The clearing and burning of peat forest has to be permanently banned. But on-the-ground verification that there is no further deforestation, that strips of forest have been left as wildlife corridors and along watercourses, is a huge problem, with all the corruption surrounding this lucrative commodity. Meanwhile species continue to be wiped out before they are even discovered, the most tragic type of extinction. Truly sustainable palm oil is still a long way off.
Support the investigations of the Bruno Manser Fonds, a Swiss NGO that has traced laundered profits from palm oil and logging in Sarawak from the former longtime chief minister and his family members and cronies to an upscale mall and condo complex in Ottawa, and a gated golf course community in the Arizona Desert. Keep abreast of the latest developments on Borneo and the spread of oil-palm cultivation around the Equator. The sad thing is that few modern consumers are aware of this far-away biocultural holocaust or of their complicity in it.
There have been some encouraging developments, particularly in Sarawak, which has elected a new chief minister, who is more supportive of the state’s 40-some ethnic groups and has canceled the massive Baram Dam. The 20,000 forest people who would have been displaced by its impounded water will have their land restored to them. Sarawak’s entire misguided, ecologically disastrous dam-building program has been canceled. But in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, pristine rain forest continues to be annihilated. This is a global battle for the cultural diversity of the tropics. We have to keep the pressure on.
Alex Shoumatoff is the editor of “Dispatches from The Vanishing World,” which is devoted to documenting, celebrating, and making people aware of the planet’s fast-disappearing biocultural diversity. He is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, Outside, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. His eleventh book, The Wasting of Borneo: Dispatches From A Vanishing World, has just been published.
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