The forgotten human face in climate change
Bob TeohPublished: Nov 19, 2014 5:39 AM | Updated: Nov 21, 2014 2:43 AM
COMMENT While the green, consumer, and anti-palm oil lobby in the West are battling the palm oil industry over greenhouse gas emission arising from massive forest clearing mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for oil palm cultivation, 10-year-old Rimania who lives in the heartland of Borneo may just become the collateral damage and unseen human face of the global warming jaw-jaw.
While the green, consumer, and anti-palm oil lobby in the West are battling the palm oil industry over greenhouse gas emission arising from massive forest clearing mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for oil palm cultivation, 10-year-old Rimania who lives in the heartland of Borneo may just become the collateral damage and unseen human face of the global warming jaw-jaw.
But she’s oblivious to how her future is being shaped by the way the media sets the climate change agenda. Media attention has since shifted to the survival of the cuddly and human-like “orang utan” whose natural habitat is threatened.
The western media is taken up by this highly emotional pitch but the local media is seemingly disinterested.
Aditya Wardhana, a TVOne producer, Indonesia’s leading private broadcaster explains it this way: “Who cares about orang utan when “orang kota” (city folks) – the real people – is poor, homeless, jobless, don’t have social security, health service and education?”
He says local readership interest on such matters is low.
P Gunasegaram, joint CEO and publisher of www.kinibiz.com, an independent and reputable Malaysian business news portal, agrees. He says, “It is a bit of a challenge getting readers interested in such issues.”
The emotional hook
But the helpless orang utan angle remains too tempting as an emotional hook to ignore.
Take this post on www.intentious.com, for instance: “Would YOU Kill An Orangutan? Say NO to Palm Oil.”
The writer asks: “Do you eat biscuits? Do you cook with vegetable oil? Do you wash your hair with shampoo? Of course you do. You could be contributing to the death of thousands of orang utans and other animals who live in these forests to the palm oil trade inadvertently. You didn’t know? I didn’t think so. I didn’t realise either, certainly not the extent of it, and I am disgusted by it and our willingness to let this happen.”
The soy oil lobby in the United States which is alarmed at the rapid rate its global market is losing out to palm oil has also embarked on an anti-palm oil campaign for a long while; first, attempting to deride its competitor as an unhealthy edible oil, then resorting to environment polemics before finally joining the orang utan bandwagon.
This prompted the US-based Coconut Research Center to hit out at the hypocrisy, “The soybean industry is up to its old tricks, attempting to demonize the tropical oils. This time, the attacks are in the guise of environmentalism. However, if the truth were told, the soy industry would be exposed as one of the world’s worst offenders.”
"…The soybean industry fed misleading information to these groups (the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the American Heart Savors Association) and allowed them to fight the battle…
"Since the bulk of the attack came from supposedly impartial third parties, their message had more impact. People were swayed against saturated fats and the tropical oils.”
The whole climate change issue may even be over-stated, as pointed out by Living Lee, a Malaysian geology professor in his article “Global Warming or Global Conning?”
According to him, “The truth is that nobody knows for sure what will happen to the earth in the future. Climate scientists are trying their best to predict what will happen based on what they know of the past and the factors they can include into their computer simulation models of the future.
“Despite their great expertise, there is always the probability that they can be wrong because of insufficient or erroneous input. A saner alternative is to assume that global warming, whatever its cause, is happening. So what can or should be done?”
The crux of the problem may be due to what political theorist Gadi Wolfsfeld cites as cultural and ideological bias, as well as commercial bias, in his book “Making sense of Media & Politics.”
The human face
Back to the story of Rimania, or Rima Joyful to her friends.
She lives in the headwaters of the great Kapuas, the longest river in Borneo. If she had not been brought out from the jungle fringe and enrolled in a residential mission school five hours downstream, she may just end up a mere statistic, just like the multitudes of early school dropouts in rural Indonesia.
She would probably get married early, have babies and get sucked into the vicious poverty cycle all over again. The boys in her village would fare no better either.
Rima’s mission school for poor Dayak children runs mainly on church donations and there is concern over its long-term sustainability as many of its donors are growing old faster than new ones could be found.
Rima, like many Indonesians, use only one name, and her future lies with the school. But the school’s future lies elsewhere.
A Malaysian church heard about the school’s plight and proposed a 10-hectare oil palm smallholding on the school’s land bank of 20 hectares of which only five hectares have been used over the last 16 years.
This is expected to generate income within three years and the interest-free loan to be raised by the Malaysian church could be fully repaid within seven years.
The school would then be fully self-sustaining and Rima’s education need not be disrupted.
But it hit a snag when a visiting retired biology professor from New Zealand convinced the school to drop the project solely on his assessment of the seemingly adverse impact of deforestation that endangers the orang utan habitat.
This is despite the fact that the land proposed for the oil palm farm is to be on unused land belonging to the school and not part of any pristine forest. There is none for miles around. This only serves to highlight the influence of the cultural bias of media coverage on readers.
High yield, massive clearing
Oil palm is an important high-yielding economic crop. The WWF Heart of Borneo Report 2011 pointed out that, “The palm oil industry is an important part of the national economies of Indonesia and Malaysia, representing 4.5% and 3.2% of GDP respectively. Palm oil also provides a significant source of employment for many of Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s rural poor employing more than 3 million in Indonesia and 1.5 million in Malaysia. Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s palm oil production amounts to 85% of the global supply.”
However, according to a recent Reuters report, each year in Malaysia and Indonesia, a land area the size of Greece is cleared for palm oil plantations.
Greenpeace says such land clearings release vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, thus accelerating climate change. It has embarked on a worldwide campaign to boycott palm oil products.
WWF is also concerned about the carbon dioxide emissions from forest clearing for oil palm cultivation.
It said, “The practice of draining and converting tropical peat land forests in Indonesia is particularly damaging as these ‘carbon sinks’” store more carbon per unit area than any other ecosystem in the world (instead of releasing it to the atmosphere).
To resolve the environmental issues associated with palm oil, WWF initiated an international multi-stakeholder roundtable bringing together the industry’s key players from producers, consumers to the supply chain 12 years ago.
This resulted in the Geneva-based Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a voluntary certification of palm oil produced according to audited best practices benchmarks which is aimed at, among other things, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
But Greenpeace said it won’t work. It said, “At present the RSPO itself is creating the illusion of sustainable palm oil, justifying the expansion of the industry.”
Part II: No such thing as objective news
BOB TEOH is a freelance writer who believes the first obligation of journalism is to truth. This article is adapted from a paper he submitted as a requirement for his Masters in Journalism programme at the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism, Ateneo University, Manila.
The climate change debate is contentious particularly over greenhouse gas emission arising from massive forest clearing for oil palm cultivation and its threat to the survival of the orang utan. But mud-slinging by the anti-palm oil lobby won’t save the orang utan. Part I of this article looks at the unseen human face of climate change. Part II looks at how the media sets the agenda.
But she’s oblivious to how her future is being shaped by the way the media sets the climate change agenda. Media attention has since shifted to the survival of the cuddly and human-like “orang utan” whose natural habitat is threatened.
The western media is taken up by this highly emotional pitch but the local media is seemingly disinterested.
Aditya Wardhana, a TVOne producer, Indonesia’s leading private broadcaster explains it this way: “Who cares about orang utan when “orang kota” (city folks) – the real people – is poor, homeless, jobless, don’t have social security, health service and education?”
He says local readership interest on such matters is low.
P Gunasegaram, joint CEO and publisher of www.kinibiz.com, an independent and reputable Malaysian business news portal, agrees. He says, “It is a bit of a challenge getting readers interested in such issues.”
The emotional hook
But the helpless orang utan angle remains too tempting as an emotional hook to ignore.Take this post on www.intentious.com, for instance: “Would YOU Kill An Orangutan? Say NO to Palm Oil.”
The writer asks: “Do you eat biscuits? Do you cook with vegetable oil? Do you wash your hair with shampoo? Of course you do. You could be contributing to the death of thousands of orang utans and other animals who live in these forests to the palm oil trade inadvertently. You didn’t know? I didn’t think so. I didn’t realise either, certainly not the extent of it, and I am disgusted by it and our willingness to let this happen.”
The soy oil lobby in the United States which is alarmed at the rapid rate its global market is losing out to palm oil has also embarked on an anti-palm oil campaign for a long while; first, attempting to deride its competitor as an unhealthy edible oil, then resorting to environment polemics before finally joining the orang utan bandwagon.
This prompted the US-based Coconut Research Center to hit out at the hypocrisy, “The soybean industry is up to its old tricks, attempting to demonize the tropical oils. This time, the attacks are in the guise of environmentalism. However, if the truth were told, the soy industry would be exposed as one of the world’s worst offenders.”
"…The soybean industry fed misleading information to these groups (the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the American Heart Savors Association) and allowed them to fight the battle…
"Since the bulk of the attack came from supposedly impartial third parties, their message had more impact. People were swayed against saturated fats and the tropical oils.”
The whole climate change issue may even be over-stated, as pointed out by Living Lee, a Malaysian geology professor in his article “Global Warming or Global Conning?”
According to him, “The truth is that nobody knows for sure what will happen to the earth in the future. Climate scientists are trying their best to predict what will happen based on what they know of the past and the factors they can include into their computer simulation models of the future.
“Despite their great expertise, there is always the probability that they can be wrong because of insufficient or erroneous input. A saner alternative is to assume that global warming, whatever its cause, is happening. So what can or should be done?”
The crux of the problem may be due to what political theorist Gadi Wolfsfeld cites as cultural and ideological bias, as well as commercial bias, in his book “Making sense of Media & Politics.”
The human face
Back to the story of Rimania, or Rima Joyful to her friends.
She lives in the headwaters of the great Kapuas, the longest river in Borneo. If she had not been brought out from the jungle fringe and enrolled in a residential mission school five hours downstream, she may just end up a mere statistic, just like the multitudes of early school dropouts in rural Indonesia.
She would probably get married early, have babies and get sucked into the vicious poverty cycle all over again. The boys in her village would fare no better either.
Rima’s mission school for poor Dayak children runs mainly on church donations and there is concern over its long-term sustainability as many of its donors are growing old faster than new ones could be found.
Rima, like many Indonesians, use only one name, and her future lies with the school. But the school’s future lies elsewhere. A Malaysian church heard about the school’s plight and proposed a 10-hectare oil palm smallholding on the school’s land bank of 20 hectares of which only five hectares have been used over the last 16 years.
This is expected to generate income within three years and the interest-free loan to be raised by the Malaysian church could be fully repaid within seven years.
The school would then be fully self-sustaining and Rima’s education need not be disrupted.
But it hit a snag when a visiting retired biology professor from New Zealand convinced the school to drop the project solely on his assessment of the seemingly adverse impact of deforestation that endangers the orang utan habitat.
This is despite the fact that the land proposed for the oil palm farm is to be on unused land belonging to the school and not part of any pristine forest. There is none for miles around. This only serves to highlight the influence of the cultural bias of media coverage on readers.
High yield, massive clearing
Oil palm is an important high-yielding economic crop. The WWF Heart of Borneo Report 2011 pointed out that, “The palm oil industry is an important part of the national economies of Indonesia and Malaysia, representing 4.5% and 3.2% of GDP respectively. Palm oil also provides a significant source of employment for many of Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s rural poor employing more than 3 million in Indonesia and 1.5 million in Malaysia. Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s palm oil production amounts to 85% of the global supply.”
However, according to a recent Reuters report, each year in Malaysia and Indonesia, a land area the size of Greece is cleared for palm oil plantations.
Greenpeace says such land clearings release vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, thus accelerating climate change. It has embarked on a worldwide campaign to boycott palm oil products.WWF is also concerned about the carbon dioxide emissions from forest clearing for oil palm cultivation.
It said, “The practice of draining and converting tropical peat land forests in Indonesia is particularly damaging as these ‘carbon sinks’” store more carbon per unit area than any other ecosystem in the world (instead of releasing it to the atmosphere).
To resolve the environmental issues associated with palm oil, WWF initiated an international multi-stakeholder roundtable bringing together the industry’s key players from producers, consumers to the supply chain 12 years ago.
This resulted in the Geneva-based Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a voluntary certification of palm oil produced according to audited best practices benchmarks which is aimed at, among other things, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
But Greenpeace said it won’t work. It said, “At present the RSPO itself is creating the illusion of sustainable palm oil, justifying the expansion of the industry.”
Part II: No such thing as objective news
BOB TEOH is a freelance writer who believes the first obligation of journalism is to truth. This article is adapted from a paper he submitted as a requirement for his Masters in Journalism programme at the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism, Ateneo University, Manila.
The climate change debate is contentious particularly over greenhouse gas emission arising from massive forest clearing for oil palm cultivation and its threat to the survival of the orang utan. But mud-slinging by the anti-palm oil lobby won’t save the orang utan. Part I of this article looks at the unseen human face of climate change. Part II looks at how the media sets the agenda.
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