Rainforest Problems
Government admits palm kernel animal feed contributes to rainforest destruction
Mr English also sought to deflect attention from Fonterra’s use of palm kernel by twice challenging Greenpeace to picket the nation's supermarkets over palm-oil products such as margarine, processed foods and soap.
Amazon felled for British plywood
You might not guess it flying west from Manaus in a small plane but the mighty Amazon forest is in jeopardy. Thirty years ago only one percent of the Amazon forest had been cut down. Today a quarter has disappeared.
Now previously untouched areas in the very heart of the forest are being felled, and, as elsewhere, most of the logging is illegal.
The logging takes place during the dry season, which has just begun. Later in the year when the rains come and the floodwater rises the logs are floated out of the forests and down the rivers to saw mills, many of them in Amazonia's biggest city, Manaus.
Is deforestation rising or falling in the Amazon?
Last week Brazil's National Space Agency INPE reported a 51 percent drop in Amazon deforestation in the six months ended February 2010 compared with the year earlier period. But the seemingly happy news for environmentalists may be premature.
Data from Imazon, an independent organization that aims to improve forest transparency through advanced analysis of satellite imagery and other tools, reveals a 23 percent increase during the period. Why does the data conflict?
Paper company loses green certification after rainforest destruction in Indonesia
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a global certifier of sustainably managed forest, has dropped another Indonesian company for the destruction of rainforests. Asia Paper Resources International Limited (APRIL), has had its certification suspended due to evidence of conversion of rainforests for acacia plantations, the destruction of 'High Conservation Value Forest', draining peatlands, as well as continuing conflicts with local communities. The decision was made by the Rainforest Alliances Smartwood, an accreditation program with the FSC.
"This means that until practices on the ground drastically improve, pulp and paper products from Indonesia must be off limits to anyone who cares about human rights, the climate or rainforests," said Lafcadio Cortesi of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in a press release.
APRIL is not the first pulp and paper company to lose its certification due to deforestation and problems with communities. Asia Pulp and Paper (APP)—Indonesia's largest paper producer—lost its FSC certification in 2007 due to similar problems. A number of big paper purchasers have also dropped APP—including Office Depot, Unisource, Tiffany and Co., Wal-Mart, Staples, Woolworths, and Gucci—to the tune of an estimated loss of $300 million in 2008.
Rainforests Die for Cattle Feed
DAIRY farmers have been implicated in a new palm oil scandal after
revelations that last year the national herd ate one-quarter of the
world's palm kernel stock food supply.
More than one million tonnes of palm kernel expeller (PKE) was imported last year, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, where environmental groups are concerned at the palm industry's role in the loss of tropical rainforest and destruction of tiger and orang-utan habitat.
An international body, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, has been set up to ensure sustainable supply of palm product, but secretary-general Dr Vengeta Rao said last week that "very little" of what entered New Zealand would have been certified.
His comment follows Cadbury's decision to back down on plans to introduce palm oil to its Dairy Milk chocolate, after a public outcry.
PKE is created when palm fruit is crushed and processed to produce palm kernel oil. Based on figures provided by the roundtable, a maximum 330,000 tonnes of PKE on the global market since last August could be considered certified. This country imported 1,104,387 tonnes, putting our consumption rates second only to the combined 27 countries of the European Union.
