Soapbox Part Satu: Slapped by Palm Oil

Written: March 16
Occasionally I get fired up enough to talk about a political/social/environmental/’fill-in-the-blank’ topic to get into a heated debate with people, but very rarely do I care enough to write an article/email/etc or to ask people to do something. It’s because of this dearth of action that I hope this one has more impact. I don’t know what got into me, but this is something that is too easy to glance over, but too important to ignore.

In previous postings I may have previously mentioned the lack of concern for environment here in Indo, and how it was a bit disturbing. Mostly what I was referring to was the atrocious amount of plastic garbage EVERYWHERE, the typical person’s attitude toward littering (it doesn’t exist; of course you throw garbage out the bus window or on the ground beside you), and the noxious habit of burning all garbage. These are all obvious maladies of Indonesia and ones that really do detract from its beauty. They are not however the biggest issue for the Indonesian environment.
The biggest issue is undoubtedly the legal, and even more so, illegal, exploitation of the land. Whether it is mining or logging or over-fishing or palm oil, Indonesia and its stunning beauty and biodiversity is literally being ripped to shreds. Clearly Indonesia is a growing country and thus needs to make the most of its natural resources so that it may continue to develop; I’m not naïve enough to sit in a country that has exploited its natural resources and tell others they can’t do the same thing.
The problem in Indonesia is the illegal exploitation and this traces back to Indonesia’s largest nation-wide problem: corruption. I didn’t come to write about corruption though (see Soapbox, part dua), my concern for today was the way the environment is being unnecessarily shredded here. This ties to corruption however because while laws are passed and movements made to protect the environment, these may be circumnavigated by local politicians looking to line their pockets or by enforcement agents looking to do the same thing.
I come from a logging family (something that raises some eye-brows here, but I’ve gotten good at in one breath saying my father is a logger, but that logging in the US is different, more like farming) and I border-line despise environmentalists, namely the extreme ones. It is because of that background that I really believe that if the laws and movements to protect the environment were actually enforced (and hopefully expanded somewhat), Indonesia would probably be able to attain a level of steady and a much more sustainable, if not quite as rapid, growth. That fact is the really aggravating part to me.

So that’s a lot of negative, and I always hate when people just write ‘bitch-blogs’, so what can people actually do? Sadly, the average American can’t do a whole lot. While this is the world’s problem (just look up an article about the amount of endemic biodiversity in Borneo, it’s absolutely stunning), it is Indonesia’s land (as well as Malaysia’s to some extent) and thus they are the ones that will need to enact the ultimate change.
What I will say is that one of the worst culprits, palm oil, is something that can be helped from abroad. Palm oil plantations are rather notorious here for flattening rainforest, burning the land (often resulting in fires that rage out of control), and then planting orderly, single-species plantations. Initially when I went to Kalimantan and heard my friend complaining about palm oil I wrote her off as a bit of an environmentalist nut, but then I started looking around and doing some reading. You know what? She was right; these companies really are having appalling consequences for the environment and the local peoples. But I said this problem could be helped from abroad, so on to that. Palm oil is a wide spread cooking oil, it is used in cosmetics and now amongst its numerous other uses it is being touted as a bio-fuel. I’m a realist, I know that you can’t always completely boycott a product, it’s simply too widespread, but I would ask this:

Think about it. Next time you’re looking at the ingredients or the nutrition facts, do a quick scan, see if palm oil is listed. If it is, think about reaching for a different product (granted that one may have it too). But more than anything, realize what is going on, one of the most diverse wild jungles in the entire world is being turned into a tropical ‘Mid-West’ full of nothing, but orderly rows of crops.


Ok, I’m off my soapbox; I hope that wasn’t too painful. I don’t do that very often, but it really is tragic what is happening.

As for me, my internet has been down for a few days. Hopefully this actually gets put up before I leave tomorrow for one last extended trip first to Pulau (island) Weh and then Danau (lake) Toba, both in Northern Sumatra.