Baroness Worthington
Main Page: Baroness Worthington (Crossbench - Life peer)
Baroness Worthington (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for a very eloquent tribute to the wonderful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Eden. Perhaps we ought to start a tradition where provision is made for a valedictory QSD on retirement so that we can discuss topics of great importance. The House has benefited greatly from the distinguished and long career of the noble Lord, Lord Eden, and the passions that he has sustained throughout his time in this place, including his interest in the Rainforest Alliance and the Jane Goodall Institute. It is clear that this is a subject which is dear to his heart and I am grateful to him for his speech. It has given us a comprehensive overview of many of the issues associated with the destruction of rainforests arising from our use of palm oil.
It is obviously true that palm oil is now almost ubiquitous in many of our packaged foods. The statistic is often quoted that 50% of supermarket products contain palm oil. Over the years the profile of this issue has risen and there has been increasing pressure on the supply chain to become more sustainable and to reduce its impact. Indeed, the UK among other countries has signed up to a target of using 100% sustainable palm oil by this year. So my first question for the Minister echoes one that has already been posed by the noble Lord, Lord Eden: how are we doing on that target? Will we reach 100% by the end of this year? It seems that we are making progress because the noble Lord talked about that, as did the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, in relation to the percentage that might be deemed sustainable. However, how we are going to reach the 100% target is the question.
Underlying that is the thorny question of how to prove that the certification process is robust. Since 2004 we have approached this issue on the basis of self-regulation. An NGO-led initiative created the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil production. It is a multi-stakeholder process which seems to have had some success, but the very organisation which formed it, the WWF, stated recently that it is in need of fundamental reform. There are still concerns about whether the certification process is robust enough. Those concerns include the continuing threat of deforestation and logging, the planting of plantations on peat land, the fear that forest fires are being used to clear land which is subsequently planted, the use of pesticides and, indeed, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the intensive agricultural practices used on palm oil plantations. We rely on this certification process, yet there is a fear that it is not robust. We ought to remember that the process is only certifying roughly 18% of global production of palm oil. What of the other 82%?
It is difficult to find the right adjective, but my fear is that the process is not rigorous enough and is self-policing in a way that means it is not being done with enough due diligence and seriousness.
I looked into the RSPO a bit further, as I was interested in the membership of the round table—who the governors are and who sits on the board. It seems to me that the board is predominantly made up of people with vested interests. The largest number of seats goes to the oil palm growers, followed by the palm oil processors, the consumer goods manufacturers and the bankers—that is pretty much everyone, bar two environmental conservation NGOs and two social development NGOs. What seems to be missing is any representation from the scientific community. Indeed, where are the Governments in this?
I am an old-fashioned environmental campaigner and I believe in regulation. I think that we can pursue these issues through voluntarism and encouragement of labelling, but ultimately, if we are serious about avoiding deforestation, there has to be a UN-based international approach to this. We are entering a period where we are gaining ways to gather and process information about our globe and the planet we inhabit. We now know more, more quickly, about what is happening on the planet that we all share. I would have thought, given modern surveillance and everything that we can do with satellite monitoring, there ought to be a more considered approach from the UN as to how we manage the lungs, essentially, of the planet—the forests that keep our planet rich in biodiversity and provide such vital climatic services, such that we cannot afford to lose them.
Of course, it is easy to say that, and at the heart of all of this is a tension between economic development and the need to preserve biodiversity. It is very easy for us in our developed societies in the West to say, “We must discourage the commercial exploitation of these forests and this land because we rely on it”. That almost imperialistic view of how to engage with this problem cannot continue or be sustained. We must find an answer with those producing nations, whereby they can move to more sustainable economic growth patterns and are rewarded for preserving those things to which we attach so much value, such as the biodiversity and climatic services of these forests.
As the noble Lord, Lord Eden, mentioned, we are going to see some sustainable development goals set in New York, and we will then move to Paris, where we will discuss the UNFCCC. I fear that we might be pinning rather too many hopes on to that one meeting in Paris. We already face the challenge of how to control our fossil fuel-based energy emissions. In parallel, we have been discussing the related and very important issue of land-use change and deforestation and trying to create incentives to preserve our forests. Until very recently, there was a proposal that we ought to be engaging in some kind of carbon trading, where we would allow polluters to continue polluting in order to preserve forests. I think now it is finally being realised that these two things need to be done separately: we need to price carbon and reduce carbon emissions as well as creating financial incentives to preserve our rainforests and, indeed, the forests all over world that sustain biodiversity and act as a carbon sink. But where will the money come from? That seems to be the nub of many problems to do with these international global issues where there is a high degree of complexity due to equity and sustainable development—who is going to pay whom to do what, and who will oversee it? I do not have the answers and I do not think we will have time to arrive at them this evening, but relying on a self-regulating system that is now over a decade old has been criticised from a number of quarters for lacking teeth. I note that on 9 March, 100 members of the RSPO were suspended due to the failure to report. It feels like this initiative might well be running into the buffers. Perhaps we need to go back to the UN charter and back to Rio, and start to rethink how we deal with these big issues of global land management.
Tonight’s debate has focused on palm oil—quite rightly, because it brings an interesting and unique set of challenges—but it is by far not the only crop that has these associated problems. Soya production is another example—in fact, it is probably an even more widely used product in terms of volume—that we must tackle. There are countless other non-food related crops where you could question the sense of using land for them. I would include in that the global land given up for tobacco production, which also has a deforestation impact.
There are big issues to be looked at but I am not convinced by the voluntary, vested interests-led, stakeholder approach. It feels a little dated and possibly needs to be looked at again in the light of member state co-operation. This has to be sorted out at government level. We probably need to look at some form of international oversight. We thank the RSPO for the work it has been able to do but the time has probably come to acknowledge that it is time to move on.
I have enjoyed this debate very much and again thank the noble Lord, Lord Eden, for his contribution tonight and for his passion for this topic throughout the years. I look forward to the Minister’s response.