Resources Sustainability

U.S. biofuels not to blame for Indonesia and Malaysia deforestation (24 Jan)

Since 1990, the United States has ramped up its production of biofuels—to about 16 billion gallons of ethanol and 1.6 billion gallons of biodiesel in 2017. At the same time, production of palm oil has increased nearly sixfold, mainly for food production, and with it significant deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. That overlap has led some analysts to blame the United States for deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, suggesting that the expansion in palm oil production is driven by biofuel production in U.S.

But a Purdue University study shows that only a scant fraction of the deforestation in those countries can be pinned on U.S. biofuel production and policy. “Our analysis shows that less than 1 percent of the land cleared in Indonesia and Malaysia can be tied to U.S. biofuel production,” said Farzad Taheripour, a research associate professor of agricultural economics at Purdue. “The amount is not significant. We’re talking about thousands of hectares amidst the millions that have been cleared for oil palm plantations and production of other commodities in Malaysia and Indonesia.”

Sources: Purdue University

India’s curbs on Malaysian palm oil set to shake up sector (27 Jan)

India has restricted palm oil imports after Malaysia commented on its policy towards Kashmir, with thousands of tonnes now stuck at ports. The dynamics between key players in the palm oil industry will fundamentally shift unless a diplomatic spat between India and Malaysia can be resolved amicably, experts warn. India – the world’s largest importer of palm oil and a major market for Malaysia – has started a trade war after taking strong exception to comments by the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. Late last year, the Malaysian leader condemned the Indian federal government’s move to revoke constitutional provisions that conferred special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim majority state. He subsequently criticised India’s new citizenship law as discriminatory to Muslims. The Indian government views these as internal matters.

Sources: Eco-business

Indonesia forest fires push orangutans into starvation mode (24 Jan)

The fires that raze vast swaths of Indonesian Borneo every year are having a lasting health impact on the region’s critically endangered orangutans that threatens them with extinction, a preliminary study has found. The fires, which in nearly all cases are started to clear land for plantations, such as oil palm, reduce the availability of food for the orangutans, pushing them into what researchers say is starvation mode. Meanwhile, the smoke from the fires weakens their immune system and damages their DNA. The researchers, from Rutgers University–New Brunswick and the National University in Jakarta, have for years been studying Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) from the Tuanan research station, inside the Mawas conservation area that’s home to an estimated 3,500 of the great apes. In 2015, 90 hectares (220 acres) of peat forest in the area was burned; in 2019, 160 ha (395 acres) was burned.

Sources: Mongabay

Malaysia to send palm oil delegation to Europe (30 Jan)

Malaysia’s primary industries minister, Teresa Kok, said she would visit the UK, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium and stress the importance of conservation efforts with forest replanting and wildlife protection. She said that during her week-long visit to Britain, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium, she would emphasise Malaysia’s stand on the importance of environmental conservation efforts such as forest replanting and wildlife protection. Kok said she would outline the country’s four new directions, namely limiting oil palm acreage across the country by setting a ceiling of 6.5 million hectares, as well as imposing restrictions on new oil palm cultivation on peatlands.

Sources: Bernama, ASEAN Economist

Green Finance

Climate change pushes investors to take their temperature (20 Jan)

Policymakers are pushing investors to do more to ensure their portfolio choices help to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change by limiting planetary warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius. A vanguard of insurers and pension funds – many of whom will be in Davos for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum – claim part of the answer is a new “temperature score” which provides a snapshot of how their investments are contributing to climate change. A single score can help them navigate the reallocation of capital from heavily polluting sectors likely to experience a financial hit to greener companies poised to profit. Despite the growing enthusiasm for temperature scores, however, a dearth of standardised data, methodologies and disclosure makes it extremely hard to calculate a single meaningful number.

Sources: Reuters, Channel NewsAsia

Global carbon trading turnover at record $214 billion last year: research (24 Jan)

Research by Refinitiv found that the turnover in global emissions trading reached a record high last year of $214 billion as prices rose on current or expected stricter regulation. The turnover was up 34 percent from a year earlier and marked a third consecutive year of growth. Emissions trading schemes, or carbon markets, are market-based tools to limit greenhouse gas emissions. They put a cap on the amount countries or companies can emit and if they exceed the limit they can buy permits from others. While a global carbon market remains elusive, 46 nations and over 30 cities, states and regions now have a price on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), covering just over 20 percent annual global greenhouse gas emissions, based on World Bank data.

Sources: Reuters, TODAYOnline

Oil major pledges to become carbon neutral by 2030, drawing sharp criticism from climate activists (27 Jan)

One of Europe’s largest independent oil producers Lundin Petroleum AB announced it will aim to make its operations carbon neutral by 2030. The Swedish company has been under pressure since Norway’s government directed the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund to sell out of pure upstream oil producers such as it, which unlike oil majors such as Shell and ExxonMobil, have no downstream activities such as refining. The proposed measures would involve using renewable energy to supply its offshore fields and adopting carbon offset measures. More specifically, the company announced plans to reduce emissions from oil and gas fields off Norway to below 2 kg of CO2 per barrel of oil equivalent from 2023 compared with 6.5 kg in 2018. It also intends to replace its net electricity usage on the Norwegian continental shelf through renewable power investments by 2023, including an unspecified investment in a wind power project in 2021. However, environmentalists have criticised Lundin’s plan for failing to address emissions from the use of oil and gas, which overall contributes about 95 percent of emissions.

Sources: Reuters, The Financial Times, CNBC

£30bn pension fund: we’ll sack asset managers that ignore climate crisis (27 Jan)

One of Britain’s largest pension schemes has given its 130 asset managers a two-year deadline to reduce their exposure to climate change or risk being fired. Brunel Pension Partnership, which manages £30bn on behalf of 700,000 members and 10 government bodies, also threatened to vote against directors at the companies it invests in and divest if they fail to demonstrate significant progress on managing climate risk by 2022. The pension fund further unveiled a new climate policy, which includes a five-point plan aimed at building a financial system that is fit for a zero-carbon future. Its new policy reflects the rising pressure on the role of the asset management sector in abetting the climate crisis. Research by InfluenceMap, a non-profit, found that the portfolios of the world’s 15 largest asset managers were overweight in polluting companies, while the largest US managers opposed the majority of climate-based shareholder votes at the companies in which they invested.

Sources: The Guardian, The Independent, The Financial Times    

Social Sustainability

Government tsar warns EU migration curbs ‘could fuel people smuggling’ (27 Jan)

More than 30 business groups had signed a joint letter last week urging the UK government to maintain access to the labour and skills needed for the economy to thrive. Tighter controls on EU immigration risk fuelling people smuggling and modern slavery in Britain, Matthew Taylor, CEO of the RSA (Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) charity who is also the UK government’s interim director of labour market enforcement warned. If there are insufficient legitimate routes for people to come in and get work, there will be a danger of people using illegitimate routes to enter the UK and get work.  Official figures suggest these migrants arriving without papers are particularly vulnerable to modern slavery, including forced labour.

Taylor also opined that if EU migration is going to be more tightly controlled, the labour market will be giving more power to workers, however, this is only beneficial if workers know their rights and can demand for them. He earlier called for firms to contractors as well as employees a clear statement of their rights by their first day. This can empower vulnerable workers to be aware of potential breaches of their rights, especially if they are not highly educated and are unaware of their rights as employees.

Source: Yahoo News

Trump to Create Post to Focus on Solely Human Trafficking (30 Jan)

President Donald Trump plans to appoint an individual to focus exclusively on combating human trafficking. This will be done via an executive order next week, after he addresses a human trafficking summit at the White House this Friday, 31 January. A candidate has yet to be identified for the new post. President Trump has sought to elevate human trafficking since taking office by speaking publicly about the issue and inviting reporters into his White House meetings with victims and anti-trafficking advocates. He has also allocated funding for prevention education programs, enhanced intelligence-level coordination, and increased efforts at fighting child pornography. A partner in the effort is Ivanka Trump, his daughter and senior adviser and who is also an advocate for the same causes.

Under the executive order, the State Department will create a website to serve as a clearinghouse where law enforcement officials, victims, advocates and others can get information on government-wide efforts to combat human trafficking. Federal departments and agencies will also be proposing legislative and executive actions to help law enforcement officials track the sharing of child sexual abuse material on the internet. The Justice and Homeland Security departments will also be directed to work with the Education Department to fund prevention education programs for schools in the US.

Source: New York Times

How harnessing big data can combat human traffickers (30 Jan)

According to Europol, the greatest challenge in tackling organized crime is the level of sophistication in which criminals are exploiting technology. Through a combination of paid advertising on social media and other means of online recruitment, traffickers are luring victims with the promise of legitimate paid work. Fortunately, in an unprecedented move and by joining hands with NGOs to digitize their data and combining it with open source data, court cases and news in one centralized hub, Edelman Predictive Intelligence Centre (EPIC) and STOP THE TRAFFIK (STT) has now made it possible for governments and corporates to to understand the entire supply chain from source recruitment through to destination.

Results show that the best way to disrupt this multi-billion-dollar industry is to focus on recruitment and choke off the supply. To disrupt recruitment, data can be use to identify trafficking hotspots, routes and narratives and these can be communicated in a manner that is tailored to local conversation so as to educate and spread awareness. For example, intelligence has shown that one of the mechanisms traffickers use to recruit women and girls for the sex industry is befriending and building trust by gifting them handbags and smartphones. With this information, a geo-targeted social media information campaign that exposes the common narratives used by such sex traffickers can be created, facilitating awareness among the local women. By building resilient communities and increasing the difficulty of recruitment, the trafficking business is made more challenging, riskier and less profitable.

Source: CNN