A recent story focusing on the impacts of palm oil plantations and declining habitat for endangered forest birds in Papua New Guinea has brought new attention to the link between increasing demand for biofuels and the destruction of the rainforests through deforestation. Rainforest Action Network, a very effective environmental organization, recently has launched efforts to challenge the industrial expansion of biofuels expansion in the rainforests where
palm oil plantations are expanding at a rate of 2.5 million acres per year into the tropical forests of Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.
One of the lesser known impacts of the growth in biofuels and one that may not seem apparent at first look is its impact on coral reefs, fisheries and coastal communities.
The alarming signs of global climate change coupled with increasing oil and gas costs (as fossil fuel supplies dwindle) has led to a magic bullet approach to finding solutions – from the ill-advised dumping of urea into the ocean to absorb carbon to the switching to renewable energies such as biofuels so that we can maintain levels of activity without looking at the more difficult questions of conservation, efficiency, reducing consumption and using less energy.
Biofuels sound warm and fuzzy on the outside: let’s just recycle cooking oil from hamburger joints to run our school buses.
But the reality of biofuels is very different. According to Rainforest Action Network,
Agribusiness, oil, energy and auto companies are rapidly consolidating control over the entire agrofuel sector…
Take palm – one of the cheapest and most popular sources for agrofuel. Taking into account the slash-and-burn deforestation and drainage of peat swamps that occurs to make way for palm oil plantations, as well as chemically intensive cultivation and energy-intensive refining and transcontinental shipping, palm oil is one of the worst fuel sources for the climate.
Further, last year, a United Nations report warned of the potential negative environmental and social costs of rapidly expanding biofuels. The report warns that:
“unless new policies are enacted to protect threatened lands, secure socially acceptable land use, and steer bioenergy development in a sustainable direction overall, the environmental and social damage could in some cases outweigh the benefits.”
In the realm of food security, for example, price increases in major biofuel sources such as sugar, palm oil and soybeans could drive up the prices of basic foods.
So what does all this have to do with the oceans?
Palm oil plantations are industrial operations. Rainforest are cleared and a monocrop is planted. These plantations are subject to massive runoff of waters and overflow of industrial waste during the rainy season,
According to Friends of the Earth:
A range of waste products is generated by the production of palm oil. Of these, effluent from palm oil fruit processing – which takes place in hundreds of mills throughout South East Asia – is responsible for the most pollution. Known as palm oil mill effluent (POME), the waste consists of a mix of water, crushed shells and some fat residue and is notorious for contaminating rivers. It kills aquatic life for some distance downstream.
Responsible mills store POME waste in basins in the hope of detoxifying it, but the basins often overflow during bouts of heavy rain or intensive production. Even this halfhearted attempt to control the waste contamination is ignored by many companies which still release the effluent directly into rivers.
So how does this effluent as well as runoff of chemicals such as paraquat impact the oceans?
Massive freshwater discharges can cause coral bleaching and die off. Water that is contaminated with chemicals and waste makes matters worse for the corals.
In 2006, a team of researchers isolated bacteria found only on dying sponge tissue in Papua New Guinea.
What was fascinating was that the rRNA sequencing revealed that the putative pathogens were all very closely related to species of bacteria widely used in sprays (some aerial) in oil palm plantations as “good, friendly” bacteria in integrated pest management, mainly species of Pseudomonas used against fungal infections, and species of Bacillus used against insect pests, including Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).
The implication is that even by using more environmentally friendly techniques industrial palm oil plantations were having a ripple effect in the ecosystem.
How do we move forward when even the environmentally friendly alternatives cause environmental destruction?
I think the answer really lies in what I touched on earlier. We cannot expect to maintain the same levels of consumption and energy expenditure, much as we cannot maintain the same levels of fish consumption. The solutions that we need to be looking at are more systemic than cosmetic.
And we need to look for ways to meet our needs without impacting others. When we use biofuels that come from deforested jungles wastewater kills corals. Without corals, local fish supplies decrease, and people living in coastal communities suddenly have less food to feed their families.
Everything is connected and the choices that you and I make can have impacts on people half a world away. So, take the time to make the right choice.
