In 2019, South Korea imported 745,000 metric tonnes of palm oil, up from 194,000 metric tonnes in 2005. It is among the fastest-growing markets for the commodity on the planet, pushed by authorities insurance policies to spice up palm oil as a profitable inexperienced business and to safe meals and power provides from abroad.
Most of this palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia and till just lately was utilized in processed meals, comparable to instantaneous noodles. However below the nation’s “Green New Deal” launched earlier this yr, palm oil is being promoted as a supply of renewable power, as biofuel for transport and energy technology.
However palm oil’s inexperienced credentials are hotly debated. Whereas the US and Europe are taking steps to limit use due to hyperlinks to widespread deforestation and excessive carbon emissions, South Korean public establishments have given tens of millions of {dollars} in subsidies to firms creating plantations in Indonesia within the identify of “inexperienced” growth.
Environmental activists and attorneys in South Korea have change into more and more vocal concerning the business’s hyperlinks with human rights violations and deforestation in Indonesia, and are demanding the federal government cease financing harmful practices.
Demand soars
South Korea depends on abroad imports for 97% of its power and 75% of its meals sources. After the 2008 global food crisis, the federal government got down to safe each edible and industrial palm oil, launching an “Abroad Agro-resources Growth” programme in 2009. That public mortgage scheme lined 70% of the enterprise prices of personal South Korean firms to supply and distribute wheat, soybean, corn and crude palm oil.
Palm oil is designated a strategic commodity below South Korean legislation. The Abroad Agriculture & Forest Sources Growth and Cooperation Act, and the Abroad Sources Growth Enterprise Act are used as authorized grounds to subsidise Korean palm oil firms abroad. The Korea Forest Service and varied finance establishments classify oil palm growth as “bioenergy afforestation” initiatives. This can be a perverse use of the phrase afforestation, which usually means planting timber for environmental and local weather advantages, not clearing tropical forest for monoculture plantations.
“I discover these acts very imperialistic. The federal government helps firms to take sources from different international locations as a result of we’re resource-poor,” mentioned Chung Shin-young, a lawyer with Advocates for Public Curiosity Legislation (APIL), who has been investigating South Korea’s palm oil business and main the marketing campaign to cease public finance of the business.
Private and non-private funding within the palm oil business has additionally been pushed by way of palm oil as a transport gas because the mid 2000s. Since 2015, South Korean firms importing or exporting petroleum gas merchandise have had to make sure their oil merchandise are at the very least 2.5% biodiesel. The proportion was later elevated to three%. As of 2017, palm oil and its by-products accounted for 88% of South Korea’s biodiesel imports.
Public cash funds deforestation and human rights abuses
South Korean palm oil producers discovered themselves within the worldwide highlight in 2016 when environmental advocacy group Mighty Earth, in partnership with the Korean Federation for Environmental Actions (KFEM), exposed huge forest clearance within the palm oil concessions of Korindo and Posco Worldwide in Indonesian-administered Papua. Satellite tv for pc information and drone photographs confirmed that Korindo had cleared 30,000 hectares of rainforest within the earlier two years whereas Posco Worldwide had cleared 19,000 hectares within the earlier 4.
Korindo established its first oil palm plantation in Papua in 1998. Current years have seen a marked enlargement of its actions within the province, with 30,000 hectares of forest cleared between 2013 and 2016. (Picture: Mighty Earth)
“The Korean mannequin of palm oil plantation deforestation harkens again to the outdated, darkish days of the palm oil business when forests, wildlife and indigenous lands had been obliterated for the aim of creating big expanses of monoculture plantations, the earnings of which primarily go to overseas house owners,” mentioned Deborah Lapidus, senior marketing campaign director at Mighty Earth.
The issue is these two firms have been working their palm oil enterprise with public cash from the Korea Forestry Service and the Export-Import Financial institution of Korea (Korea Exim Financial institution), mentioned Chung.
“In the event you take a look at the detailed assertion of the federal government mortgage to Posco Worldwide, you’ll study that they hardly ever run a enterprise on their very own cash. However it’s not solely Posco Worldwide. LG Worldwide, Daesang, and JC Chemical earlier than them bought a mortgage from the Korea Forestry Service,” mentioned Chung. Her group was one of many first native teams to research South Korean palm oil firms’ hyperlinks to rights violations and big deforestation in Indonesia since 2016, along with the Korean Federation of Environmental Actions (KFEM).
“The company’s very first public mortgage to the palm oil business was to an oil palm afforestation firm, Daesang Holdings, in 2008. In whole, 3.8 billion-won (round US$3.2 million) was financed for a bioenergy afforestation undertaking in Indonesia,” defined Shin Gun-seop, an administrative officer at Korea Forest Service’s Abroad Sources Growth Workplace.
Between 2010 and 2019, Korea Forest Service offered 40.1 billion received (round US$33 million) to plant oil palms in round 24,000 hectares, principally in Indonesia, in keeping with Shin. Daesang Holdings, LG Worldwide Corp., Kodeco, and JC Chemical had been a few of the recipients of those public loans.
Livelihoods destroyed
The enlargement of South Korean palm oil firms has put indigenous communities’ livelihoods in danger, lots of whom had been displaced from their forest land up to now.
“My concern is that the presence of Korindo and Posco Worldwide in Papua will additional widen gaps and deepen injustices in Papua the place huge enterprise take every thing and the local people is left with empty palms. For many indigenous Papuans, forests are their supermarkets, banks, hospitals and sacred locations. Huge forest conversion means they lose their livelihoods,” mentioned Angky Samperante from the Papuan rights group Yayasan Pusaka. His group has been struggling to guard the rights of indigenous peoples and the setting of Papua in opposition to Korean palm oil firms since 2010.
A household from the Kowin Marind tribe whose land has been affected by deforestation to make method for a Korindo plantation in Papua (Picture: Mighty Earth)
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has been closely monitoring Korindo’s operations since complaints in opposition to its harmful practices and human rights violations had been first made by Mighty Earth in 2017, however has stopped in need of stripping it of its sustainability certification. Korindo Group printed a statement on its web site in July 2019 saying it rejected complaints that it was concerned in unlawful forest fires however agreed to work with FSC to enhance its requirements.
The Korean palm oil business has been linked with the struggling of indigenous communities in Indonesia from the beginning. Korindo Group began the primary “Korean” palm oil enterprise in Merauke, Papua province, in 1995. There the Marind and Mandobo peoples had already been compelled from their customary forest by the central authorities’s growth plan within the early Seventies. PT. Tunas Sawa Erma, the palm oil firm of Korindo Group, acquired a palm oil enterprise allow in 1997 and by December 2001 had planted palms over 7,800 hectares of land. This set the scene for the subsequent set of large-scale Korean palm oil ventures in Indonesia from 2007.
The key gamers
Aside from Korindo, six different huge South Korean firms have change into main gamers within the palm oil business, financed by public cash. Virtually US$200 million value of public funding has been given to those firms to develop over 65,000 hectares of palm oil plantations in Indonesia. These estimates are primarily based on publicly out there and verified information from the Korea Forest Service, Export-Import Financial institution of Korea and the South Korean parliament. And in keeping with an unbiased investigation by APIL (Advocates for Public Curiosity Legislation), nearly all of those firms have ongoing land and rights violation conflicts with native communities.
Native advocacy teams have been operating a marketing campaign to cease authorities loans to the palm oil firms in Indonesia since APIL and KFEM (Korean Federation for Environmental Actions) printed a report primarily based on their investigation in 2019.
“It’s our tax cash going into the business that’s complicit in land grabbing, indigenous individuals’s rights and labour rights violations. We’re pushing Korean export credit score companies to have their very own human rights requirements to comply with when offering a public finance mortgage to abroad initiatives just like the palm oil business. It’s the authorities workplaces’ constitutional accountability to keep away from any human rights violations,” mentioned Chung.
Carbon emissions
Native scientists are additionally elevating their considerations concerning the authorities’s rising “carbon debt” given its assist for the palm oil business.
“South Korea has been utilizing a by-product of crude palm oil known as Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) as a most important supply of bioenergy. Resulting from its excessive carbon depth and environmental value, PFAD wouldn’t be permitted as a most important supply of biodiesel in international locations just like the US and UK,” mentioned Shin Jung-Yull from Korea Vitality Company’s audit division.
In accordance with Shin’s 2018 PhD dissertation, PFAD accounted for 47% of Korea’s biodiesel feedstock in 2015, and emits 5.7 occasions extra greenhouse gases than various oils. The European Union plans to phase out palm oil-based transport fuels by 2030, due to the deforestation and better emissions they trigger.
Mounting stress
Since 2015, South Korean lawmakers have additionally been questioning the related ministries over the effectiveness and sustainability of public financing within the abroad palm oil business by parliamentary inspections and analysis service experiences.
Underneath public stress, Korea Forest Service excluded Korindo from receiving abroad public financing and seized further mortgage assist for oil palm afforestation initiatives in 2019. This was after the company launched new analysis standards requiring firms to offer proof, comparable to satellite tv for pc photographs, to show that they don’t seem to be liable for “conversion of forest”. Nonetheless, firms receiving loans earlier than 2019 aren’t sure by the stricter standards.
Membership of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – the worldwide certification organisation set as much as promote moral palm oil – will not be included in public financing standards, and neither is a dedication to No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) insurance policies.
Regardless of this, there was big public stress on firms to take motion. Posco Worldwide voluntarily joined RSPO membership and introduced a zero-deforestation policy for its palm oil plantation in Indonesia’s Papua province in March this yr.
When requested to answer the worldwide outcry over their actions in Indonesia, Joyce Eun Jeong Website positioning of Posco Worldwide’s Sustainable Administration Division advised China Dialogue: “In finishing up the palm oil enterprise in Indonesia, Posco Worldwide and its subsidiary PT Bio Inti Agrindo recognised and complied with indigenous customary legal guidelines as a prime precedence and strives to fulfil the extent of social accountability required by worldwide norms as a accountable world firm.”
Posco Worldwide was the primary South Korean enterprise to introduce a NDPE (no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation) coverage earlier this yr. However between 2012 and 2017, its subsidiary in Papua cleared 26,500 hectares of principally main forest to determine a plantation. (Picture: Google Earth, Landsat / Copernicus)
However Korean residents have solely simply began to demand extra transparency concerning the palm oil provide chain and the issues round this ubiquitous commodity.
“Everyone knows that our nation has to rely closely on abroad sources for our meals and power. However the authorities can’t blind its residents through the use of ‘nationwide curiosity and safety’ logic to justify human rights violation, deforestation and carbon emissions,” mentioned Kang Myung-hwa, a 34-year-old citizen from Seoul.
From our companion chinadialogue