After 30 Years Of Greenwash, Malaysian Palm Oil Industry Admits Possible Problems For Orangutans

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HUTAN's Q&A with Dr. Marc Ancrenaz

Do you agree with claims by organisations such as World Growth that the oil palm industry is not directly responsible for the decline of orang-utan?

Dr. Ancrenaz: These claims are untrue, irresponsible and are misleading. Genetic studies in Sabah show that orang-utan population have declined by 50 to 90% over the past few decades. This severe decline is due to several causes such as hunting and pet trade, but the foremost reason is forest losses when the forest is cut down and converted to agriculture. In Borneo and Sumatra where wild orang-utans live, forest is primarily converted to palm oil and industrial tree plantations. Forest conversion results in an extreme loss of biodiversity and the destruction of species like the orang-utans. There is no doubt about this.

In this case why does World Growth and others in the palm oil industry make such false claims?

Dr. Marc Ancrenaz: I think this is because you have two “groups”, the orang-utan group and the palm oil group. People on both sides are so passionate that it becomes difficult to have an impartial view of the true situation on the ground. The industry is under attack by environmentalists and has adopted a very defensive “greenwashing” approach denying there are the root cause of the problem. NGOs have adopted the opposite strategy called “blackwashing” and blame the industry for all problems encountered in the field, which is not true either. This situation is very sad since the debate in its current stage cannot move in any direction at all. We all need to work together to identify solutions.

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So what is the situation within the oil palm landscape in Sabah Dr. Ancrenaz?

Dr. A: Today, oil palm plantations cover a staggering 14,000 square kilometers of Sabah, that’s equal to having 20 Singapore in landmass of palm oil! This is why Sabah is the number one producer of Malaysian palm oil. Palms need to be planted in lowlands below 500 meters, unfortunately these lowland forests used to be inhabited by large concentrations of orang-utans and other wildlife before the forest was converted to agriculture. Developing oil palm plantations in lowland habitats is therefore destroying the home of the unique biodiversity found in Borneo. On a more localized scale, we have been studying orang-utans in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary since 1998. The Sanctuary is home to about 1,000 orang-utans, but this habitat is highly “broken up” in isolated patches of forests that are surrounded by oil palm plantations. We recently realized that young male orang-utans were disappearing from our study site but we didn’t have any clue where were they going? Of course, we wanted to investigate this further, and this project conducted under BCT with funding from MPOC gave us the opportunity to investigate this situation in Eastern Sabah.

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Does this mean that the orang-utans have adapted to surviving within palm oil plantations

Dr. A: I want to be absolutely clear here, so that these findings are not misquoted by others again, orang-utans have not adapted to the palm oil landscape and cannot survive within the palm oil landscape in its present condition today. It is equivalent to asking a human to survive on eating potatoes alone. Just as humans need a variety of food sources for survival and health, so do the orang-utans. In the course of our research in the Kinabatangan we have identified more than 300 different species of plant-life being consumed by the orang-utans in the forest, which is their natural habitat.

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http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0116-orangutans.html

[amborin]

1. palm oil plantations are a scourge