Economic woes may damage moves to slow deforestation
KUALA LUMPUR/JAKARTA, April 29 (Reuters) - Growing economic pain may increasingly force consumers to turn to palm oil, one of the cheapest cooking oils, a move that could scupper nascent plans to slow deforestation in Southeast Asia.
The Jakarta Post (Feb. 16) reported that the Forestry Ministry is planning to include oil palm estates to the forestry sector. Even though Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan denied the plan, an internal source at the ministry said that the decree is in progress (the Post, Feb. 23).
REDD may not provide sufficient incentive to developers over palm oil
Payments for forest conservation under the proposed REDD mechanism are unlikely to provide a viable economic alternative to oil palm agriculture at current prices. Lian Pin Koh (ETH Zürich) and Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
Hundreds of millions of tonnes of palm oil look set to be pumped into Britain's vehicles despite scientific evidence showing that chopping down rainforests to make way for plantations exacerbates climate change, according to a leaked report.
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission and some EU member states hope to redefine palm oil plantations as "forests," according to a leaked document from the EU executive.
Can REDD make natural forests competitive with oil palm plantations?
1 February 2010: The latest issue of the International Tropical Timber Organization’s (ITTO) newsletter, Tropical Forest Update, includes an article that questions whether payments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) can make natura
Carbon accounting used in the Kyoto Protocol and other climate legislation currently neglects CO2 emissions from the production of biofuels, a loophole that could drive large-scale destruction of tropical forests and exacerbate global warming, warned researchers writing last week in the journal Science.
