KUCHING: Wilmar International, Asia’s leading agribusiness group and Unilever, global consumer goods leader, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that aims to accelerate sustainable market transformation for palm oil with the declaration of ‘No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation’ policy (December 5, 2013).
This declaration is discriminatory to oil palm planters in Sarawak and damaging to the state’s government’s development plan of achieving 3 million hectares of oil palm.
Wilmar, which operates the Bintulu Edible Oil (BEO) plant in Sarawak and buying about 1.7 million tonnes of CPO (crude palm oil) annually here, also stated that it will immediately cease to do business with suppliers who do not take immediate action in compliance with the policy which amongst others include no new planting in peat areas regardless of depth and no new planting in High Carbon Stock (HCS) and High Conservation Value (HCV) forest areas. Only young scrub and cleared open land with mostly grass and non-woody plants are eligible to be planted under the conditions set. In Sarawak there are no scrub or grassland areas as such which means that development of oil palm will have to cease immediately to comply with the conditions set.
“SOPPOA (Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association) is very disappointed by the unilateral action of Wilmar in coming out with the declarations as it is discriminatory and detrimental to development of oil palm industry here. In fact, it will have a major impact on the oil palm industry here given their high volume purchased in Sarawak.As declared by Wilmar, suppliers must comply with their policy by 31 December 2015 after which verifications by independent consultants will be compulsory for suppliers to meet the conditions set, failing which the suppliers will be dropped from their list. Sarawak is the last frontier for oil palm expansion in Malaysia and so now the nation’s development plan for the industry will also fail to materialize following the declaration.” said the spokesperson for SOPPOA.
“Willmar’s policy is based on RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) benchmark with nine (9) other additional conditionswhich is driven by NGOs(non-governmental organizations) based on assumptions, prompting the Indonesian palm oil producers (GAPKI) to pull out of the RSPO last year. This is because the RSPO aimed to discriminateagainst oil palm in peat based on the assumption that peat has high carbon stock and allegedly release high carbon dioxide (GHG). These allegations and assumptions have yet to be scientifically proven but Willmar and Unilever have already passed judgment on the industry here. Currently, Malaysia has been conducting scientific research for the past four years, through MPOB (Malaysian Palm Oil Board) and TPRL (Tropical Peat Research Laboratory), to ascertain the amount of GHG releases in oil palm planted in peat areas which will provide scientific data and facts. The RSPO assumptions are based on temperate peat conditions which are totally different from those in tropical peat areas,” the spokesperson revealed.
Taken from New Sarawak Tribune
