The cost of the biofuel boom: destroying Indonesia’s forests

In Jakarta, I told Art Klassen, regional director of the Tropical Forest Foundation - a science-based US non-profit - about what I heard from the Kubu villagers. He did not seem surprised.

Indigenous land claims “are not enshrined in any legal framework,” he said. Oil palm, he continued, “occupies the land totally and squeezes out local populations. They become marginalised. They become slave workers for the oil palm industry basically. There is no other economic opportunity for them. That’s it. End of story.”

But it’s not just tribal people and wildlife that are displaced by oil palm. So, too, is the very atmospheric gas now at the centre of the global warming debate: carbon dioxide. All forests release CO2 when logged. But Indonesia’s jungles and carbon-rich, peaty soils haemorrhage the stuff. Last year, a World Bank report put the loss from deforestation at 2.6 billion tons a year, making the impoverished southeast Asian island nation the third largest source of CO2 on Earth, behind China and the United States.

The week I visited Sumatra, Greenpeace activists aboard the Rainbow Warrior were blockading a shipment of palm oil off its coast. A banner tied to the ship’s mast read: “Palm Oil Kills Forests and Climate.”

Perhaps the right kind of biofuels can help slow carbon emissions. But scientists say that by rushing into biofuel production in recent years, we failed to look ahead. What would make the best biofuel? Switchgrass? Soybeans? Sunflower seeds? Algae? That’s open to debate, but one thing is certain: Raw materials for biofuels should not be grown on plantations hacked out of tropical forests that are home to the richest concentrations of plant, insect, bird, and animal species on the planet.