Big food companies accused of risking climate catastrophe

The rush to palm oil and biofuels threatens to release 14 billion tonnes of carbon from Indonesia’s peatlands Many of the largest food and fuel companies risk climate change disaster by driving the demand for palm oil and biofuels grown on the world’s greatest peat deposits, a report will say today. Unilever, Cargill, Nestlé, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, as well as all leading UK supermarkets, are large users of Indonesian palm oil, much of which comes from the province of Riau in Sumatra, where an estimated 14.6bn tonnes of carbon – equivalent to nearly one year’s entire global carbon emissions – is locked up in the world’s deepest peat beds. More than 1.4m hectares of virgin forest in Riau has already been converted to plantations to provide cooking oil, but a further 3m hectares is planned to be turned to biofuels, says the Greenpeace report. Carbon is released when virgin forests are felled and the swampy peatlands are drained to provide plantation land. The peat decomposes and is broken down by bacteria and the land becomes vulnerable to fires which often smoulder and release greenhouse gases for decades. (…) The Indonesian plantations, which Greenpeace says provide oil used in global brands like Flora margarine, Pringles, KitKat, Cadbury’s Flake and Philadelphia cream cheese, feed a rising global demand for cheap vegetable oil used in producing food, cosmetics and, increasingly, vehicle fuel. “Demand [for palm oil as a cooking oil] is predicted to double within 25 years and triple by 2050. Further expansion in Indonesia is expected to be on the wet peatlands, because most of the dry forests have already been converted”, the report says. Image source: Ahmad Zamroni/Getty Images / The Guardian. > Continue.

News selected by Covalence | Country: Global, Indonesia | Company: Unilever, Cargill, Nestle, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Cadbury Schweppes | Source: The Guardian