End of the 1st semester - so why Hilary always talk about palm oil

End of 1st Semester - So why Hilary always talks about Palm Oil?

I see this blog post more than just an assignment for my Political Ecology of Food and Agriculture class, rather more like a review and a sharing of my understanding about palm oil and as I seek direction as to where I should go from here.

As you know, I have work experience relevant to the global sustainability demand for responsible palm oil production. This has filled me with an understanding of the challenging context on the ground. Carrying these with me, I hope to find some answers through my American University Global Environmental Policy master’s degree program. 

While I appreciate every opportunity to engage in a conversation about Palm Oil, why we can't just label palm oil as "dirty", and why avoiding Palm Oil could be a wrong direction of ethical consumerism, I think writing about these on a blog is useful. Especially in this era of globalization, we easily can be flooded with one-sided information.  

1. What is Palm Oil?

Oil palm is a tree; Palm Oil is the oil extracted from the palm fruits (Fresh fruit bunches).

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhpARi2RnBQ

Off the top of my head… what is Palm Oil?
To small farmers, it means a living; to mega-corporations, it means a business; to NGOs, it’s on a measurement scale ranging from dirty to sustainable; to indigenous people, it means a challenge/struggle; to Malaysia, it means development; to ethical consumers, it means "No Palm Oil" or "Sustainable Palm Oil"; to the global economy, [I am going to find out soon]; to my classmates: here, it’s Hilary's topic!

While I have just laid out a quick view of palm oil from various parties, what I intend to show here is that there are many angles to look at when we talk about "Palm Oil". (And that’s why, it is also easy to paint just one-sided information for the general public.)

2. What should we know about palm oil?

Check out WWF's article on Which Everyday Products Contain Palm Oil? This article starts with "You might not cook with it, but you almost certainly eat or use palm oil."

Yes, WWF article ends with looking for certified sustainable palm oil label as a way of responsible consumerism. While I understand some of you question the real impact of certification (I do have the same concern), may I ask you to be open to understand the bigger picture of palm oil in order to make an informed decision for your definition of responsible consumerism?

Source: https://gizmodo.com/fascinating-graphic-shows-who-owns-all-the-major-brands-1599537576

This is a graphic showing that major brands are owned by a handful of corporations. I also find it useful to capture people's attention on the range of supermarket products that use palm oil. (And yes, you may be able to connect the dots between sustainable production and these few large corporations. We will talk about this a little bit later.)

What I have just shown to you is that “Palm Oil is everywhere”. Depending on what angle you look at, I would argue palm oil is "unavoidable". Let us go through a quick fact check and we will come back to this point again. 

Fact Check:

a) Highest yield of plant-based oil - Oil palm tree produces 11 times more oil than soybean plants, 10 times more than sunflower and 7 times more than canola, per hectare per year. Read more here.

b) The role of Palm Oil between environment and development 

While there have been numerous reports on Palm oil as a cause of deforestation, Palm oil is actually one of the big 4 drivers of deforestation, the others include beef, soy, and wood. Read some easy digestible newsletter here. 

There are many papers written assessing the role of palm oil in poverty eradication and economic development among the developing countries. I found one showing that palm oil provides employment for more than millions of people and livelihood for 721, 000 smallholders.

So I ask: to what extent this has benefited our people in Malaysia? To understand this, I try to go back to Malaysia’s colonial period to understand how palm oil plays a key role in Malaysia’s poverty eradication. My preliminary analysis this semester found that oil palm planting during the early stage in Malaysia benefited a group of “landless poor”, but another group of “land rich, cash poor” indigenous people have little to no economic benefits and to a larger extent, have been deprived of their rights to land. 

Historically, palm oil was brought into Malaysia as a cash crop by the British. Colonization changed the local social setting and created two phenomena: landless poor; and land rich, cash poor communities. During the post-colonization period, Malaysia’s government launched a major land development scheme. This was captured in The World Bank’s Malaysia economic report: “Although the land available for development ultimately is limited, there is no reason to delay its use.” Increased world demand of palm oil and the domestic political economy dynamic at that time has further encouraged the palm oil industry in Malaysia.

Besides this, I also found that the recent years’ biodiesel policies are driven largely by private sectors’ interest. They were used initially as a backup plan to stabilize the oil and petroleum industry in the West. In addition, overproduction in the western agricultural industry led to low food prices and so, the biodiesel market was created as one of the surplus dumping strategies. I also found in a few research papers information about the displacement effect of EU biodiesel policies and how this jeopardizes the sustainable development in developing countries.

While this semester has given me a lot of academic information about the contrasting interests between developed and developing countries  – and in fact, we are now in the midst of a heated global debate to phase out palm oil – (as what I have learned in the Environment and Politics class) I think we should start to question: Whose future generations are we seeking to protect – the developing countries’ or the developed countries’? 

All in all, this encouraged me to learn more about global economy and sustainable development. Perhaps, this could be relevant to what Dr Mahathir (current Prime Minister of Malaysia) wrote in 2002 – Globalization and Developing Countries.

c) Palm Oil & Health. I am less familiar with this Palm Oil topic. However, I find the interview with Dr Jean Michel Lecerf (Head of the Nutrition Service of the Institute Pasteur Lille, France) able to offer some balanced view on this topic.

It is a 4 minute video in French (with English subtitles) titled:"Is palm oil hazardous to my health?" While Dr Jean Michel Lecerf has dispelled most of the doubts about palm oil dangers to health, the recent challenge facing the palm oil industry is 3 monochloropropane diol (3-MCPD), a food processing contaminant found in some processed foods and vegetable oils, mainly Palm Oil. Read more about "Should the US food industry be concerned about a 3-MCPD backlash."

3. What is the recent heated debate around Palm Oil?

To understand the recent heated debate, you may want to watch this Greenpeace video "Rang tan: the story of dirty palm oil".

The debate came when Iceland Supermarket used this video as a Christmas advertisement to promote their "No Palm Oil" Christmas product range. While this has invited tons of debate, I have selected one article that offers a balanced view of the crux of the issue. See here: How the world is waking up to palm oil in the wake of banned Iceland orang-utan advert. This article is unique as it doesn't just discuss the surface-level issue of oil palm expansion, but highlights the need to re-examine the underlying political and socio-economic forces that contribute to deforestation.

I find it rather self-contradictory for Iceland Supermarket, where on one hand it celebrating their "responsible consumerism" by phasing out palm oil, on the other hand it calls for more consumption by promoting their "No Palm Oil" Christmas products. I need to highlight that "reduce consumption" is one of the crucial elements discussed in the IPCC Global Warming of 1.5 ºC report and Missing Pathway to 1.5 ºC. 

Perhaps it is now worth taking some time to understand what the industry has been doing in response to all the challenges. Long story short, there are various mandatory and voluntary certifications and large corporations have responded by committing to “No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation (NDPE)”. You will be able to find how each corporation reports their progress in NDPE on their website, or, if you want to know more about certification, here are two of them: RSPO & MSPO. Of course, to provide you with a balanced view, here is one of the reports explaining the leakage markets for unsustainable palm oil and check out the Palm Oil news by Mongabay.

I understand that the motive behind most of the "No Palm Oil" campaign came from the view that there is no guarantee that palm oil is not causing rain forest destruction and from a lack of confidence in "sustainable" palm oil production. 

In fact, as the word "sustainable" has been widely use today, I ask, is your understanding of "sustainable" the same as my interpretation of "sustainable"? 

Should your understanding of sustainable mean “zero deforestation and zero exploitation”, I really invite you to rethink how you can play a more effective role in achieving this. 

Banning palm oil can impact the livelihood of small farmers and this can be a form of exploitation. Perhaps, reducing consumption and food wastage during this festive Christmas season can be more effective than banning palm oil?

4. So, what does all this adds up to?

While I am still here searching for my answer, what I see now is that: 

• Palm oil is unavoidable. 
• The palm oil industry provides employment and livelihood for millions; however, it can also takeaway livelihood of others if not well developed.
• It is an important economic development strategy for developing countries but has caused the loss of forests and biodiversity.
• It is not the product (palm oil) but the way it is produced that we need to change.
• How can we all play a role to inspire change? I think we need to set our target right by examining the root causes of deforestation and exploitation.

5. If I may leave you with some food for thoughts and a little story...

• If you are avoiding palm oil products, think about what do the companies use as an alternative. Please use the same ruler to evaluate the alternative oil that the company will use as a replacement. I respect your decision but be sure that you are doing so for logical reasons based on objective factors.
• Think about what are the root causes of deforestation.  I am not saying the surface problem nor the proximate causes. To make myself clear, I am saying: Does boycotting Palm Oil help to stop deforestation? Who has the ultimate control over the resources and land use? Who actually benefits from all of this? What is actually driving the global demand of Palm Oil?

Let me share a version of joke shared by Dr. Robin Broad of American University to students on the last day of her Fall 2018 graduate Environment & Development class. It struck me!  

There are 2 characters in this story - a man and a woman. The story starts with featuring a man entering a hall. He then walked up the long staircase to the second floor and noticed that the entire building has a very dim light. 

On the second floor, he walked past a room and saw a woman on bent knees searching for something on the floor. 

He asked: “Are you searching for something? Can I help you?"

She answered: “Yes, I lost my key."

So, he knelt down to help her look for the key. After 15 minutes, they both found nothing. 

Burning out of curiosity, he asked: “I think we have spent a good 15 minutes but I couldn't find anything here. Could you recall where you lost your key?"

The woman pointed to the dark side of the room and said: "Actually, I lost my key on that side of the room, but this area is brighter and easier for me to search."

[Thanks to Robin Broad of American University in Washington, DC for letting me retell a version of her joke..... ]

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There are many topics in palm oil that I haven't managed to cover in this blog post (for e.g., transboundary haze, global economy, etc.). I will address these as I gain more insights over the next few semesters. In fact, each of the topics discussed here is worth an in-depth discussion by itself in order to carve a better way forward. 

If you are interested to know more, I plan to document how my perspective has changed during my US journey. I can be slow at blogging, but I know I will. 

I think my next missing puzzle pieces is "economic globalization". This is an interesting read: Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe.

Of course, if you ever see me in person, or you happen to be in a class with me, and, if again I am talking about palm oil, I welcome your thoughts.  I am more than happy to engage in a conversation with you.

Thank you for reading! Happy Christmas and A Wonderful New Year! Ciao~