Oil-Palms and the Last Rainforests”
ENVIRONMENTAL & AGRICULTURAL
PANACEA...
OR A DESTRUCTIVE BIOLOGICAL
SELL-OUT?
Palm oil offers biodiesel in a petroleum-hungry world, and a cheap oil for making foods
and cosmetics. The palms that yield it have made fortunes for some, and lifted millions
out of poverty. But at what cost? In a few short years, untold millions of acres of tropical
forest lands have been cleared for oil palms. Vast forests and peat beds have burned,
releasing millions of tons of greenhouse gas. Hundreds of thousands of species have
fallen towards extinction, orangutans and gibbons amongst them, and indigenous
peoples have lost their lands, lives and cultures. Land-grabs and land clearings continue
to spread day-by-day, and the plantation companies are now eyeing up the last rainforests
of the Asia-Pacific islands, Congo and Amazon. And ubiquitous palm oil is boosting a
global epidemic of obesity.
Is this how the living world will end, with a fire-sale of cheap fat?
SUMMARY
Palm tree oil. A huge multi-national industry sprung up rapidly to farm palm trees, grown to
be used as a cheap vegetable-oil replacement. Palm oil has now been studied
extensively and is showing its true face: it is less healthy than other vegetable oils when
ingested, emits more polluting toxic gases when burned in bio-fuels, and is farmed in
ways that are more destructive to the tropical forest environment than any other hazard.
We have all been turned into BIOFOOLS.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Tropical rainforests. Those giant wet ecosystems filled with orchids and lianas,
buttressed trees and climbing palms, spiders that look like bird-droppings, phasmids that
look like leaves, golden fruits bursting straight from tree bark, gliding frogs, paradise birds,
black panthers, the singing of pair-bonded gibbons and the drawn-out lustful calls of male
orangutans. That place of wonders - the one that we were taught about in junior school,
that we drew clumsy pictures of, that we collected money from our parents to help save.
That mystery - the one that seemed to sum up our pitiful knowledge of creation, yet that
beckoned us into scientific careers, or on which we pinned our hopes for a cure for cancer
before our parents needed one. That killing field - the one where red fire laps the stumps
after the chain-saws have been through, where mile-high columns of smoke rise from
underground fires in the peat beds of Borneo, where the cows now graze on coarse grass
across Central America. Were our efforts to conserve that extraordinary universe all in
vain? Was our will to save it without point?
The answer is a mixed one. We managed to set aside a few parks and reserves, some of
them magnificent in their stature and diversity, but now we wonder whether a changing
climate will keep them wet, or if fire will gnaw at them until they are all gone. Some of
these zones, as well as the vast majority of rainforest areas that were never protected,
have become direly threatened in recent years. Indeed we are moving into an end-game,
in which the momentum of logging, fire and plantation development is so great that
sometimes it seems that nothing can stop it. Yet one of the great drivers of the final
clearance of our rainforests is demand for something that we all eat or use every day –
“palm-oil”, or one or other of the immense range of materials, foods, cosmetics and fuels
made from it. This program tells the story of how we came to this, how the rise of a single
species of palm tree, planted by the billions to give us cheap, saturated fat, led us to the
very brink of seeing the last rainforests, the last orangutans, and the last millions of
rainforest species. And how the same crop was meanwhile responsible for churning out
more greenhouse gases than China and/or India ever did or perhaps ever will. This
program will be hard to watch for anyone who loves nature or who values the future, but at
least it will show how we can all do something to snatch survival from the jaws of short-
sightedness.
This program will be co-produced by Dr. Elliott Haimoff of Global Science Productions and
Dr. Julian Caldecott. Dr. Haimoff is a world-renowned biologist, who is a pioneer in the
video analysis of animal behavior, and over the past 20 years has produced well over 200
full-length TV documentary specials and TV news segments on science, nature, space,
and health. Dr. Caldecott is a world-renowned tropical rain forest ecologist, and has
written several books on ecology and conservation, as well as consulting with dozens of
governments worldwide on conservation issues.
OF BANGLADESH”
Of Bangladesh’s nearly 150,000 square kilometers of land area, almost half of that is
considered as a special marsh ecosystem known as “wetlands”. In fact, Bangladesh has
been bestowed with the world’s largest wetlands and deltas, found within the Ganges,
Brahmaputra and Meghna river systems. The wetlands of Bangladesh provide not only
a wide range of important ecological, cultural, social, economic, agricultural and
commercial values to its people, but they are also the home of uncounted millions of
plants and animals that are of substantial significance both locally AND globally. The
wetlands are so crucial to Bangladesh, that it’s regarded as the heart and arteries of
Bangladesh’s socio-economy. However, as Bangladesh develops and grows, with a
population that has doubled in the last 40 years, the wetlands are disappearing at an
alarming rate largely because of inefficient land-management practices and
irresponsible bureaucrats who are ignoring newly-enacted laws. Even though there are
some exceptional actions taken by a few government agencies and non-governmental
organizations intent on protecting these wetlands, the government of Bangladesh has as
yet been unable to stop the enormous and tragic loss of habitat, to stem the dwindling
biodiversity of Bangladesh wetlands.
Therefore, pioneering leaders in Bangladesh conservation such as Enayetullah Khan, Dr.
Anwarul Islam, Enam Ul-Haque and their team at the Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh, as
well as Faridur Reza Shagor and Shahidul Alam of Channel “i” in Bangladesh, in
conjunction with the noted biologist Dr. Elliott Haimoff and his documentary production
company, Global Science Productions, have decided to all join forces and produce a one-
hour, high-definition, TV documentary special on the plight of the wetlands of
Bangladesh. Dr. Haimoff of Global Science Productions has already filmed two other full-
length wildlife conservation documentaries in Bangladesh over the past two years, and
he has produced well over 200 science, space, and nature documentaries and TV news
segments over the past 20 years.
This is one last-ditch effort to save and conserve the treasure of Bangladesh, its
biodiversity and its wetland habitats, as well as to educate the people of Bangladesh
about the predicament of their wetlands, before this habitat and all of the rare animals
and plants here would be lost forever. The hopes are that this program will contribute to
the fight to save the wetlands and the Delta regions of Bangladesh by profiling their plight
to the global media, and will hopefully be the turning point for the wetlands, and the
animals, on the brink of extinction. In addition, such a program would attract attention
from multi-national corporations and other non-governmental organizations, motivating
them to participate in conservation efforts and outreach programs, as well as give further
incentives to the government to enact stricter laws to protect the wetlands from destructive
development.
This project can be set up as EITHER a “non-profit” OR a “for profit” project, depending
upon the requirements of any conservation agency, foundation, corporation, or any
individuals requiring a 501(c) non-profit organization to provide funding. Since one of the
partners for this project is a non-profit organization, funding can be provided to them for
disbursement, and the copyright and entire program’s profits will be given to that
organization. Otherwise, funding would go through Global Science Productions directly
as a for-profit project, and sponsors would have a vested interest in the program.
