Singapore otters' lockdown antics spark backlash

Yahoo – AFP, Catherine Lai, May 30, 2020

With the streets empty, the creatures have been spotted hanging out by a shopping
centre, scampering through the lobby of a hospital and even feasting on pricey
fish stolen from a pond (AFP Photo/Roslan RAHMAN)

Singapore's otters, long adored by the city-state's nature lovers, are popping up in unexpected places during the coronavirus lockdown but their antics have angered some and even sparked calls for a cull.

With the streets empty, the creatures have been spotted hanging out by a shopping centre, scampering through the lobby of a hospital and even feasting on pricey fish stolen from a pond.

While many think of tiny Singapore as a densely populated concrete jungle, it is also relatively green for a busy Asian city, and has patches of rainforest, fairly clean waterways and abundant wildlife.

There are estimated to be about 90 otters in Singapore, making up 10 families, and appearances at popular tourist sites around the city-state's downtown waterfront have transformed them into local celebrities.

They featured in a documentary narrated by David Attenborough, are tracked avidly by the local media -- and have been spotted more frequently since people were asked to stay home and workplaces closed in April to fight the virus.

While many think of Singapore as a densely populated concrete jungle, it is also
relatively green and has patches of rainforest, fairly clean waterways and abundant
wildlife (AFP Photo/Roslan RAHMAN)

"When there's restriction of movement, there's less vehicles and there's less people, so the urban space opens up," said N. Sivasothi, a biologist at the National University of Singapore known as "Otterman" due to his work on the animals.

But their newfound freedoms appear to have emboldened the otters, and they are now facing a backlash.

'More daring'

The most high-profile incident was a raid on a pond at a spa shuttered due to the pandemic. The creatures gobbled several fish including an arowana, a prized species that can sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

Actress-turned-entrepreneur Jazreel Low, who owns the spa, posted pictures on Facebook of fish parts scattered around the pond and lamented a "massacre".

"They probably realised that there was nobody there and became more daring," Low told entertainment news website 8 DAYS.

With the streets empty, the creatures have been spotted hanging out by a shopping
centre, scampering through the lobby of a hospital and even feasting on pricey fish
stolen from a pond (AFP Photo/Roslan RAHMAN)

The case sparked a debate about whether more should be done to stop otters rampaging through the city, with a widely discussed letter in a local newspaper calling for air horns and rubber bullets to be used as deterrents.

"Wild boars have never been encouraged to enter urban areas, neither should otters be just because they look cute," wrote Ong Junkai in the correspondence to the Straits Times, which triggered calls from some for a cull.

In other incidents, a video showed a group charging into the lobby of a children's hospital before being shooed away, and the creatures were also filmed frolicking in the empty streets outside a popular shopping centre.

The otters' more frequent forays onto the streets of Singapore are part of a global trend triggered by virus lockdowns, with animals increasingly slipping cover to explore the streets of some of the world's biggest cities.

'Coexist and thrive'

Still, otter experts believe the anger is an overreaction and that the creatures are likely just enjoying the extra freedom to venture to new places.

Fans say people should celebrate the return of an animal that was driven out 

of Singapore by coastal development and water pollution around the 1970s, and 

only started reappearing in the 1990s as waterways were cleaned (AFP Photo/

Roslan RAHMAN)

NUS's Sivasothi criticised calls for a cull as "quite an uneducated response", and said such a move would be ineffective.

He also said many recent sightings were likely of the same family of smooth-coated otters, which have been searching for a new home along the city's rivers. Most of Singapore's otters are the smooth-coated variety, classified as "vulnerable".

Fans believe people should be celebrating the return of an animal that was driven out of Singapore by coastal development and water pollution around the 1970s, and only started reappearing in the 1990s as waterways were cleaned.

"I simply don't understand anyone who could not like them. They are really cute," said Pam Wong, a 35-year-old Singaporean.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong weighed in on the debate Friday, posting a photo he took of otters before the lockdown on his Facebook account.

"Rather than being focused on protecting 'territory', we must find ways to coexist and thrive with our local flora and fauna," he wrote.

Indonesian man walking in reverse to save forests

Yahoo – AFP, August 5, 2019

Medi Bastoni walks 20 to 30 kilometres backwards every day under the scorching sun,
with a rear-view mirror attached to his backpack to avoid bumping into objects (AFP
Photo/Medi BASTONI)

Jakarta (AFP) - An Indonesian man is walking 700 kilometres (435 miles) from his home on a volcano in East Java to Jakarta in the hope of drawing attention to the archipelago's quickly shrinking forests -- and he is doing it backwards.

Medi Bastoni, a 43-year-old father of four, set out on his arduous, in-reverse journey in mid-July, with the goal of reaching the capital by August 16, a day before the Southeast Asian nation's independence day anniversary.

"Of course I'm exhausted, but I'm willing to do this to fight for the next generation," Bastoni told AFP.

"(My home) is losing all of its trees so I have to do something. I can take the pain and fatigue."

Walking backwards is a siganl to Indonesians to reflect on the past and remember 

how national heroes fought for the good of the country (AFP Photo/Medi BASTONI)

When he arrives, Bastoni said he hopes to meet with president Joko Widodo and highlight deforestation across the archipelago including at his home on Mt. Wilis, a dormant volcano.

Indonesia suffers from one of the high rates of deforestation in the world, according to Greenpeace.

Bastoni walks 20 to 30 kilometres backwards every day under the scorching sun, with a rear-view mirror attached to his backpack to avoid bumping into objects.

Along the way, supporters cheer him on, offer him meals or a place to stay overnight. But Bastoni always leaves at dawn to stay on schedule.

Walking backwards is meant as a siganl to Indonesians to reflect on the past and remember how national heroes fought for the good of the country, he said.

EU palm oil ban sows bitter seeds for Southeast Asian farmers

Yahoo – AFP, Ridwan Nasution with M. Jegathesan in Ijok, Malaysia, 24 September 2018

Indonesian farmer Kawal Surbakti says a planned EU palm oil ban could devastate
his income

Indonesian palm oil farmer Kawal Surbakti says his livelihood is under attack, but the threat is not from insects or hungry orangutans eating his prized crop.

Half a world away, the European Parliament is moving to ban the use of palm oil in biofuels, while British grocer Iceland has announced it will stop using the commodity over concerns that it causes widespread environmental destruction.

Losing the key European market worries small farmers like Surbakti and millions of others in Indonesia and neighbouring Malaysia -- the world's top two producers -- as prices drop for an oil found in everything from biscuits and sweets to cosmetics and vehicle gas tanks.

"I've suffered serious losses," the 64-year-old Surbakti said from his two-hectare (five acre) farm on Indonesia's Sumatra island.

"Before, I could save up a little money but now I can't even do that."

Across the Malacca Strait in Malaysia, grower Mohamad Isa Mansor issued a dire prediction as he plucked reddish-orange fruits from his trees.

"If the EU succeeds in the ban, I'm dead," he said at his small plantation in the coastal town of Ijok.

"Without this crop we will be living in poverty. It is the source of income for thousands of people (here)," he added.

Chart showing top producers of palm oil, led by Indonesia

'Victims of big corporations'

Europe is one of the world's biggest palm oil consumers, along with India and China.

About half of the palm oil used last year in Europe was for biofuels that ended up in gas tanks, according to environmentalists.

Indonesia and Malaysia have threatened retaliatory sanctions on European products over the proposed palm oil ban, which calls for a complete phase-out from biofuels by 2030. The legislation is awaiting a final vote and member-state approval.

As the diplomatic row smoulders, Indonesian grower Selamet Ketaren says he and other small farmers -- the backbone of the industry -- are pawns at the mercy of land-clearing multinational firms that buy their crops.

"Smallholder farmers like us are just victims of the big corporations," said Ketaren, who has been growing palm oil since the mid-eighties.

Environmentalists accuse the multi-billion-dollar industry of destroying huge swathes of rainforest home to indigenous communities, orangutans and other threatened species.

Critics say that palm oil development also contributes to climate change through deliberate forest-clearing fires, which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and lung-clogging smog into the region's air.

Many under-pressure firms made "no deforestation" pledges, but activists say they are tough to monitor and frequently broken in the vast jungles of Sumatra and Borneo island.

Palm oil has become a major earner for Malaysia and Indonesia but at 
huge environmental cost

This week, Greenpeace said a group of Indonesian palm oil firms that supply major international brands including Unilever and Nestle have cleared an area of rainforest almost twice the size of Singapore in less than three years.

But Malaysian farmer Mansor rejects the depiction of growers as an environmental threat.

"(The EU) says we cut down the forest. But my land is on peat soil -- there was rubber growing here before," he said.

"How can the EU claim that I'm killing the earth?"

'Negative campaigns'

An EU ban would threaten the livelihoods of 650,000 smallholders and over 3.2 million Malaysians who rely on the industry, according to the Malaysian Palm Oil Council.

"The policies that the EU is proposing to introduce will harm Malaysia's rural communities and reduce incomes for Malaysian families," said Douglas Uggah Embas, deputy chief minister of Sarawak state on Borneo island, home to many smallholders.

Some three million people in Indonesia -- the world's biggest palm oil exporter -- are estimated to be working in the sector and many more depend on their income.

While it hopes to tap other markets, the Indonesian Palm Oil Association said that a slowdown in China and "negative campaigns" against palm oil could hurt the bottom line.

Malaysian grower Muhamad Ngisa Kusas fears that political decisions made in Europe will lead to poverty, crime and could push desperate people into the arms of religious extremists in the two Muslim-majority countries.

"If the EU bans comes into effect, the price of palm oil will surely plunge. Then we smallholders are doomed," said the 78-year-old.

"The EU had better think very carefully about this action."

VIDEO: The European Parliament is moving to ban the use of #palmoil in biofuels, and UK supermarket Iceland says it will stop using it over environmental concerns. Losing the EU market worries millions of small farmers in Indonesia and Malaysia, the world's top two producers. pic.twitter.com/o3RnLJsYUl

— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 24, 2018

More animals killed on the roads is ‘good news’ for wildlife

DutchNews, February 12, 2016

The fact that more animals are being killed on the Dutch roads is often cause for celebration, Maurice La Haye – a researcher at the Dutch mammal society Zoogdiervereniging – told the Algemeen Dagblad. 

An increase in accidents is a sign that conservation efforts are working and the wildlife population in the Netherlands is increasing, La Haye told the paper on Friday. 

An estimated ten million animals are killed on Dutch roads every year, but millions more survive, mate, and multiply. This is at least partly thanks to the Netherlands’ network of 1,725 green passages, viaducts, and walking ledges that allow animals to safely cross roads in certain places. 

Green passageways

Since the mid-1980s, the Netherlands has been building these structures in an effort to preserve dwindling wildlife stocks, including the endangered European badger, and several species of wild boar and deer. 

One of these ‘ecoducts’ – the Natuurbrug Zanderij Crailoo – is the longest such structure in the world. Some 50m wide and 800m long, the ecoduct takes animals safely over a railway line, roadway, business park, sports complex and a river. 

The ecoducts allow animals to expand their habitats past the barriers of roads, rivers and railways. And it’s been successful. In 1950, the total deer population of the Netherlands was around 5,000. Now it sits nearer 110,000, Gijs Van Ardenne, chairman of the Wildlife Collision Foundation Netherlands told the AD. 

Healthy and thriving

As well as an increase in sheer numbers, Dutch wildlife now appears to be in better health than before.

‘Ditches and canals are no longer the open sewers of last century, but fish-rich waterways,’ Hugh Jansen, of research institute Alterra told the AD. ‘Dead animals we find and analyse are in very good condition. They are top athletes who encountered a car.’

World Bank Urges Better Resource Management in Indonesia

Indonesia loses $4 billion from its rain forests to illegal logging.

Jakarta Globe, Vanesha Manuturi, Jun 10, 2015

Farming is seen in the protected areas of the Kerinci National Park (TNKS),
in Kerinci, Jambi, in May. (Antara Photo/Wahdi Septiawan)

Jakarta. The World Bank has pressed Indonesia to improve resource management and governance as the country works towards more sustainable and environmentally-friendly economic growth over the next five years.

“Indonesia has enjoyed tremendous growth … but not all are benefiting from these achievements and they come with a high price of environmental degradation,” said Sri Mulyani Indrawati, managing director and chief operating officer at the World Bank, on the first day of the Indonesia Green Infrastructure Summit 2015 in Jakarta on Tuesday.

She pointed to Indonesia’s forestry industry as an example of the country’s murky governance track record.

“Every year, Indonesia loses some $4 billion through illegal logging. Meanwhile, revenue from forestry licensing amounts to only $300 million per year,” she said. “This is a problem of governance, manifested in poor performance that impacts the implementation of existing regulations or design of better laws.”

Sri Mulyani — who was a former finance minister in the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration before resigning in 2010 — also noted “an information gap” among government agencies in Indonesia, which has led to a lack of transparency and efficiency in resource management.

“The energy sector, for example, needs more and better data on simple energy use and emissions,” she said.

Still, the World Bank managing director praised the government’s moratorium on new fishing permits for large operations as an “encouraging development.”

“A well-managed ‘blue’ economy can ensure food security, promote sustainable tourism and build resilience. But degradation through overfishing and dumped waste exacerbates poverty and undermines food security globally,” she said.

Improving governance of the fisheries sector coupled with large-scale investment in maritime transport and trade infrastructure could double fish production in the next five years, according to Sri.

During the same summit, Vice President Jusuf Kalla admitted the government’s stance to maintaining a sustainable economic growth has been lackluster.

“We’ve always thought about environmental issues after we’re faced with problems,” Kalla said.

“We’ve learnt and we are now learning with economic principles that are sustainable so that we can pass down this country for the next generation.”

Under President Joko Widodo, the government wants to boost growth to 7 percent over the next five years, bolstered by greater investment — both by the government and the private sector — in infrastructure development.

Joko’s infrastructure vision for the country includes the development of new power plants with a total capacity of 35,000 megawatts and nine million hectares of agriculture land across the country.

In a bid to encourage more environmentally-friendly investments, Indonesia currently offers tax allowances to nine business areas relating to environmental preservation, including geothermal power, refining and natural gas processing industry, organic basic chemical industry, and clean water reservoir and purification industry.

In April, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya said that the ministry plans to offer more incentives — such as soft-loan facilities, business permit extensions and free import duties — to local and foreign investors with technology which reduces pollution and conserves energy.

GlobeAsia

Full Disclosure Demanded as Police Nab Suspect in Activist’s Murder

Jakarta Globe, Basten Gokkon, May 25, 2015

Jopi Peranginangin was known for his strong criticism of palm oil
companies. (Antara Photo/F.B. Anggoro)

Jakarta. Environmental and human rights activists have called on the police to reveal the identity of a person suspected of murdering activist Jopi Peranginangin, amid speculation that the alleged culprit is a member of the military.

Jopi died on Saturday after being stabbed in the back as he was leaving a South Jakarta cafe.

“We have found a single suspect,” Sr. Comr. Krishna Mukti, chief of the general crime unit at the police, said on Monday, as cited by news portal Detik.com. “The suspect, identified by the initial J., has been detained.”

“Solidarity for Jopi,” a coalition of several environmental and human rights groups in Indonesia, is urging the police to reveal what they know of Jopi’s fatal stabbing, at the parking lot of a cafe in Kemang.

“We think a public exposé of the investigation results is imperative to show the authorities are transparent with the legal process,” a joint statement published on Monday by the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN) reads. “The results can also shed light on who the suspect is. We note that there has been speculation that the suspect is a member of the Indonesian military.”

The coalition — which also includes Greenpeace Indonesia, the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) — also called on the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) to monitor police investigations and on the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) to keep witnesses and the victim’s family safe.

Jopi died on Saturday morning at Pertamina Hospital in South Jakarta due to massive bleeding in his lungs, or pulmonary hemorrhage, just a few hours after being stabbed in the back while he was breaking up a fight at the cafe’s parking lot.

Born in 1976 in North Sumatra, Jopi was an activist with AMAN and known for his strong criticism of palm oil companies, particularly those that violate their working permits and concession areas approved by the Indonesian government.

Activists Urge Jokowi to Renew Forest Clearing Ban

Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s moratorium on deforestation will soon come to an end

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia, May 06, 2015

Indonesia has the third largest area of tropical rainforest on the planet, but
also one of the fastest rates of deforestation. (EPA Photo/Bagus Indahono)

Jakarta. Environmental activists have called on President Joko Widodo to extend and strengthen a forest-clearing moratorium that runs out this month.

The moratorium on issuing permits to clear peat and primary forests was introduced in May 2011 by then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and slated to run for only two years. Yudhoyono extended it in 2013 on a temporary basis, and activists say Joko now has the chance to make a lasting positive impact by giving the moratorium a firmer legal basis.

Any extension to the moratorium “must stipulate punitive measures for people or companies that violate it,” Zenzi Suhadi, a forest campaigner for the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi, told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.

“This is needed to curb [the illegal] issuance of licenses for forest exploitation, whether for mining or for large-scale plantations,” he added.

He noted that the moratorium as enforced by the Yudhoyono administration was for all practical intents toothless, noting that the Forestry Ministry issued mining and agriculture concessions for 12 million hectares of forest land, much of it ostensibly off-limits under the moratorium, between 2011 and 2014.

“During this period, there was no punishment for the violators,” Zenzi said. “The next moratorium should include punitive measures to ensure that no one hurts the environment.”

He also said it was important that the moratorium be supported by a new agency “to supervise its implementation as well as enforce the law.”

“The government must consider extending the moratorium period. It’s been proven that a two-year moratorium isn’t as effective as expected.

Making it longer will help the government prioritize its to-do list, from evaluation to license review to management refinement,” Zenzi added.

The original moratorium was enacted as part of a deal that would see Norway provide up to $1 billion in funds for climate change mitigation projects in exchange for demonstrable protection on Indonesia’s part of high conservation value forests, including peat forests, which store enormous amounts of carbon dioxide.

Critics, though, have long argued that the moratorium does far too little to protect such areas, given that it applies only to new concessions and not to existing ones on peat and primary forests.

In the time since the moratorium went into force, nearly 970,000 hectares of peat forest have been cleared, half of that total coming from the heavily logged Sumatran provinces of Riau and Jambi, according to a study by Walhi and environmental nongovernmental organization Kemitraan.

The study also found that in some regions, up to four-fifths of the primary and peat forests identified as off-limits for new concessions are already protected under prevailing zoning regulations, hence the moratorium is doing little to expand the scope of forest protection.

Progressive revisions have also seen the map of areas protected under the moratorium shrink, with dozens of concessions issued across the country for land that was at one point included in the moratorium map, says Hasbi Berliani, Kemitraan’s program manager for good governance.

The forest area that falls outside the moratorium map “is really wide.”

“It is really crucial for the government to strengthen [a] few points in the moratorium to protect other areas [that] haven’t been included within. As long as the moratorium doesn’t include it, it’s useless,” Hasbi said.

Zenzi echoed the sentiment, saying that what Indonesia really needed was not a moratorium on new concessions, but a termination program for existing licenses.

“The situation is critical,” Zenzi said, noting that when the moratorium was renewed in 2013, it included new concessions for energy and food production, thanks to what he called corporate lobbying. “This cost the country 1.2 million hectares.”

“This year, there’s the possibility of intervention from the biofuel and food lobbies, and exemptions for border regions,” Zenzi added.

Strong government commitment, he said, was key to an effective moratorium.

“However big the intervention, once the government is committed to the people, it won’t compromise or make any exceptions unless it’s in the interests of the people,” Zenzi said.

The Forestry and Environment Ministry says it wants to extend the moratorium as part of a wider program to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 26 percent by 2020, and has welcomed suggestions of environmental groups in drafting an extension.

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno

In Mataram Declaration, Belated Recognition of Indigenous Rights

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia,  Apr 23, 2015

The government is finally getting serious about recognizing Indigenous
groups’ forest rights. (Antara Photo/Ahmad Subaidi)

Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara. Proponents of the rights of indigenous groups have hailed a pledge by the Indonesian government to do more to recognize their stewardship of forests, seen as crucial in efforts to stave off deforestation.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar made the so-called Mataram Declaration last weekend in a belated response to a May 2013 Constitutional Court ruling relinquishing the state’s default claims to forested areas settled and used by indigenous groups.

“Long before this, civil society organizations and local communities were struggling for the recognition and protection of customary land,” said Abetnego Tarigan, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi. “Now the government has shown good faith, and we really appreciate it.”

He said the central and local governments often violated indigenous people’s land rights because the latter lacked title deeds to their land. In many cases, he noted, the people were disenfranchised of their rights, and their land given over to logging, plantation or mining operators.

“There are a few policies that regulate the rights of local communities to the land, such as the 2012 law on customary forests, but they don’t cover the recognition of people’s customary territory, so we need another framework to guarantee it,” Abetnego said. “This declaration should really be a form of political will for all stakeholders to push the recognition and protection of customary forests managed by the people.”

Civic-centered development

At the signing of the declaration on Saturday in Mataram, in West Nusa Tenggara province, Siti said the government and other stakeholders were committed to expediting the process to craft policies that improved the welfare and protection of local communities and conserved the environment.

“These policies are really important,” she said. “President Joko Widodo’s government has indicated that the citizenship concept is a democratic one, in which we seek to bring welfare to the people.”

She said the government was making efforts to involve people, especially indigenous groups, in environmental protection.

“Here, our development must be civic-centered,” Siti said. “This issue has been echoed by the people and environmental organizations, and now the government is listening.”

Under Joko’s 2015-2019 National Mid-Term Development Plan, the administration plans to designate 12.5 million hectares of land for “social forestry,” in which indigenous groups and local communities will commit to sustainable forestry practices, and nine million hectares for agriculture.

“These [social] forests can be developed as community forests, village forests and customary forests,” Siti said, adding that the agricultural land, to be staked out from former logging concessions, would go primarily to subsistence farmers.

Collaborative effort

Siti said it was important for all stakeholders — the central government, regional administrations, civil society organizations and local communities — to work closely together.

“The policy is ready to go, but we can’t do it alone. We need help from other stakeholders to cooperate. For example, I hope the Home Affairs Ministry will help us identify indigenous communities and their problems to ensure that all land is distributed rightly and fairly,” she said.

“We also need civil society organizations to work with the people on mediation, community building and others. Access to welfare for all Indonesians is our responsibility.”

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, an adviser to the Home Affairs Ministry, said the institution was open to cooperating with the other stakeholders.

“But the identification process isn’t easy. There are a few requirements to meet before we can definitively say that a given community is an indigenous one,” he said. “The process must be really selective. And this is the task of regional leaders.”

Zudan said that for a forest community to qualify, it would have to show some kind of environmentally sustainable practice in its interactions with the forest.

“Here we need experts and help from civil society organizations,” he said.

People first

Siti said the new policy, unlike previous ones, prioritized the role of people in economic development through the exploitation of forests and other natural resources.

“I believe the system will be no longer like the past, when government didn’t put the people at the front of its development plans. Now, we must use dialogue in our approach to developing the economy of this country,” Siti said.

West East Nusa’s Deputy Governor Muhammad Amin welcomed the declaration, but said further talks on the issue were still needed between the central government and regional administrations.

“We realize there hasn’t been a regional policy that recognizes the territorial rights of indigenous people. However, with this declaration, we hope that the people will receive greater consideration in the policy-making process,” he said. “Should the synergy run smoothly, we may be able to achieve an environment-oriented development framework.”

Yansen T.P., the head of Malinau district in North Kalimantan, who was among the more than 30 regional heads attending the Mataram Declaration, said an increasing number of regions across the country were beginning to prioritize land rights protections when crafting new policies.

“We’ve been done a lot for several years now to show our support for our environment,” he said. “We have vast areas of natural resources and considerable local wisdom. The forest we have is the forest we must hold on to. We understand that people depend on the forest and they will try to maintain it. But to do that, we in the regional government have to provide them with legal certainty.”

Yansen said he hoped that future investments would “take the side of the people.”

“We don’t need to exploit all of our natural resources right away. We have to think about our children, grandchildren and our future generations,” he said. “Hopefully the central government’s policy will accelerate the recognition of indigenous people’s right to the forest.”

Test cases

Adi Rozal, the head of Kerinci district in Sumatra’s Jambi province, said his administration had designated 12 swaths of forest as customary forests.

“Now we’re waiting for coordination from the central government to issue a policy that fully mandates the forests for use by the local community,” he said.

Mathius Awoitauw, the head of Jayapura district in Papua province, agreed that while the central government had a key role to play, it was local governments that would serve as the test cases for various frameworks on the issue.

“All we need to do to establish nationwide synergy is to hold regular dialogues to test how capable regional governments and people are in managing their forests. In addition, there should be a regulation that truly guarantees the rights of each region to map its own customary forests,” he said.

In prioritizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities, the government has switched from an earlier paradigm that served large corporations, said Chalil Muhammad, the chairman of the Association for Community and Ecology-Based Law Reform, or Perkumpulan HuMa.

“There’s a need to create a scheme to build rights coordination between the central government, regional governments and the people in an effort to prevent forests from rampant exploitation,” he said. “These stakeholders need to change their mind-set. We need to increase human resource capacity and fix existing forestry policies.”

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno

Chinese company fights for flamingos in Angola

Want China Times, Xinhua 2015-03-27

Flamingos at a park in Nanchang, Jiangxi province,
March 27, 2003. (File photo/Xinhua)

A Chinese company is actively involved in preserving the wetlands of the southern harbor city of Lobito, Angola a key part of the migration route of flamingos from neighboring Namibia to Kenya.

Thousands upon thousands of flamingos can be seen on the wetlands during the peak time of migration though only hundreds of flamingos stopped by the wetland during the past week due to torrential rains, said Zhang Huaqiang, a project manager of China Harbor Engineering Company (China Harbor).

China Harbor, a key player in the reconstruction of harbors in the formerly war-torn African country, joined hands with local volunteers and governmental environmental protection organizations in safeguarding the wetlands, removed dustbins, and levelled the banks of the two lakes to provide a better environment for the migrating birds.

The Chinese company also organized on-spot awareness campaigns on wetlands to educate local residents and Chinese expats working in Lobito on the breeding, growth and habits of flamingos. The group also joined local volunteers to patrol the area to guard against poaching of the birds, which were a symbol of Lobito city.

Zhang said his company entered Angola in 2006 and constructed or rebuilt 16 harbors there, and the protection of flamingos and conservation of the wetlands in Lobito is part of his company's efforts to shoulder its social responsibilities and pay back to local societies.

China Harbor is not only actively involved in the post-war reconstruction process but also became a part of local society, and his company is willing to share the dividends of economic development with the local population, Zhang said.

China Harbor is now building a new oil tanker terminal in Lobito with an investment of US$120 million from the Angolan government. Before this, it reconstructed the container terminal and the terminal for bulk minerals at Lobito, 550 kilometers south of the capital city of Luanda.

Palm Oil King Shifts From Forest Foe to Advocate

Jakarta Globe, Yuriy Humber & Ranjeetha Pakiam, Mar 13, 2015

In this handout photograph released by Greenpeace areas of forest cleared
 for palm oil plantation are seen in Jambi Province on Indonesia's Sumatra
island on Oct. 20, 2013. (AFP Photo)

The sprawling palm oil industry is the destroyer of rainforests and tormentor of endangered species across Southeast Asia, to hear environmental groups tell it.

And if there’s one executive who embodies this contentious $50 billion business, it’s Singaporean commodities magnate Kuok Khoon Hong. He’s the palm oil king, co-founder and chairman of giant Wilmar International, the industry’s biggest trading firm. It handles almost half of the global trade in the commodity.

Yet, these days Kuok is no longer portrayed as a villain by activists and non-governmental organizations. He’s actually become central to their campaign to prod the industry into adopting new, eco-friendly business practices that may start to arrest the environmental damage in the region.

“I would consider myself an environmentalist today,” Kuok said in an e-mail.

“I changed a few years ago when I saw the damage climate change had on the environment in some countries.”

The story of how Kuok’s position changed is based on an e-mail correspondence with him and interviews with industry executives, experts and environmentalists familiar with his thinking.

The portly 65-year-old, who sports a head of jet-black hair, has a warm, avuncular demeanor and a tendency to wink as he speaks. He’s also a pragmatist and a member of one of Asia’s most powerful business clans.

Extracted from the orange pulp of a palm fruit, palm oil is the most ubiquitous edible oil in the world, consumed every time you brush your teeth, wash your hair, slurp some ice cream or put on lipstick.

As commodities go, it’s cheap, versatile and high-yielding. Cultivation of palm oil ties up more than 17 million hectares worldwide, an area four times the size of Switzerland.

Europe’s backlash

The business has made Kuok a billionaire and lifted many communities in Southeast Asia and Africa out of poverty. It’s also led to mass deforestation and air pollution across Southeast Asia.

A consumer backlash against using palm oil in Europe and other developed economies threatens the profitability of the industry. Kuok says the solution is not to shun the fruit, but change the way it’s produced.

Wilmar’s experience may also offer up lessons to other industries whose expansion and business practices pose risks to the environment.

A bad year

Back in 2013, Kuok had every reason to believe the world might be conspiring against him. That year, the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, disclosed that it had dumped shares in 23 palm companies, citing environmentally harmful industry practices. The next year that number rose to 27 companies.

Greenpeace videos, alleging that consumer industry palm oil buyers including Unilever contributed to deforestation, had amassed millions of YouTube hits. Environmentalists confronted the chief executive of Kellogg about palm oil purchases from Wilmar on investor calls. And Singapore, the home of Kuok and Wilmar, was covered in ash from plantation fires.

2015 target

Environmentalists are far less critical now. Wilmar and about 30 other firms including Unilever and McDonald’s have pledged by the end of 2015 to buy palm oil that’s certified as coming from sustainable sources. The pledge effectively means no trees, peat land or orangutans were harmed in making the products.

While most the goals are not legally binding, Dave McLaughlin, vice president of Agriculture for the World Wildlife Fund, said the companies are “putting their credibility on the line.”

Global firms “really are exposed on the palm oil issue. It’s difficult, the circumstances and the issues are not easy, but they’re doing it,” he said.

Wilmar’s decision to back causes as diverse as restoring forests and riverbanks, protecting wildlife on the edges of plantations from poachers, and education of migrant workers, have not come about due to the activist pressure, according to Kuok. Being sustainable is good for business, he says.

Fragmented industry

Oil palm trees were introduced to Malaysia at the turn of the 20th century by the British, who brought the West African variety to pretty up the gardens of colonial homes. Today, Indonesia and Malaysia dominate supply.

It’s a fragmented industry consisting of hundreds of large plantations and thousands of plots tendered to by a single family or community.

Reputational hit

Wilmar is testament to one family’s obsession with food. A Chinese immigrant family in British-controlled Malaya, the Kuoks started with a rice and flour shop before current patriarch Robert Kuok rose to be one of the world’s top sugar traders.

Robert’s nephew, Khoon Hong, set up Wilmar with a partner in 1991, growing it to be one of Singapore’s biggest firms with $45 billion in revenue.

Wilmar’s reputation took a hit when the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund sold its stake in the company in 2012. It didn’t specify a reason.

However, in its 2012 annual report, the fund explained the sale of Wilmar and other palm stocks by noting the industry’s role in continued deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia and its view that some companies “by our reckoning produced palm oil unsustainably.”

Number-one target

Matters turned worse in the spring of 2013. Winds carried record volumes of smoke from land-clearing fires at Indonesian plantations. The miasma that visited Singapore set records for air pollution in the city state and blanketed cars with ash, forcing people indoors.

The government wanted answers.

Wilmar stated its case, according to Jeremy Goon, Wilmar’s chief sustainability officer. The company told government officials it had a zero-burning policy. It monitored fires and knew none of these were on its own land, though it couldn’t speak for others, Goon said.

Voice from TV

Amid the public questioning in Singapore about those culpable for the fires, Kuok turned on the television news and saw one activist lay the blame squarely on Wilmar. The company was closing its eyes to murky industry practices, instead of using its clout to enact change, the man argued.

The speaker was Glenn Hurowitz, executive director of Catapult, and one of the strategists behind a year-long attack by a broad collective of NGOs including Climate Advisers and Forest Heroes on the palm industry, with Wilmar as their number-one target.

“I asked myself what we did wrong for us to be so wrongly accused,” Kuok said. Because of Wilmar’s industry position “we were made to look like the biggest villain.”

Wilmar bends Kuok tracked down the activist he saw on TV and fired off a defensive letter. The two began an e-mail exchange and within weeks the tycoon had invited Washington-based Hurowitz to his Singapore office.

Kuok spent the first 15 minutes ranting about NGOs.

“I couldn’t believe I’d flown 24 hours across the world to listen to that,” Hurowitz recalls. Then Kuok calmed down and “treated me like a Chinese uncle.”

The new mood of respect deepened when Wilmar’s chief discovered over a meal in a local Chinese restaurant that his “angry” critic was a vegetarian.

Conversing in English and “rusty”

Mandarin Chinese first picked up as a kid at a Minnesota summer camp, Hurowitz explained that he had quit meat because of the strain rearing animals has on the planet.

“He thought it was an indicator that I was a sincere environmentalist,” Hurowitz says.

According to Kuok, that’s a person who wants to help the planet without ignoring positive aspects of palm development.

Being sincere

Scott Poynton, the founder of environmental group The Forest Trust, soon joined the talks. The activists pushed Kuok to use his industry clout to force all Wilmar suppliers to cease forest cutting, cultivation on peat land, and to champion labor and indigenous tribes’ land rights.

In principle, Kuok agreed, Hurowitz said. After all, Wilmar was already implementing much of the advice at its palm estates. The harder task was getting outside suppliers — including the more than 800 mills that send crude palm oil to its refineries and the thousands of farmers who sell its agents fruit — to do the same.

Already Kuok was starting to feel resistance from “some of the big plantations,” Hurowitz said.

Few of Kuok’s peers shared the tycoon’s fear that NGO campaigns could provoke a consumer pushback and government interventions, factors that would limit palm oil use and hurt prices.

Kuok gathered industry peers in the fall of 2013 to urge everyone to take the plunge together. The talks were joined by Unilever’s chief executive Paul Polman, the world’s biggest palm oil buyer.

Unilever, the maker of Dove soaps and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, had been through its own NGO heat.

Greenpeace had run public and social- media campaigns that scored millions of YouTube views for videos such as “Dove Onslaught(er),” depicting an Indonesian girl amid tree stumps.

A Unilever spokesperson, without discussing the details of the 2013 talks, said that the company believes governments, business and civil society must work together to enact change.

Unilever is pursuing such an approach in palm, soy, paper and beef and plans to widen the focus, the spokesperson said.

“We are working with our key supplier partners, including Wilmar, to drive market transformation,” the spokesperson said by e-mail.

Failure to agree

At the talks Unilever pushed for higher standards, but stopped short of offering to pay more for sustainable products, according to the account of three participants, who asked not to be named because of the closed-door nature of the meeting. Palm companies objected to calls to stop all new plantation development.

The negotiations yielded a Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto, which was denounced by Greenpeace as worthless. Wilmar didn’t even sign it.

Though the talks failed to win widespread industry support, Hurowitz said Kuok was still looking for solutions — ones that would not put him at a disadvantage with competitors.

“He talked a lot about how upset he was at the haze in Singapore and in China,” Hurowitz said. “He just needed to be given a business rationale to go ahead with this, to show that this was a commercial decision.”

The deal

By early December, the momentum seemed to falter and Kuok threatened to call the whole thing off, according to Hurowitz.

On Dec. 4, 2013, Hurowitz and Poynton, Kuok and other Wilmar executives went for dinner to the Szechuan Court & Kitchen at Singapore’s Fairmont hotel, a five-minute drive from Wilmar headquarters.

Seated around a table with a Lazy Susan rotating tray, the party’s mood was tense and the conversation at times descended into shouting, Hurowitz recalls.

Hurowitz and Poynton warned Wilmar palm oil would lose market share as demand for the product in the West crumbled under NGO criticism.

They even threatened to renew all attacks on the industry — but focus on Wilmar alone. And they promised to bring competitors aboard later if Kuok made the first step.

Kuok, said Hurowitz, offered a deal:

Get me Unilever and I’ll sign. If the biggest seller and buyer could make the jump together it would make a splash. And Kuok wouldn’t be alone.

The two campaigners penned an e-mailed letter to Unilever chief executive Polman in the hotel lobby. “We thought this deal could change agriculture,” Hurowitz said.

No reply came. The next morning, the pair received a last- minute invite to visit Unilever’s Four Acres office in Singapore. Resigned to another fruitless run through the issues, they didn’t even bother with jacket and tie.

The UK-Dutch firm’s chief procurement officer at the time, Marc Engel, sat across from them and simply said: We’re in. I’ll call Khoon Hong.

The Unilever spokesperson, who asked not to be named, did not reply to questions about this episode.

Domino effect

In a domino effect, big-brand food and household goods companies from Dunkin’ Donuts to Procter & Gamble and Kellogg joined the movement to buy oil from sources certified as sustainable or, at least, offset purchases with so-called green certificates that compensate the “good” suppliers.

Rival traders Cargill and Golden Agri-Resources made similar pledges to prevent deforestation by their suppliers.

Amid the euphoria, there is a need to remain watchful against backsliding, says Daniel May, a senior manager at the German sustainable palm oil industry group. Myriad production and monitoring challenges must be overcome. Another challenge: Consumers are largely in the dark about the issue. “There is still a long way to go.” May says.

Unilever’s vision is that “the entire industry will move to 100 percent sustainable palm oil” by 2020, the firm’s spokesperson said.

“In a world of finite resources, it makes absolute business sense to source sustainably so we can continue to serve consumers in decades and centuries to come, whilst preserving environments and livelihoods.”

Expansion from palm

Norway’s sovereign fund, which sparked the exodus from palm stocks, is keeping tabs on events.

“To the extent we find that companies improve their practices we may choose to reinvest,” said Marthe Skaar, a spokesperson for Norges Bank Investment Management, which oversees the sovereign fund.

Palm’s makeover bodes well for the whole of agriculture, says Hurowitz.

Cargill vowed in late 2014 to start spreading the lessons learned in palm to all its products.

For Kuok, however, the focus is still firmly on palm oil. In fact, he has argued that production of alternative oilseeds requires even more land and result in more forest clearing.

Wilmar has devoted vast resources since making its pledge in 2013 simply to “educating” its suppliers “that sustainable development is an irreversible trend in the world today,” he says.

Business-minded to the end, he fears palm oil prices will crash if his new alliance with his former critics doesn’t hold.

“If the industry continues business as usual, NGOs will continue to tarnish the reputation of palm oil and governments and consumers will be pressured to restrict the use of palm oil in food, biofuel and so on,” the palm oil king warns.

Bloomberg