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Peatland News

Title: Greenpeace says Fonterra's defence on PKE undermined by report
Date: 20-Nov-2015
Category: Peat fire
Source/Author: stuff.co,nz/Tom Pullar-Strecker
Description: Environmental group Greenpeace says it has evidence linking forest fires in Borneo, Indonesia, to companies that sell palm oil products to a Fonterra supplier.

A peatland forest is cleared for a palm plantation on the outskirts of Palangkaraya in Borneo.

ULET IFANSASTI/GETTY IMAGES

A peatland forest is cleared for a palm plantation on the outskirts of Palangkaraya in Borneo.

Environmental group Greenpeace says it has evidence linking forest fires in Borneo, Indonesia, to companies that sell palm oil products to a Fonterra supplier.

Fonterra social responsibility director Carolyn Mortland said it took its responsibility to look after natural resources seriously and had no doubt its supplier, Wilmar International, would be "carefully reviewing the Greenpeace report and working with them to improve responsible sourcing of palm-related products".

Fires ripped through the Indonesian provinces of Sumatra and Borneo in September and October, as a result of attempts to clear land for pulpwood and palm plantations.

Fonterra imports hundreds of thousands of tonnes of palm kernel expeller (PKE) which it sells to dairy farmers as a supplementary feed for cattle, but the dairy giant has been stressing its "green" sourcing policies.

Mortland said earlier this month that Fonterra imported all its PKE from supplier Wilmar which had a "no-deforestation, no exploitation" policy.

Greenpeace said in a report published by its Dutch office on Friday that forest and peatland had been cleared during the second half of this year at a 9277 hectare concession in Central Kalimantan in Borneo owned by Singapore company Bumitama Agri.

Bumitama was a supplier to Wilmar this year, it said.

Greenpeace said that in September and October several fires raged in the centre of the concession "destroying the last remains of forest in this area, including [a] site where orang-utan nests had been spotted".

The environmental group said land clearance in the concession had been exposed by "field investigations", satellite mapping analysis and had been verbally confirmed by PT ASMR, the local company that operates the plantation.

Wilmar has not responded to requests for comment.

Greenpeace New Zealand executive director Russel Norman said Wilmar had been indirectly linked to another palm plantation concession mentioned in its investigation, owned by Alas Kusuma in West Kalimantan, where it said 1000 hectares of recently-cleared peatland had caught fire in July.

The area had been mapped as an orang-utan habitat, it said in its report.

Greenpeace said it documented excavators preparing land for plantation in the newly burned area. Fresh palm fruit from the plantation was sold to another plantation company, Surya Borneo Indah, which in turn was "a confirmed supplier to Wilmar", it said.

Mortland said in a letter to Norman earlier this month that all Wilmar's plantations would be certified as sustainable by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) by the end of the year.

Norman said his understanding was that a significant part of Wilmar's supplies came from plantations that the company did not itself own.

Bumitama is affiliated to the RSPO while Alas Kusuma is associated with the Forest Stewardship Council, Norman said.

"The question for Fonterra, is they relied on Wilmar and RSPO certification; now we have done an investigation ... and found strong evidence that these suppliers are part of the problem in terms of deforestation and peatland drainage, what is Fonterra going to do now that defence doesn't hold?", he said.

Norman said dairy farmers might find it difficult to transition away from PKE. "But it is totally unacceptable to have the dairy industry dependent on destroying the forests of south-east Asia."

Federated Farmers climate change spokesman Anders Crofoot said farmers were "trying to do the right thing" and he believed they would be concerned if certification schemes were shown to be wanting. If would be frustrating if people were not playing by the rules, he said.

Farming sources said the use of PKE as a supplementary feed was becoming more widespread outside the dairy industry.  

Cash-strapped sheep and beef farmers in drought-hit parts of North Canterbury were also now turning to PKE as feed for their flocks and herds, sources said.

 - Stuff



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