CPOPC urges the EU to rethink its palm oil policy
The Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC) has again urged the European Union to revise its approach on vegetable oils in biofuels.
This comes under the framework of RED II in light of the upcoming revision of the directive on 14 July.
Additionally there is the Commission’s approaching deadline for adopting rules on certifying low indirect land-use change (ILUC) risk biofuels and updating the list of high ILUC-risk feedstocks.
The CPOPC said the use of ILUC as a policy tool has been fraught with methodological problems and biases from the beginning.
It added: “Therefore, a new approach, which treats all sustainable vegetable oils equally, based on verified production practices and not on the type of commodity, is urgently needed. After all, commodities in themselves are not responsible for deforestation – it is the practices that matter.”
Palm oil has been singled out as damaging to the environment based on a comparison study that used 2008-2016 as a gauge for ILUC.
This timeline discriminates against countries that were late in development whose growth during that period affected land use change, the organisation argued.
The CPOC said that a proper timeline for the sustainable development of palm oil producing countries including Indonesia and Malaysia should start from post-colonial times.
A new expansive study on land use change by Nature tracked land use change from 1960-2019 and identified 43 million km2 from global north to the south. Estimates on palm oil cultivation globally pits it at a mere 250,000 km2, CPOPC said.
This comes under the framework of RED II in light of the upcoming revision of the directive on 14 July.
Additionally there is the Commission’s approaching deadline for adopting rules on certifying low indirect land-use change (ILUC) risk biofuels and updating the list of high ILUC-risk feedstocks.
The CPOPC said the use of ILUC as a policy tool has been fraught with methodological problems and biases from the beginning.
It added: “Therefore, a new approach, which treats all sustainable vegetable oils equally, based on verified production practices and not on the type of commodity, is urgently needed. After all, commodities in themselves are not responsible for deforestation – it is the practices that matter.”
Palm oil has been singled out as damaging to the environment based on a comparison study that used 2008-2016 as a gauge for ILUC.
This timeline discriminates against countries that were late in development whose growth during that period affected land use change, the organisation argued.
The CPOC said that a proper timeline for the sustainable development of palm oil producing countries including Indonesia and Malaysia should start from post-colonial times.
A new expansive study on land use change by Nature tracked land use change from 1960-2019 and identified 43 million km2 from global north to the south. Estimates on palm oil cultivation globally pits it at a mere 250,000 km2, CPOPC said.
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