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| The climate ‘timebomb’ of palm oil Thursday, November 8, 2007 Giant retailers such as Unilever, Nestlé and Proctor & Gamble were accused yesterday of unleashing a ticking 'climate bomb' in driving up the demand for palm oil from Indonesia. A Greenpeace report said that, to meet the demand for cheap vegetable oil, 4million hectares of peatland – equal to the size of Switzerland – is at risk. It warned that destroying peatland forests in Riau, Sumatra – which have the highest concentration of carbon stores in the world – could release the equivalent of the entire global annual greenhouse gas emissions. 'Unless efforts are made to halt forest and peatland destruction, emissions from these peatlands may trigger a “climate bomb”,' the report warned. It also claimed the firms depended on an industry involved in deforestation and conversion of peat swamps to plantations. And it said the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), set up by companies and producers to regulate the industry, was failing to prevent conversion of environmentally valuable land to plantations or make production sustainable. According to Greenpeace, 1.8billion tonnes, or four per cent, of total global climate change emissions are being released each year from the destruction of the peatlands and peat swamp forests. Riau has 1.4million hectares of palm oil plantations which provide cheap vegetable oil for food, cosmetics and biofuels. Another 3million hectares of peatland in the province are earmarked for plantations, the campaigners said. In total, Riau's peat areas store 14.6billion tonnes of carbon, the report said. Spokesmen for Unilever, Nestlé and Proctor & Gamble last night said they were members of the RSPO and were committed to using only palm oil that came from sustainable supplies. |
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