JAKARTA – The growth of demand for foods, housing, infrastructure and other facilities has become the main drivers of global deforestation.
The study conducted by the European Commission (2013) has shown that the size of global deforestation during the period of 1990 – 2008 reached 239 million hectares, of which 40 percent occurred in American continent, 31.6 percent in Africa, 26.2 percent in Asia, 1.5 percent in Europe, and 2.0 percent in Oceania.
According to the PASPI Monitor, an interesting fact about the results of the study is that Europe and North America became the center of global deforestation during the pre-agriculture period until 1980, and then still continued the deforestation during the period of 1990 – 2008 despite the fact that they are no longer the main drivers of global deforestation. But then South America, Central America, and Africa contributed 71 percent to the global deforestation during the period.
A number of empirical studies have revealed that the agricultural sector through the expansion of agricultural land areas has become the main driver of global deforestation. The agricultural commodities identified (outside of the natural disaster and unexplained factors) as the drivers of global deforestation during the period of 1990 – 2008 consist of those of animal farm at 24 percent, cereals at 8.0 percent, soybeans at 6.0 percent, roots pulses at 4.0 percent and other plants at 4.0 percent.
Besides the top-5 commodities that drive the global deforestation during the period include fruits, vegetables and nuts at 3.0 percent, other oil crops (besides palm oil) at 3.0 percent, and palm oil at 2.0 percent.
“Based on the scientific facts, listing the palm oil into the top-5 commodities as main drivers of global deforestation is too much and baseless. Also, attributing the oil palm plantations to the indirect land use change (ILUC) or accusing the palm oil as a high ILUC-risk commodity or high forest-risk commodity is irrelevant and baseless,” PASPI Monitor reported.
If the western countries are concerned with global deforestation, they should turn to the top-5 commodities that mainly drive the global deforestation, and stopped accusing the palm oil as the main driver of global deforestation.
“But they won’t take such step. In other words, accusing the palm oil as the main driver of global deforestation is an unfair way of winning business competition and a kind of crop apartheid at the global market,” PASPI concluded in its report.
Source : wartaekonomi.co.id
