Oil Palm Plantations

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I start by sincerely thanking my noble friend Lord Eden of Winton for raising this very important issue. He became the country’s youngest MP in 1954 and went on to join the Lords in 1983. On his retirement this June, he will have served an incredible 61 years in Parliament. His expertise will be sorely missed. I thank my noble friend Lord Cormack for the tribute that he paid.

I also note that my noble friend Lord Eden was vice-president of the International Tree Foundation for more than 40 years, which brings me back to the subject of today’s debate: the impact of palm oil plantations on our planet’s climate and biodiversity. Needless to say, the Government are fully committed to responding to the challenge of land use change to our planet’s climate and biodiversity. Globally, as we have heard, around 13 million hectares of forest were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year between 2000 and 2010. More action is needed if we are to meet our objective of halving deforestation by 2020 and ending natural forest loss by 2030.

We have heard from my noble friend Lord Eden and the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, of all the uses of palm oil, and global demand for palm oil is expected only to grow. Estimates by the Earth Security Group suggest that demand will increase by 32% by 2020. Production of palm oil is already increasing in Colombia, Brazil, Papua New Guinea and areas of west and central Africa. Yet there is growing recognition that unsustainable production of palm oil may increase the destruction of tropical rainforest and drainage of peat-land areas. In turn, this destruction has major impacts on biodiversity, climate change and the land rights of local peoples, as we have heard.

For example, we know that clearing forests and peat-lands releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases; oil palm plantations hold fewer than half as many vertebrate species as primary forests; and conversion of forests to plantations can reduce the number of bird species by at least 60%. The species most at threat are those which rely on habitats that are not found in palm oil plantations: animals as diverse as the Malaysia river frog, the orangutan—as we have heard—and the Borneo elephant.

We recognise the need for a better understanding of these impacts if we are going to respond in the most effective way. That is why Defra and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, together with the Stockholm Environment Institute, have developed a model to assess the potential impact of UK imports on the environment and biodiversity overseas. A project using this model to evaluate the impact of palm oil plantations on biodiversity in south-east Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America is due to report in May, and we look forward to those results. However, this should not delay, and has not delayed, the Government from taking action to promote both the supply and the demand of sustainably produced palm oil.

Efforts have been made to produce palm oil more sustainably, and chief among them, as we know, is the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. The RSPO is a global, multi-stakeholder organisation where businesses and NGOs have worked together to agree principles and criteria for the sustainable production of palm oil, develop a certification system and bring certified sustainable palm oil to market. However, I hear the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, has when she asks: where is the scientific community and where is the rigour in their inspection? The RSPO has been effective in many areas and is the key international organisation driving the move to sustainable palm oil. Without it, the transition would be extremely difficult. There are still some areas of the RSPO principles and criteria that the Government would like to see tightened, notably the inclusion of a standard on greenhouse gas emissions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, also wondered about the inclusion of the United Nations. In November 2014, the United Nations environment programme and the RSPO signed a memorandum of understanding, which aims to raise global awareness and generate market demand for sustainable palm oil. Moves are in hand on that.

In the UK, we have been working with trade associations, NGOs and others since 2011 to encourage the switch to the sustainable sourcing of palm oil. During the Prime Minister’s visit to Indonesia in April 2012, we announced that we would work with British trade associations and companies to set out a road map to achieving sustainable palm oil use nationwide. In October 2012, we published a joint statement with key palm oil-using sectors, setting out that:

“The United Kingdom is working towards achieving 100% sourcing of credibly certified sustainable palm oil by the end of 2015”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, talked about this, and we are working towards it. The Government are also a signatory to the statement and fund a support service for businesses to move to sustainable sourcing. We track progress towards this shared ambition through annual palm oil consumption reports. We have also amended the government buying standard for food and catering so that all food and catering products bought by central government must meet sustainability requirements from the end of 2015.

The UK is one of the leading importer countries encouraging the move to sustainable palm oil and the latest figures show that the UK is making progress. Analysis shows that the estimated proportion of UK palm oil imports supported by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil certification was either 55% or 71% in 2013, depending on the trade data source.

Internationally, we are working with Governments, the private sector, scientists and civil society in a range of countries to incentivise sustainable palm oil production and reduce carbon emissions and habitat loss through combating deforestation.

My noble friend Lord Dundee raised the issue of European co-operation. We are supportive of greater knowledge exchange and co-ordination between national commitments and have already participated in a number of meetings with representatives of other national commitments. More generally, the EU is considering the development of an action plan on deforestation and forest degradation, as outlined in the EU’s seventh environmental action programme. The Government support consideration of an action plan to promote Europe-wide action on the supply and demand of commodities linked to deforestation. We will certainly seek to work with our European neighbours in this respect.

I would like to highlight two key programmes aiming to make a difference in Malaysia and Indonesia. The first is the Government’s £3.9 billion international climate fund, for which tackling global deforestation is a priority. In total, over £500 million has been committed to forestry projects, and a number of noble Lords asked about the funding for this. The Department for International Development has recently invested £60 million in a new programme that has the potential to improve the productivity of existing smallholder palm oil plantations, whose yields are typically half those of professional plantations and who apply higher environmental and social standards. In that way, we can help farmers increase their yields without having to clear more forest.

Secondly, since 2013, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s South East Asia Prosperity Fund programme has supported a project that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly those linked to palm oil plantations. This project has created a knowledge exchange network between policy advisers, local and international NGOs, businesses and scientists. The network disseminates scientific information and informs evidence-based policy development on sustainable oil palm production in Malaysia and Indonesia.

These programmes support wider government action to protect endangered species and valuable peat-lands affected by the demand for palm oil. In 2013, the orangutan was a featured species in our awareness-raising campaign, If They’re Gone, which focused on the need for sustainable palm oil. The Government have provided $500,000 to the Global Tiger Initiative, which aims to double tiger numbers in the wild by 2022.

My noble friend asked what progress was being made on REDD+ and who was monitoring the distribution of funds. UK International Climate Fund finance for forests is used for all three phases of REDD+. DECC, Defra and DfID support the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, the BioCarbon Fund and the Forest Investment Program. These programmes are administered and monitored by the World Bank and are subject to periodic independent review. We welcome the progress made by more than 50 countries in developing programmes that support efforts to slow, halt and reverse deforestation. Separately, I note that this week my noble friend Lord De Mauley is leading the UK delegation in Botswana in a follow-up conference to last year’s London conference on combating the illegal wildlife trade.

However, this Government’s efforts do not stop there. The UK is playing a leading role in negotiations both on a legally binding climate agreement and on the sustainable development goals. I assure my noble friend that we will be represented at the New York meeting in September. My noble friend was quite right to highlight the opportunity that these negotiations will afford. Both are essential for the international community and should enable us to agree an effective response to global issues and to protect our planet’s natural resources.

My noble friend Lord Eden asked about the blurring of the definitions of “forest” and “rainforest” which enables people to avoid conservation obligations. All international agreements which promote the concept of sustainable forest management apply to all types of forest, irrespective of their origins. That is deliberate, as it allows recognition of the specific economic, social and environmental roles played by different types of forest.

My noble friend asked what Her Majesty’s Government’s objectives were for the Paris COP in December. Here, the UK is working with EU member states and other countries to secure a legally binding agreement with mitigation commitments for all in Paris at the end of the year.

My noble friend Lord Dundee asked how we target SMEs in the hospital sector. The door remains open to organisations wishing to sign up to the UK statement. Defra is working with the Central Point of Expertise on Timber and trade associations to provide support to businesses including SMEs on sourcing sustainable palm oil. We recognise that there are a significant number of SMEs in the food, drink and hospitality sectors, and CPET has been working with the relevant trade associations to provide support that meets the needs of its members. My noble friend also asked to what extent mandatory EU requirements, in particular the renewable energy directive, would be implemented. Since 2011, all biofuels rewarded under the UK’s renewable transport fuel obligation have had to meet mandatory sustainability criteria provided for the renewable energy directive.

I am extremely grateful to noble Lords for the issues raised in today’s debate. I hope that I have covered the various questions raised in my reply, but I will be more than happy to pass on any specific questions to my counterparts in DfID, Defra and DECC. Once again, I thank my noble friend Lord Eden for initiating this debate on such an important topic and for the passion with which he spoke. I also thank other noble Lords who provided contributions and questions on this issue. We shall all hope for real action and engagement in the months ahead and for an improvement in the situation as it stands.