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 As a leader in the industry, we are in a strategic position to engage all our stakeholders in developing best practices and solutions for sustainable palm oil. This has motivated us to create the gar-FoodforThought Library – an online platform where we share our thoughts and perspectives on the issues and developments as we take important steps towards the goal of sustainability. |
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| Conserving High Carbon Stock Forests
As part of GAR's Forest Conservation Policy (FCP) announced earlier this year, GAR has begun the fieldwork in collaboration with TFT and other stakeholders. This presentation, Conserving High Carbon Stock Forests, gives an update of this fieldwork and was presented to the RSPO Greenhouse Gas Working Group (GHG WG2) on 8 Apr 2011. |
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| Calculating Carbon Footprint
One controversy surrounding palm oil is that the amount of carbon that can be sequestered by growing oil palms is offset by the carbon released when land is converted into plantations. This is especially so if the land is primary forest, as natural habitats and biodiversity are destroyed, or peat land, which releases stored carbon when it is cultivated. Besides capturing carbon dioxide from the air, however, palm oil as a biofuel can bring about other carbon savings by replacing fossil fuel. While biofuel production has a carbon footprint, this is balanced by similar emissions from fossil fuel extraction. The entire equation swings in favour of biofuels when one factors in the risk of environmental damage that fossil fuel extraction poses – for example, the substantial leak caused by BP in the Gulf of Mexico, and the smaller but more frequent oil spills caused by oil tanker accidents. In this paper, Estimating carbon footprint from biofuel production from oil palm: methodology and results from 2 pilot areas in Indonesia, a comprehensive accounting system for carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions from production of oil palm biofuel is proposed. The Biofuel Emission Reduction Estimator Scheme (BERES) calculates emission reduction factors, using a life cycle approach. The paper was presented at the International Conference on Oil Palm and Environment (ICOPE) held in Bali in February 2010. |
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