Malaysia intends to present orangutans to nations that import its palm oil. The move aims to allay concerns that palm oil production is often linked to the destruction of the endangered apes’ habitats.
Malaysia has said it plans to present orangutans to major palm-oil-importing countries with the aim of boosting its credentials as a conserver of biodiversity.
The Asian nation is the world’s second-largest producer of the widely used commodity, whose production is blamed by environmentalists for fuelling the destruction of the great ape’s habitats in both Malaysia and Indonesia.
The move comes after the EU last year approved a ban on importing commodities, like palm oil, that are linked to deforestation.
Malaysia says the ban has been introduced to protect the bloc’s own oilseeds market.
This is fucking disgusting.
Why?
From the article:
Malaysia is a sustainable oil palm producer and is committed to protecting forests and environmental sustainability.
Without having read the article, I’m not sure I buy that it’s as sustainable as they say.
Argument from ignorance is pretty worthless and nothing more than a baseless opinion, which you are of course free to have.
That’s a quote from Malaysia’s commodities minister, so I don’t know if you can trust it. The article also says
The Asian nation is the world’s second-largest producer of the widely used commodity, whose production is blamed by environmentalists for fuelling the destruction of the great ape’s habitats in both Malaysia and Indonesia.
Because 1) orangutans are only one of the hundreds of thousands species affected by deforestation, and 2) catching, transporting and confining animals in zoos is hardly an improvement to their life: apes are social animals who live in large groups in large habitats, they suffer in zoos. 3) this is the commodification of sentient beings, ironically the very species they pretend to wanting to help. Greenwashing at its finest.
Any statement that boils down to “this extractive industry is environmentally sustainable” is massively suspicious. I don’t trust that statement at all. I don’t buy that you can produce palm oil on that scale while respecting nature.
Well IDK how it’s done with Palm oil, but AFAIK what is meant by sustainable, is that the area is regrown, that’s how we do with forestation here too. And that’s been grown and harvested sustainably for many decades.
Basically you are putting forward what is called an argument from ignorance.
Gross
Because 1) orangutans are only one of the hundreds of thousands species affected by deforestation, and 2) catching, transporting and confining animals in zoos is hardly an improvement to their life: apes are social animals who live in large groups in large habitats, they suffer in zoos. 3) this is the commodification of sentient beings, ironically the very species they pretend to wanting to help. Greenwashing at its finest.
I agree Orangutangs are amazing animals, and in principle I dislike the concept of Zoos, but I cannot fault a country like Malaysia from trying to turn around the massive propaganda there has been against Palm oil, which I must admit I suspect is engineered by competing even more harmful agriculture interests in the west.
Genius. If you export some of the apes, the remaining population requires less habitat, leaving more room for plantations! /s
On the other hand, Palm oil is one of the densest crops that exist, as in it yield the most nutritional value per m2. So sustainable Palm oil production is less harmful to habitat than mostly any other crop in any other country.
Just Google “the benefit of palm oil production”
Palm Oil yields 4-10 times more oil per hectare than other sources of vegetable oil such as soybeans or coconut palms. The plant accounts for just 9% of the 322 million hectares of land used to produce oil crops globally, yet it produces 36% of the oil. This makes it an efficient and profitable use of land.
Unfortunately deforestation to make palm oil is still a thing, but this is not equal among palm oil producing countries.
In Denmark our main vegetable oil product is from Raps seeds, using about 5 times as much agricultural area for similar yield. But fortunately for us, we had our deforestation of almost the entire country several hundred years ago to make a huge naval fleet, and no body complains today that we are not regrowing those forests.
This is not an equal standard for developing countries, they always get blamed much worse for doing things we already did decades or centuries ago in developed countries.
These countries need to be helped, not to be hindered.
I think the anger is directed and the agricultural conglomerates and the governments that have allowed those groups to pillage these places while selling out their countrymen, not the farm workers themselves or the citizens of those countries. Probably no matter the issue, that is likely the case. I know palm oil is important to many people, and colonialism is a lot of the cause of these issues for both the people and those that care about the local environments, as many times they are the same people.
Many people, myself included, don’t know much about the current Malay government, so the initial action being mistrust of something like this shouldn’t be a surprise. As people are realizing how much of our natural resources we’ve squandered for quick cash, I don’t fault them for being angry.
As you said though, it’s important to realize there are good and bad actors in all of these situations, plus many doing what they need to survive in many of these regions.
Very nice post, I admit I don’t know a lot about Malaysia either, but I’ve seen many times that they are working to make Palm oil production sustainable.
It’s worth considering the biodiversity loss where palm oil is grown, as all land area is not equally valuable to nature either. Most palm oil plantations used to be rainforests.
Fun fact, the Jamestown Colony, the first colony Britain set up in the Americas, was intended to send timber back to Britain because they were running out of wood for construction and fuel due to all of the deforestation.
I’m not sure handing out wild orangutans in cages en mass sends the message about conservation they’re hoping it will.
Better than gorilla warfare to be sure
