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New World Growth report contains 'false and misleading' informationRhett A. Butler, mongabay.comMarch 31, 2011  Palm oil mill in Sumatra.
The report, released today, claims that reducing deforestation in Indonesia will cost the country 3.5 million jobs annually by slowing growth of the forestry sector. "This would cost the Indonesian economy up to 3.5 million jobs annually, cut growth to industries that make up 15 per cent of the economy, and cut revenues to the Indonesian government, hampering its ability to sustainably manage Indonesia’s forest areas and continue poverty alleviation efforts," said Alan Oxley, a lobbyist who heads World Growth International.
"The World Growth report is misleading," Effendi told mongabay.cm via email. "Greenomics sees the employment calculation as false and totally baseless." Effendi said that Indonesian government data shows that over the last ten years, each point of economic growth created 305,000 jobs. The rate has accelerated to 400,000 jobs per percentage point during the past three years. Thus the 6.1 percent growth in 2010 should have generated some 2.4 million jobs across all economic sectors, including forest-related industries. "Greenomics is confident World Growth's claim that stopping expansion of forest-related industries would cost the Indonesian economy 3.5 million jobs annually is a misleading figure," he said, noting that forest-related industries account for only 5 percent of Indonesia's economy, according to state data. "The Indonesian forestry sector (0.75%), paper and other printing products industry (1.02%), wood-based products and other forest products (1.25%), and plantations (2.11%) amount to 5.13% of 2010 GDP," Effendi explained. "If we include mining sector, excluding oil and gas, the total contribution of forest-related industries stood at 11.79%." "Based on the above figures, it means that forest-related industries (including mining) created 288,000 jobs."  Oil palm and logged over rainforest in Sabah, Malaysia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler 2008. World Growth International's report also downplays expansion that could occur on non-forest land. The Indonesian government has said tens of millions of hectares of degraded lands could be brought into production should the country move to slow conversion of natural forests under its proposed billion dollar forest conservation agreement with Norway. World Growth International assumes that efforts to limit deforestation and forest degradation would stop all growth of the forestry sector. But last week Indonesia's Deputy Minister of Agriculture said that yield improvements and other productivity gains could boost palm oil production in Indonesia by 2 million tonnes a year without the need to clear more land. World Growth International's report comes just days after Indonesia's largest palm oil producer Golden Agri Resources (GAR) said its new forest policy, which prohibits conversion of high conservation value and high carbon stock forests and peatlands, will not impact its economic growth.
"The additional cost of this policy will not be material," Peter Heng, Managing Director, Communications and Sustainability at GAR told mongabay.com in response to World Growth International's mailing. "Based on initial field work, we think that the land to be earmarked as high carbon stock is not significant as GAR's concessions are on degraded land." The rebuke from GAR was notable because Oxley was hired last year by the Sinar Mas group, which controls GAR, to cast doubt on environmental complaints lodged by Greenpeace, which had been campaigning against GAR's subsidiary PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources & Technology (PT SMART). Heng told mongabay.com that GAR is not engaging Oxley.
World Growth International reports have also dismissed other important environmental concerns, including emissions from conversion of peatlands for plantations and loss of habitat for threatened species including orangutans and Sumatran tigers. Its missives have claimed oil palm is generally not suited for peatlands and that rights' groups typically do not apply the concept of free, prior informed consent to local communities.
"A number of the key arguments of World Growth International, ITS Global, and Alan Oxley, represent significant distortions, misrepresentations, or misinterpretations of fact," wrote the scientists, led by William F. Laurance, a researcher at James Cook University. "In other cases, the arguments they have presented amount to a 'muddying of the waters' which we argue is designed to defend the credibility of the corporations we believe are directly or indirectly supporting them financially. As such, World Growth International and ITS Global should be treated as lobbying or advocacy groups, not as independent think-tanks, and their arguments weighted accordingly."
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(02/09/2011) One of the world's highest profile and most controversial palm oil companies, Golden Agri-Resources Limited (GAR), has signed an agreement committing it to protect tropical forests and peatlands in Indonesia. The deal—signed with The Forest Trust, an environmental group that works with companies to improve their supply chains—could have significant ramifications for how palm oil is produced in the country, which is the world's largest producer of palm oil.
(01/26/2011) The commercial shows a typical office setting. A worker sits drearily at a desk, shredding papers and watching minutes tick by on the clock. When his break comes, he takes out a Nestle KitKat bar. As he tears into the package, the viewer, but not the office worker, notices something is amiss—what should be chocolate has been replaced by the dark hairy finger of an orangutan. With the jarring crunch of teeth breaking through bone, the worker bites into the “bar." Drops of blood fall on the keyboard and run down his face. His officemates stare, horrified. The advertisement cuts to a solitary tree standing amid a deforested landscape. A chainsaw whines. The message: Palm oil—an ingredient in many Nestle products—is killing orangutans by destroying their habitat, the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.
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