts simply alienate people who would otherwise reasonably contribute to improving the state of biodiversity. Incidentally, an environmental advocacy group in Australia emailed me to support their campaign to highlight the plight of sharks. I am a firm supporter of better conservation of sharks (see recent paper and post about this here). However, when I read their campaign propaganda, the first sentence read:

“Almost 90 % of sharks have been wiped out“

I immediately distanced myself from them. This is a blatant lie and terrible over-exaggeration. Ninety per cent of sharks HAVE NOT been wiped out. Some localised depletions have occurred, and not one single shark species has been recorded going extinct since records began. While I agree the world has a serious shark problem, saying outrageous things like this will only serve to weaken your cause. My advice to any green group is to get your facts straight and avoid the sensationlist game – you won’t win it, and you probably won’t be successful in doing anything beneficial for the species you purport to save.
CJA Bradshaw

Koh, L., Ghazoul, J., Butler, R., Laurance, W., Sodhi, N., Mateo-Vega, J., & Bradshaw, C. (2009). Wash and Spin Cycle Threats to Tropical Biodiversity Biotropica DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7429.2009.00588.x

Comments : 13 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, blackwashing, conservation, greenwashing, science
Categories : Asia, carbon, conservation, corruption, deforestation, environmental policy, Indonesia, Malaysia, oil palm, palm oil, propaganda, rain forests, Sarawak, South East Asia

Ray of conservation light for Borneo

25 07 2009

This was the most interesting 20 minutes I’ve spent in the last wee while.

Up until just now, I had never heard of Willie Smits or what he’s been doing in Indonesia. I’ve been fairly hard on Indonesia in some of my papers and blog posts because of the ecological tragedy taking place there. I’ve focussed on the immense rate and extent of deforestation, the oil palm explosion, peatland destruction and air pollution arising from runaway fires there – I have thus far ignored any real positives because I didn’t really believe there were any.

Then I saw Smits’ TED talk. Two words – very impressed. I usually enjoy and even barrack for TED talks, and this is no exception.

This man and his organisation have really been applying a great deal of the research mentioned on ConservationBytes.com, as well as collecting data proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you integrate people’s needs with those of biodiversity, you can restore not only entire ecosystems, you can make humans benefit immensely in the process. A chronic pessimist, I can scarcely believe it.

He talks about a whole-system approach where agriculture, full rain forest restoration, climate control, carbon sequestration, monitoring and local governance all work together to turn once bare, fire-prone, species-poor deforested grasslands into teaming jungles that support happy, healthy, wealthy and well-governed human communities. Please watch this.

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more about “Willie Smits restores a rainforest – TED Talks“, posted with vodpod

CJA Bradshaw

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Tags: biodiversity, Borneo, conservation, orangutan, TED, Willie Smits
Categories : agriculture, Asia, biodiversity, biosequestration, Borneo, carbon, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, fire, governance, Indonesia, investment, Malaysia, oil palm, palm oil, poverty, rain forests, recovery, reforestation, restoration, South East Asia, tropical

June Issue of Conservation Letters

6 06 2009

Quick off the mark this month is the new issue of Conservation Letters. There are some exciting new papers (listed below). I encourage readers to have a look:

Policy Perspectives

Briggs, SV. Priorities and paradigms: directions in threatened species recovery

Rosen, T, A Bath. Transboundary management of large carnivores in Europe: from incident to opportunity

Letters

Kellner, JB, A Hastings. A reserve paradox: introduced heterogeneity may increase regional invasibility

Venter, O et al. Carbon payments as a safeguard for threatened tropical mammals (blog post)

Underwood, EC et al. Evaluating conservation spending for species return: a retrospective analysis in California

Halpern BS et al. Mapping cumulative human impacts to California Current marine ecosystems

CJA Bradshaw

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : Asia, Borneo, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, coasts, conservation, deforestation, environmental policy, exploitation, fish, fisheries, governance, habitat loss, harvest, Indonesia, invasive species, investment, management, marine, marine protected area, oil palm, palm oil, predator, recovery, research, reserve, South East Asia, threatened species

Tropical forests worth more standing

4 06 2009

Keeping with the oil palm theme…

A paper just published online in Conservation Letters by Venter and colleagues entitled Carbon payments as a safeguard for threatened tropical mammals gets my vote for the Potential list.

We’ve been saying it again and again and again… tropical forests, the biodiversity they harbour and the ecosystem services they provide are worth more to humanity than the potential timber they represent. Now we find they’re even worth more than cash crops (e.g., oil palm) planned to replace them.

A few years ago some very clever economists and environmental policy makers came up with the concept of ‘REDD’ (reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), which is basically as system “… to provide financial incentives for developing countries that voluntarily reduce national deforestation rates and associated carbon emissions below a reference level”. Compensation can occur either via grant funding or through a carbon-trading scheme in international markets.

Now, many cash-greedy corporations argue that REDD could in no way compete with the classic rip-it-down-and-plant-the-shit-out-of-it-with-a-cash-crop approach, but Venter and colleagues now show this argument to be a bit of a furphy.

The authors asses the financial feasibility of REDD in all planned oil palm plantations in Kalimantan – Indonesia’s part of the island of Borneo in South East Asia. Borneo is also the heart of the environmental devastation typical of the tropics. They conclude that REDD is in fact a rather financially competitive scheme if we can manage to obtain carbon prices of around US$10-33/tonne. In fact, even when carbon prices are as low as US$2/tonne (as they are roughly now on the voluntary market), REDD is still competitive for areas of high forest carbon content and lower agricultural potential.

But the main advantage isn’t just the positive cash argument – many endangered mammals (and there are 46 of them in Kalimantan) such as the South East Asian equivalent of the panda (the orang-utan – ‘equivalent’ in the media-hype and political sensitivity sense, not taxonomic, of course) and the Bornean elephant (yes, they have them) are currently found in areas planned for plantation. So saving the forest obviously saves these and countless other taxa that only exist on this highly endemic island. Finally, Venter and colleagues found that where emission reductions were cheapest, these are also areas with higher-than-average densities of endangered mammals, suggesting that REDD is a fantastic option to keep developing countries in the black without compromising their extensive species richness and endemism.

Brilliant. Now if we can just get the economists and pollies to agree on a REDD model that actually works.

CJA Bradshaw

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science, tropical forests
Categories : agriculture, Asia, biodiversity, Borneo, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem services, environmental economics, environmental policy, habitat loss, harvest, Indonesia, investment, oil palm, palm oil, tropical

Indonesia’s precious peatlands under oil palm fire

31 05 2009

A small opinion piece about to be published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (June 2009 issue) discusses a major concern we (Lian Pin Koh, Rhett Butler and I) have with Indonesia’s decision to allow peatlands less than 3 m deep to be converted to oil palm. Is nothing immune to the spread of this crop (see previous posts here and here on oil palm plantations)?

Why is this such a big deal? Well, we list five main reasons why it’s a bad idea for Indonesia, the world in general and biodiversity:

Peatlands are amazing carbon sinks, so their destruction necessarily equates to a large release of carbon into the atmosphere (Page et al. 2002)
Tropical peatlands take a hell of a long time to generate – 100s to 1000s of years (Chimner and Ewel 2005)
Tropical peatlands harbour a massive biodiversity, but they are still poorly described and their ecosystems only superficially understood
The burning of peatlands to provide the conditions necessary to plant oil palm will contribute to the massive ‘haze’ problem in South East Asia (Lohman et al. 2007)
The decision goes against the principles of ‘reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation‘ (REDD), which means it will be more difficult to implement carbon trading schemes that intrinsically value intact forests

More detail can be found in the Write Back piece that will be published shortly in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. For more information on oil palm and its conservation implications, see the following:

Koh, LP, DS Wilcove. 2008. Is oil palm agriculture really destroying tropical biodiversity? Conservation Letters 1: 60-64
Fitzherbert, EB, MJ Struebig, A More, F Danielsen, CA Brühl, PF Donald, B Phalan. 2008. How will oil palm expansion affect biodiversity? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23: 538-545
Koh, LP, DS Wilcove. 2009. Oil palm: disinformation enables deforestation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24: 67-68
Butler, RA, LP Koh, J Ghazoul. 2009. REDD in the red: palm oil could undermine carbon payment schemes. Conservation Letters 2: 67-73
Koh, LP, P Levang, J Ghazoul. 2009. Designer landscapes for sustainable biofuels. Trends in Ecology and Evolution DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2009.03.012

CJA Bradshaw

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, oil palm, science
Categories : Asia, biocarbon, biodiversity, biosequestration, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conservation, deforestation, fire, habitat loss, Indonesia, oil palm, palm oil, tropical

One more (excellent) reason to conserve tropical forests

26 02 2009

Another nail in the deforesters’ justification coffin – tropical forests are worth more intact than cut down. This one from Mongabay.com and one for the Potential section:

Undisturbed tropical forests are absorbing nearly a fifth of carbon dioxide released annually by the burning of fossil fuels, according to an analysis of 40 years of data from rainforests in the Central African country of Gabon.

Writing in the journal Nature, Simon Lewis and colleagues report that natural forests are an immense carbon sink, helping slow the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels.

“We are receiving a free subsidy from nature,” said Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds. “Tropical forest trees are absorbing about 18% of the CO2 added to the atmosphere each year from burning fossil fuels, substantially buffering the rate of climate change.”

But the good news may not last for long. Other research suggests that as tropical forests fall to loggers, dry out due to rising temperatures, and burn, their capacity to absorb carbon is reduced.

The research, which combined the new data from African rainforests with previously published data from the Americas and Asia, lends support to the idea that old-growth forests are critical to addressing climate change. Recent climate negotiations have included debates on compensating tropical countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (“REDD” or “avoided deforestation”).

“To get an idea of the value of the sink, the removal of nearly 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by intact tropical forests, based on realistic prices for a tonne of carbon, should be valued at around £13 billion per year,” said study co-author Lee White, Gabon’s Chief Climate Change Scientist. “This is a compelling argument for conserving tropical forests.”

“Predominantly rich polluting countries should be transferring substantial resources to countries with tropical forests to reduce deforestation rates and promote alternative development pathways,” added Lewis.

The new findings show that tropical forests account for roughly half of the 8.5 billion tons of carbon that is sequestered in terrestrial sources each year, the balance is absorbed by soils and other types of vegetation. Another 8.5 billion tons dissolved in oceans, leaving 15 billion of the 32 billion tons emitted by humans each year in the atmosphere. Deforestation accounts for roughly 6 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions – greater than the emissions from all the world’s planes, ships, trucks, and cars.

Note – the contention by Muller-Landau that the Lewis and colleagues’ findings are not realistic due to ‘regeneration’ demonstrates her ignorance of recent work demonstrating the sequestration aspect of mature forests. But more importantly, this cherry-picked gripe, even if it were plausible, is almost of no consequence. With much of the world’s tropical forests already badly degraded or destroyed, there will inevitably be large areas of regenerating forests for centuries to come (i.e., time periods relevant to climate change projections). We haven’t even managed to reduce the RATE of tropical deforestation, so the opportunities for regeneration will persist, making the Lewis result all the more important. Muller-Landau is known for her unrealistic and anti-conservationist views, so her comments are hardly surprising. My advice – take her opinions with a very large shaker of salt (or better yet, ignore entirely).

CJA Bradshaw

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science, tropical forests
Categories : Africa, Amazon, biocarbon, biosequestration, carbon, Central America, climate change, climate shift, deforestation, ecosystem services, habitat loss, Indonesia, oil palm, palm oil, tropical

More greenwashing from the Malaysian oil palm industry

17 11 2008

A recent article from Mongabay.com. What the good doctor Basiron appears to gloss over rather well is that his own country’s very economic future, well-being of its citizenry and long-term sustainability absolutely depends on maintaining large tracts of intact primary forest. The value of its forests far outweighs the short-term ‘development’ gains from palm oil. The backflips, greenwashing and overt profiteering will only be a blip in Malaysia’s economic development, so keep on with the propaganda while you can, Basiron. Why don’t you call a spade a spade – it’s greed, not so-called ‘development’ that’s raping your own country.

Dr. Yusof Basiron, the controversial CEO of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), blogs about the sustainability of palm oil.

Scientists should compare the biodiversity oil palm plantations to other industrial monocultures, not the rainforests they replace, said Dr. Yusof Basiron, CEO of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), in a post on his blog.

“I would also like to encourage environmental scientists not to compare the biodiversity of an agricultural crop such as the oil palm with that of rain forests,” he wrote. “The findings would not win you a Nobel price [sic].”

“If a comparison is to be made, the biodiversity of the oil palm, an agricultural crop, should be compared with that for soyabean or rapeseed, corn or sugarcane or other agricultural crops,” he continued. “Biodiversity that exists in the oil palm plantations is a bonus for all to benefit, while we enjoy the supply of oil for our food need, in addition to palm oil – an agricultural commodity – helping to promote economic growth not only in the developing countries but also in all other countries involved in using the product.”

Oil palm plantations and logged over forest in Malaysian Borneo. While much of the forest land converted for oil palm plantations in Malaysia has been logged or otherwise been zoned for logging, expansion at the expense of natural and protected forest does occur in the country. Reserve borders are sometimes redrawn to facilitate logging and conversion to plantations.
Basiron’s comments are noteworthy because until now he has maintained that oil palm plantations are “planted forests” rather than an industrial crop. Oil palm plantations are indeed biologically impoverished relative to even heavily logged forests – a study published earlier this year showed that oil palm plantations retain less than one-sixth the biodiversity of old growth forests and less than a quarter of that in secondary forests. However when compared with soy or rapeseed farms, which support almost no wildlife, oil palm plantations look a little less like biological deserts. Small measures – like maintaining and restoring forest cover along waterways, conserving peatlands and high value conservation areas, and reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides – can help augment the biodiversity of existing plantations.

Basiron also noted that oil palm is the highest yielding conventional oilseed on the market – far outstripping the production per unit of area for rapeseed and soy. While its high yield makes oil palm exceedingly profitable – especially during the recent boom in palm oil prices, which recently ended, coinciding with falling oil prices – it also theoretically means that less land needs to be converted to produce the same amount of oil had the land been cultivated with other crops. The problem, say environmentalists, stems from the practice of clearing natural forest for oil palm plantations, which reduces biodiversity, hurts ecosystem functioning, and results in greenhouse gas emissions. While Basiron and the MPOC have flatly denied that natural forest has been cleared for the establishment of oil palm plantations, ground and satellite evidence proves the claims quite false. Nevertheless there are opportunities to covert degraded and abandoned agricultural lands for oil palm, mostly in Indonesia, rather than Malaysia where most land is already under cultivation or forested. While returns would be lower without the “logging subsidy” generated by selling the timber harvested from forest land prior to planting with oil palm, such plantations would face less criticism from the environmental community.

A third point made by Basiron is that Malaysia is a sovereign nation that has same rights to develop its economy as industrialized nations have had. The same concept has been put forth by Brazil over deforestation of the Amazon and China with regards to its rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Basiron writes,

“It is also unethical, immoral and somewhat patronizing for NGOs of the developed countries in Europe to ask developing countries such as Malaysia to stop developing its land. Asking Malaysia to stop developing its land will lead to conflicts and misunderstanding because some states in Malaysia have not yet had the opportunity to develop their agricultural land as they were until a few decades ago under oppressive colonial rule.”

“Sarawak [a state on the island of Borneo] which achieved independence from the British later than Peninsular Malaysia had only developed 8% of its land for agriculture compared to the UK which has over 70% of its land under agriculture. But there are still opportunities in Sarawak and other parts of Malaysia to develop degraded logged over land for planting rubber and oil palm to increase the country’s sources of foreign exchange while not involving the deforestation of the pristine permanent forests.”

While Basiron’s comments will likely be dismissed or ignored by many environmental groups, his points are not the sort that typically provoke outcry from the green lobby. MPOC lands in the most trouble with the environmental community when it attempts to deliberately mislead the marketplace on the environmental performance of palm oil, an approach the group has used repeatedly in recent years with advertising campaigns, “greenwashing” and “astroturfing” techniques, and other propaganda. Of course MPOC is not alone in using these tactics – it follows the model employed widely by industries ranging from U.S. ethanol producers to big oil. The problem for MPOC – and other industries – is that misleading campaigns are only providing more fodder for its enemies. But MPOC is hedging itself. The palm oil marketing group is also employing a second strategy that may pay better dividends in the long run – an effort to improve the environmental performance of palm oil. While the initiative – known as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – has stumbled a bit coming out of the blocks, it appears there may be a market for certified palm oil, which would offer producers a premium for mitigating the environmental and social impacts of producing the vegetable oil. The first RSPO-certified palm oil is expected the reach Europe today. Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumers of palm oil, has already pledged to buy only certified palm oil by 2015.