Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 2.1 Palm oil biofuel and climate change
Biofuels are seen by many to be good for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and reducing the magnitude of climate change. This is
because they involve burning plant materials which are then replaced
with new plants or by new fruits and so over a period of a few years the
same amount of carbon is taken out of the atmosphere as is released
back again. One popular biofuel which is also used in food products is
palm oil. Palm oil is produced from the pulp of the fruit of the oil palm
plant. It is used to make forms of biodiesel which is becoming increas-
ingly popular in Europe. Because of its popularity for export, the gov-
ernments of Malaysia and Indonesia are encouraging the planting of
more and more oil palm trees and production of palm oil.
Much of this new planting is taking place on land which is covered
by thick deposits of tropical peatlands. These peatlands are large carbon
stores which have been amassed over thousands of years. However, to
plant oil palm trees on peatlands the peat needs to be drained. Around
45 per cent of the 27 million hectares of peatland in these two coun-
tries has now been drained. The drainage removes waterlogging, the
lack of which encourages faster decomposition of the peat and release
of the carbon that it had been storing. Such carbon emissions from
drained peatland has played a major contributing role in moving Indo-
nesia to being the third largest greenhouse gas producer (through
human action) after the USA and China. Thus a strategy that is sup-
posed to be supporting low carbon fuel production is actually releasing
large quantities of carbon into the atmosphere.
CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND
ADAPTATION
Sir Nicholas Stern reported in 2006 in his review of the economics
of climate change that '[t]he scientific evidence is now overwhelm-
ing: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it
demands an urgent global response'. The overall argument pre-
sented in the report was that action now would cost a lot, but this
would be a lot less costly than if we did not take action given the
nature of the impacts described above. So what can be done to
combat climate change?
Greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by improving the effi-
ciency of global energy supply, reducing demand for goods and
