Will Nestle’s decision stop 300 football fields of forest from being cleared …

by Tim Wilson, May 19, 2010

We were quite interested to hear that another domino in the food manufacturing industry has fallen for sustained political pressure from Greenpeace et al over palm oil. The announcement by Nestle now means they’ll only buy sustainable palm oil. But have they fallen for a green con?

Green groups have been proclaiming loudly that the palm oil industry is responsible for the clearing of 300 football fields in Indonesia each hour. That’s a lot of tree clearing!

But the FAO has identified that Indonesia’s forests are still as big as France and Spain combined. That’s a lot of forest!

And it is only being reduced by 2.2 per cent a year.

At that rate it would take at least 40 years to remove all forests. And somehow that doesn’t seem likely since 27.5 per cent of all forest is being kept for protection, nearly 20 per cent is being used for conservation and only around half will be used for production. And then there’s conservation space for orang utan.

So the real question is where this claim of 300 football fields being cleared by the palm oil industry come from? In 2005 Greenpeace Indonesia calculated the number in its campaign against industrial and illegal logging. No mention of palm oil.

But that hasn’t stopped the World Wildlife Fund just transposing the number over to the palm oil industry. And now they’re claiming it is South East Asia-wide. That’s a lot of region!

There’s clearly a discrepancy in the numbers and, presuming Greenpeace’s number was accurate in the first place (which we’re not so confident about at SusatinableDev.org), it seems WWF has taken a lot of exaggerative license. But that’s nothing new in green politics!

Meanwhile the FAO estimates that less than a third of deforestation is related to the palm oil industry. And the rest is mostly cleared by poor farmers who need wood for fires and land to grow and collect food.

But the problem is that Nestle is now, yet another, company that appears to have fallen for the green con.

No doubt it’s an easy decision to make in the rolling hills of Switzerland. But there’s the 2 million odd people who rely on palm oil for their livelihood in Indonesia and Malaysia. We doubt they’re taking it so well.

Eds note: In the original posting of this story numbers were used regarding the clearance and protection rates of Indonesian forests. Fortunately, the rates of clearance were too high, and the rates of protection were too low. This post has now been updated with the correct numbers. Apologies for any confusion.

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