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| Panut Hadisiswoyo |
I went to a talk in Oxford in Spring by Panut Hadisiswoyo
who leads the ground team for the non-profit organisation
SOS (Sumatran
Orang-utan Society). He was incredibly inspiring, showing slides and videos of
the work that is
being done each and every single day by a dedicated team
in
Sumatra. However one thing he said really stayed with me. Given all this bad
press about palm oil and how it is destroying the habitat for thousands of
species, I thought he would stand there and try to rally us all together to
campaign against the use of palm oil in our food and cosmetic products. But
what he actually said was:
“Palm oil is in ~80% of what you
buy from the supermarket. Plantations provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of
people across Southeast Asia. The biggest demand for palm oil comes from Europe
and China. If Europe stops demanding palm oil, all that will happen is producers
will continue to sell to the enormous Chinese market. The problem with that is
China doesn’t necessarily care how the palm oil is made, which will only encourage
countries like Malaysia and Indonesia to produce unsustainable, ‘dirty’ oil.
Therefore what Europe needs to do is demand sustainable
palm oil. It is possible and it does happen in certain plantations already.
So Europe’s responsibility now is to make
sustainable palm oil trendy. And with this, hopefully China and other
nations will follow suit.”
Those weren’t his exact words but that is what I took from
his speech. It really made me think... Maybe the
solutions aren’t that far away.We in Europe, America and around the world have the power to demand that our local supermarkets and
cosmetic companies use sustainable palm oil, just like we demanded organic produce, animal free testing products or free-range eggs!
Gives you hope doesn’t it? It certainly does to me.
S x
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