Indonesia Plans Palm Monoculture Half Holland's Size In Heart Of Borneo

[hatrack]

JAKARTA - Indonesian plans for a huge palm oil plantation in the heart of Borneo island could devastate some of the last remaining natural forests in Southeast Asia, a global environmental watchdog said on Friday.

WWF International said the planned plantation in Kalimantan, along the border with Malaysia, would be the world's biggest, covering an area of 1.8 million hectares (about 4.5 million acres), or equivalent to half the size of the Netherlands. It said the area chosen for the plantation was too high above sea level to be effectively cultivated.

"It doesn't make commercial or conservation sense to rip the forest out of The Heart of Borneo' to plant a crop which cannot grow in mountainous conditions," Mubariq Ahmad, chief executive director of WWF Indonesia, said in a statement. "We are calling on the Indonesian government to work only with serious and responsible palm oil investors," he said.

The WWF statement said Chinese investors were funding the project. Indonesian authorities could not be reached for immediate comment. However, local media in July reported plans to develop integrated palm oil plantation and processing facilities on Kalimantan which were projected to increase output by 2.7 million tonnes a year.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/32024/story.htm

Yeah, guys, that's a GREAT FUCKING IDEA! VISIONARY!

[displacedtexan]

1. Palm oil is the worst thing you can digest!

I know there's nothing like the middle of an Oreo, but that stuff is deadly!

So... they rip out a perfectly good forest to build a palm oil factory.

So wrong on so many levels!

[NNadir]

6. Palm oil is excellent, though, for making biodiesel.

These kind of choices will be bulldozed quite literally until the last bit of forest is paved.

I can see nothing worse than the destruction of virgin rain forest, nothing save coal mining. But I have little power. I live on Easter Island.

http://www.netaxs.com/~trance/rapanui.html

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. This is outrageous.

Borneo has one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, where entire species are confined to a single valley and are unknown across a ridge just miles away. Many of the Borneo rainforest species have never been catalogued. This would be an ecological disaster.

[dcfirefighter]

3. I am always amused by folks who like to bitch about other countries

environmental follies.

Let's clean our house first.

[blindpig]

4. we're not allowed to be concerned about the Orangutan

and the myriad other lifeforms that will be driven into extinction if the project comes to fruition?:eyes:

Be assured, I have more than enough angst to go around.

Hope you enjoyed your chuckle.

[hatrack]

5. Yes, what's another few billion tons of CO2 released to the atmosphere?

Their house IS our house - there's only one house, in case you totally missed the point of this particular forum.

[dcfirefighter]

7. And our house is far and away a bigger problem

In 1998 the US emitted 19,800 metric tons of CO2 per capita.
In the same year, Indonesia 1,100 metric tons of CO2 per capita.
Clearing 4.5M Ha of forested land will realease roughly 175 tons of CO2/Ha, or 315M metric tons. At 242,000,000 people, this is 1.3 metric tons per person, for that year only, less than 1/1000 of their existing emissions, and 1/15,000 of our per capita emissions.

I agree the plantation is a stupid idea, but really, pick your battles, and clean your own house first, before you try and tell some third world folks that they can't try and make their way as best they can.

For comparison, if the US wanted to save 1.3 metric tons of CO2 per capita, we'd have to reduce our per capita gasoline consumption by 145 gallons.