Clearly there, in 3-point font

Though the brand is owned by Nestle, KitKat’s sold in the US are made by Hershey’s. Photo: Clive Darra, Flickr.

Legal structures and operations of corporations, however, are tricky things. Large companies are rarely monolithic entities. This means the brands consumers buy may not actually be produced by the company they think owns that brand, and the company might be producing products under a brand it doesn’t own. For instance, the KitKat brand is owned by Nestlé, but if you bite into a KitKat in the US you’re eating a Hershey’s product, as the brand is licensed to that company but only within the US. Similarly, if you’re buying a Trader Joe’s chili or mac and cheese, chances are you’re actually buying a product made by Amy’s Kitchen or Annie’s, respectively.

Often joint ventures, newly formed companies that are owned by multiple parent companies, are created when a company wants to expand into a new market overseas. For example, PepsiCo has formed a joint venture with Indofood to manufacture and sell PepsiCo brand products in Indonesia.

Such partnerships make the relationship between costumers and companies much more complex. When buying a KitKit in the US which company is the consumer supporting? Which company’s palm oil policy applies? When a company commits to zero deforestation, does that cover all their partnerships and joint ventures, or just their wholly owned operations?

You’d have to be a lawyer

Plantations of palm oil, used in thousands of products such as baked goods and comestics, are expanding into rainforest in Indonesia and causing global warming pollution. Photo: Rhett Butler, Mongabay.

And herein lies the rub with PepsiCo’s new zero deforestation palm oil commitment. In many ways the language of the commitment is quite strong. However, the company’s commitment makes no reference to its joint venture with Indofood. Not only does the commitment fail to mention the joint venture, I can’t find a single reference to it on PepsiCo’s website (though the Indofood website clearly states it). In addition to making consumer products, Indofood is involved in the development of palm oil plantations, and it remains one of the few major palm oil producers that has yet to make a zero deforestation commitment.

So, are PepsiCo brand products sold in Indonesia covered by the commitment? The new palm oil commitment opens by stating “PepsiCo is committed to doing business the right way and to realizing zero deforestation and respect for human rights in all our company-owned and -operated activities and global supply chains.” Having about the same legal knowledge as an average PepsiCo customer, which is to say practically none, the phrase “all our company-owned and –operated activities and global supply chains” seems to me like it should include joint ventures, since the company does technically own part of it. However, a number of NGOs are alleging that this commitment does not cover any joint venture in which PepsiCo has a minority stake. If this is true, it would mean that PepsiCo brand products sold in the world’s fourth most populous country are not covered by any zero deforestation commitment. That is far less than the global commitment PepsiCo is promising its customers.

“Trust is a fragile thing”

I have heard it said that buying a company’s products indicates trust in that company. I think that can be true. Certainly we want to buy products from companies we trust. But trust is not given freely, it must be earned. A company earns trust from its consumers not only by making quality products, but by being honest and transparent in its actions. PepsiCo should take heed of the current blowback against Volkswagen. If it is not forthright about the bounds of its palm oil commitment it risks serious damage to its credibility. After all, trust is like a mirror, difficult to build, easy to break.

“Strange,” you say, “don’t we already have wheels?” In fact, aren’t most businesses, consumer groups, and customers pretty firmly in support of these current “wheels?”

“Oh yes,” the business group may reply, “we have heard something about your ‘wheel’, but we think ours represents a square deal for all stakeholders.” Skeptical, you decide to give them the benefit of the doubt, and wait with bated breath for the new “wheel”’s release.

When it finally arrives, it is clear that much work has gone into it. The wheel looks strong, uses state of the art materials, and is beautifully designed. Unfortunately, it also looks like this:

No matter how well designed, a square wheel is not going to get us where we need to go

That is somewhat akin to the feeling I got when reading the HCS Science Study: Draft Synthesis Report. As I mentioned in a previous post, the report was sponsored by the Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto group of palm oil producers in an attempt to re-define High Carbon Stock Forests (from here on I’ll refer to this report as “the SPOM study”). This step in essence ignores the High Carbon Stock Approach, which was first developed in 2010 and has wide support from businesses, NGOs, and technical experts. In attempting to reinvent the HCS wheel, the SPOM study falls far short of meeting consumer demands.

Can’t see the                     for the trees

The most obvious and significant way the SPOM study falls short is in refusing to define “forests” or “deforestation.” Their rationale is that these terms already have a number of definitions. But by skirting the issue of what definition of “forests” they’re using, the study sidesteps the major consumer demand for deforestation-free palm oil. Instead of devising a method to identify forests and plan development of oil palm plantations on non-forest land, as the HCS Approach does, they instead rely solely on calculations of ecosystem carbon content to determine which forests can be sacrificed. This distills the value of ecosystems down to a single variable and ignores all other potential benefits of forests.

The lack of a forest definition becomes problematic at other points in the study as well, since at times “forests” are used as the basis for decision making. For example on pg. 26 the report states that the 70 tC/ha threshold can be adjusted in “heavily forested countries.” How is one able to decide if a country is heavily forested if they have no way of knowing what is or isn’t forest?

Further, the SPOM study allows for much more clearing of land than the HCS Approach. Areas which the HCS Approach refers to as “young regenerating forest” would be available for clearing under the SPOM study.

Photo by flickr user: Wakx. Establishing an oil palm plantation on cleared peat swamps has the potential to release thousands of carbon emissions.

Continuing peat degradation

Another key component of consumer demands is the protection of peatlands. Emissions from peatlands are a big contributor to climate change and a major concern in the palm oil sector. While most peat would be protected under the method laid out by the SPOM study, it does allow for “conversion of small patches (<20 ha) of already cleared and drained peat land that can lead to a lowering of otherwise existing very high emissions from biological oxidation of peat and recurrent fires.” Even small amounts of already drained peat still produce GHG emissions. A recent study by Kim Carlson, my colleague Lael Goodman and I found that emissions from plantations established on peat range between 18-22 tC /ha/ yr. Over a 25-year plantation cycle that would be between 450 and 550 tC/ha emitted. That’s a lot of emissions and WELL above the study’s threshold of 75 t C/ha. From a climate perspective, it would be preferable to rewet the small patches of cleared peatlands.

Seeing how the sausage gets made

As companies implement sustainability commitments, transparency is key to maintaining the trust of consumers and watchdog organizations. Unfortunately, the SPOM study leaves a lot of transparency questions unanswered. There is some reference to the need for transparency in the mapping process (pg. 52) but no details of what that should look like. It is not clear what levels of information will be available to the public and in what forms. Further, it is not clear how or if decision-making processes will be transparent. For instance, figure C (pg. 13) lays out the “critical inputs and processes”. However all of the arrows feed into a “black”, or rather red, box from which outcomes are derived. There is no clear mechanism for how decisions get made, who makes them, and how they are reported. Does this decision making power rest with businesses, communities, watchdog groups, governments, or some combination of these?

Lack of transparency is evident in the study itself. This report is a synthesis of a number of consultants’ studies. These underlying studies, however, have not been made available for public review. The Appendices contain a summary of the findings from these studies, but it is not possible to conduct an adequate review of this document without seeing the underlying documentation.

Time to hit the road

If the SPOM were the only option for companies, many would be stuck on square wheels with no way to move forward. Fortunately, the HCS Approach offers a solution for companies that want to keep up with consumer demands and make progress on the deforestation-free road. Major consumer companies, including Colgate-Palmolive, Dunkin’ Brands, and Nestlé, and traders, representing over half of the palm oil traded globally, including Cargill and Wilmar International, have already agreed to follow the HCS Approach. If the SPOM companies want to be more than specks in a rearview mirror they need to swap out their wheels and get moving.

However, on a recent viewing of the film what caught my attention wasn’t the hoverboards or holograms but a drink that Marty McFly orders at a diner. That drink: Pepsi Perfect. Through the work I’ve done investigating  companies’ links between deforestation and palm oil, I’ve learned a lot about PepsiCo’s policies and asked myself how close is the real PepsiCo to being “Pepsi Perfect”?

Pepsi Perfect?

In fictional 2015 Marty McFly enjoys a Pepsi Perfect. In the real 2015 is Pepsico anywhere near perfect? (Photo: Business Insider)

While we primarily think of PepsiCo as a beverage company, they are also a major snack food producer. Ever eaten Lays potato chips, a Quaker granola bar, or Doritos? All Pepsi products. So if PepsiCo is striving for perfection it has to be more than just a drink, it has to be a corporate philosophy.

The company’s made progress over the past year. Last year in UCS’s palm oil scorecard we gave PepsiCo a 34 out 100 for their palm oil commitment. Since then, the company has released a new Forestry policy and palm oil commitment. These are an improvement over what they had before, but as we and a number of other groups pointed out, the company can still go further.

However, commitments are just the first step. Pepsi Perfect might look great on a label, but it’s what’s inside the bottle that counts. When it comes to palm oil, what counts is how commitments translate into action. And that is where some major concerns about PepsiCo’s commitment crop up.

(Looking) Back to (inform) the Future

Looking back at how PepsiCo has implemented its previous commitments give us a good indication of how it will implement its new commitment. In 2011, PepsiCo committed to source 100% RSPO certified oil by 2015 and in 2013 it expanded that commitment to cover 100% physically sourced oil by 2020, Based on the company’s own reporting in 2012-2013 it sourced 20% of its oil from RSPO certified sources; in 2013-2014 that number rose to a whopping 21%. That leaves only one year for the company to figure out how to source the remaining 79% of its oil as RSPO certified. Things get even bleaker when you look at their physical sourcing of oil, which actually went down from 10% to 6% over that same period. And yet the company’s new commitment states that it will source 100% of its oil from deforestation- and peat-free sources (a higher standard than the RSPO) by 2016.

Understandably, NGOs are skeptical that PepsiCo will be able to only source responsible palm oil within the aggressive timeframe the company has laid out. It’s no coincidence that critiques of the company concentrate mainly on the transparency, traceability, and third-party verification aspects of their palm oil sourcing, as well as the lack of comprehensive safeguards to uphold human and workers’ rights and resolve social conflict. It’s these pieces of a commitment that give stakeholders an indication of how a company will be implementing its commitment on the ground. The companies with the strongest commitments, the best records of implementation, and the most cordial relationship with NGOS are those which fully embrace transparency and are open about their progress, even when they stumble.

No need to be a Biff

PepsiCo isn’t the only company to fall short of its sourcing commitment. Our scorecard was full of companies with strong commitments but weak current sourcing practices. What sets PepsiCo apart is the aggressive and defensive public stance it has been taking. This too is far from perfect. Over the past few years we have seen businesses and NGOs working together to figure out ways to stop deforestation. To me “Pepsi Perfect” would be a company that is transparent, cooperative, and investing the resources needed to truly implement solutions. That is a future we can all look forward to, even if it lacks flying cars.

In 1989, the fall of the Berlin wall became the symbol of freedom from the destructive forces of tyranny. Unknown photographer, Reproduction by Lear 21

In the past year we have seen a wave of companies adopt deforestation-free commitments. This includes household names like General Mills, Hershey’s Chocolates, Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble, and Colgate-Palmolive as well as three of the largest traders of palm oil, Wilmar International, Cargill, and Golden Agri Resources, which together represent well over half of the global palm oil trade. This week alone saw announcements from Dunkin’ Brands, Krispy Kreme, and ConAgra Foods.

But it was an announcement today from the Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto (SPOM, not to be confused with James Bond’s soviet nemesis SMERSH) group that represents perhaps the final hammer blow to the old regime’s destructive way. Earlier this summer I wrote about the SPOM’s efforts to pass off greenwashing as a step forward for the environment. Most egregious was the group’s decision to continue clearing forests as they worked out their own definition of what is and isn’t forest. Well, this week SPOM members Asian Agri, IOI Corporation Berhad, Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad, Musim Mas Group and Sime Darby Plantation, some of the world’s largest palm oil growers, announced that they would immediately stop clearing forest as they wait for their study to be complete. These companies are the last of the old guard, and seeing them embrace deforestation-free is a major victory for our forests and our climate.

There will still be struggles ahead. It took two years from the day the Berlin wall fell until the Soviet Union officially dissolved, and likewise, we have much work ahead to cement these successes. Questions still remain about how companies will implement their agreements and how long the SPOM moratorium will last. There are a few companies along the palm oil supply chain that are still holding out, most noticeably major fast food companies like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Yum! Brands (owners of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut). But today is a day to don your piano scarf and light up jacket and celebrate:

The oil curtain is falling and someday soon, we’ll have a little bit more freedom from deforestation.

On Tuesdays, you could pick up two dozen, still warm, glazed doughnuts for the price of one, music to a sugar-addicted college student’s ears. I’d easily eat a half dozen on my way home, and invariably make myself sick by the end of the night but I kept going back week in and week out.

And while I can barely manage two doughnuts these days (let alone two dozen), I was still pleased to see two of the country’s largest doughnut chains, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Brands (who owns both Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins), strengthen their commitments to protecting one the few things I care more about than sweets: tropical forests.

One small step for a (well two) companies…

Thanks to Dunkin’ and Krispy Kreme’s new policies we can now enjoy these with slightly less guilt (Photo: Flickr-roboppy)

Dunkin’s announcement came in the form of new sourcing guidelines (not yet available online but referenced in a press release), while Krispy Kreme’s came in the form of an update to its FAQ’s, and while both lack some clarity of timelines and scope of implementation, they represent major efforts within the companies to address this issue.

I have written before about the abysmal performance of the fast food sector when it comes to protecting the tropical forests. In UCS’s analysis of companies palm oil use, Donuts, Deodorant, Deforestation, eight out of ten fast companies received a zero score because their commitments were inadequate or, in some cases, non-existent. It’s therefore promising to see two fast food companies taking this issue seriously.

One giant leap for consumer-kind

These announcements demonstrate the power that consumers can have to move companies. In our scorecard, the packaged food sector scored the highest in part because those companies have been subject to years of public campaigning.

Nestle is the classic example of this, once viewed as one of the worst actors, the company responded to consumer outcry motivated by a Greenpeace campaign to became the first company to commit to deforestation-free palm oil.

Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’s Brands new commitments can likewise be tied to public pressure. UCS and other groups rallied Dunkin’s customers to voice their concerns at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May and attended Krispy Kreme’s new store openings in Tennessee, Delaware, and Florida.What we have seen time and again is that when consumers speak, companies listen, and act.

“I believe these companies should commit themselves…”

But the fast food sector still has a long way to go. Companies like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Yum Brands! (owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco bell) still have woefully inadequate and outdated policies. For instance, at the time of our scorecard release Burger King still had a policy on its website (since taken down but still available on the UCS website), which hadn’t been updated since 2010 and stating that it wouldn’t purchase palm oil from Sinar Mas, a company that was once environmental enemy number one but has long been at the forefront of implementing deforestation-free palm oil production.

Fast food companies are no stranger to their products driving deforestation. In the 2000’s, McDonald’s was targeted by Greenpeace for its links to soy driven deforestation in Brazil. Burger King was linked to deforestation from beef production as far back as the 1980’s. In both cases the companies took steps to address the issue, so it’s difficult for them to plead ignorance or hardship when it comes to palm oil.

So what can you do as a fellow lover of tropical forests and the occasional fast food indulgence? Tell McDonald’s to go deforestation free!

We all know that fast food isn’t great for our health, but Dunkin’ Brands and Krispy Kreme have demonstrated it doesn’t have to be bad for the health of the planet as well. While there is still a lot of work to be done, I’m taking heart that I can stop in to Krispy Kreme or Dunkin’ Donuts on my way to work with a little less guilt. Now if we could only do something about that McDonald’s by my house…

Forest clearing for palm oil, like this in Sabah, Malaysia, destroys habitat for endangered species and contributes to climate change. (Photo: Rhett Butler)

The “Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto” released earlier this month and signed by major palm oil producing and trading companies like Sime Darby Plantation, IOI Corporation Berhad, Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad, Musim Mas Group, and Asian Agri, seems on its surface to be a major win for forest conservation. However, upon close inspection the text contains enough loopholes and vague language to allow these companies to continue destroying forest while making only modest steps towards change.

The bourgeois set their own standards

The Manifesto claims it will protect High Carbon Stock (HCS) forests, a category of forests meant to recognize and value the importance of secondary forests, but only once they agree on a definition of them. This process is expected to take six to 12 months, and will allow companies to continue clearing while the definition is being worked out. This strikes me as odd since a working definition of HCS has been around for nearly 4 years and has fairly broad support.

The HCS concept was first developed in collaboration with the TFT, Greenpeace, Nestlé and the major palm oil producer Golden Agri Resources (GAR) as part of a 2010 agreement for GAR and Nestlé to end deforestation from their products. This process included consultation with scientists, technical experts, and other stakeholders, and by most accounts was fairly robust. Nevertheless, the Manifesto companies treat HCS as if it’s a concept which they pulled out of thin air and is theirs to control.

Further, the Manifesto seems to indicate that the concept is so undeveloped that it couldn’t possibly be implemented at this point. If HCS can’t be implemented then someone should tell GAR, since it’s been implementing HCS since 2011. Development of the HCS definition and methodology is by no means finished, but a legitimate process is already underway to continue its refinement.  The fact that the Manifesto companies are ignoring the longstanding and ongoing process in favor of inventing their own strikes me as an attempt to coopt rather than cooperate.

No time like the future

So, the companies are giving themselves a 12-month grace period to continue deforesting while they work on defining something that has already been defined. But then they’ll stop clearing forests, right? Wrong. Companies have the initial 12 months to develop a timeline for implementation but each company is “free to adopt a reasonable time-frame.” This leaves companies a lot of leeway to continue destroying forests, sets no deadline for ending clearing, and lacks any clear ambition compared to some of the industry leaders. When in late 2013 Wilmar, the world’s largest trader of palm oil, made a commitment to purchase deforestation-free palm oil, it committed to do so immediately and to fully implement its policy by December 2015. Again, the Manifesto provides the illusion of progress while to it allows the continuation of the status quo for an indeterminate amount of time.

A worker carries an oil palm sapling onto smoldering peatlands in the Indonesian province of Sumatra. Drained peat soils are particularly flammable, and peat fires can burn for weeks or even months. Photo: Paul Hilton Photography

No means no

Another area where the manifesto falls short is on peat protections. On page one, the signatories commit to no new development on peat. However, in the annex definitions, they allow for possible development of patches less than 20 hectares and areas above 20 hectares “will need to be independently assessed to justify development.” The Manifesto group seems to have a very different definition of “no” than the rest of us.

Escape from new commitments

And as if all of those weren’t enough, the Manifesto seems to contain an escape clause for any company that finds even these modest commitments to be too onerous. The commitment descriptions for each sector includes the clause “The sourcing decisions and plans for implementation of the above, however, shall be unilaterally determined by each [company].”

So, in summary the Manifesto allows clearing of forests while companies develop an HCS definition, ignoring a four-year-old process and definition which has wide support by major companies and NGOs, redefines “no peat clearing” to mean “occasional peat clearing”, does not hold companies to any timeline for implementation, and finally allows companies to interpret and ignore the Manifesto as they see fit. In the end, this looks like just another attempt by the owners of the means of production to maintain the status quo and is one manifesto that is unlikely to spur a revolution in forest conservation.

Fast food menu items, like doughnuts, are sometimes prepared with palm oil. (Photo: Flickr-roboppy )

Unfortunately, while fast food might mean home to me, for the countless plant and animal species that call the rainforest their home and for our global climate, major fast food companies are anything but comforting. That’s because many of their ingredients, including beef and palm oil, are driving deforestation throughout the tropics.

Of forests and fries

The fast food industry is no stranger to deforestation. I remember in high school back in the 90s hearing about beef in fast food hamburgers destroying the Amazon. While the fast food/beef connection has been publicized for years, it’s only recently that attention has been drawn to these companies’ demand for palm oil and the deforestation it causes. In our report Donuts, Deodorant, Deforestation, UCS was one of the first groups to highlight how little the fast food sector as a whole has done to address palm-driven deforestation. Of the ten companies we scored, only four had palm oil commitments, and of those only two, McDonald’s and Subway, had strong enough policies to receive scores.

For more information about how the fast food sector performed visit www.ucsusa.org/palmoilscorecard

Since the release of the scorecard we have seen a wave of companies in the packaged food and personal care sectors release or update their palm oil commitments, but no new commitments from any fast food companies. However, due to pressure from groups like UCS and individual consumers, two companies, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Brands, seem poised to strengthen their commitments. They just need a little push.

Big Mac attack

McDonald’s scored a whopping (big mac-ing?) 21 points out of 100, falling well short of what could be considered a “strong commitment.” Since then, McDonald’s released its annual sustainability report, which highlights its commitment that by 2020 100% of its palm oil purchases will be Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified. As I’ve pointed out a number of times on this blog, while RSPO palm oil is better than business as usual, it still leaves a lot of forests and peatlands unprotected. Further, most companies making deforestation-free commitments are pledging to do so by 2015, so McDonald’s commitment isn’t just weak, it’s also five years late. McDonald’s was the target of a Greenpeace campaign a number of years ago about soy-driven deforestation in Brazil, so it is no stranger to the issue of tropical deforestation. But so far the company has seemed reluctant to go beyond the RSPO and address all palm-driven deforestation in their supply chain.

America runs on Dunkin’, not deforestation

Dunkin’ Donuts has also committed to source 100% RSPO palm by 2020, but its parent company Dunkin’ Brands has no policy to cover its other brand, Baskin-Robbins. Dunkin’ Donuts, further, currently supports a “moratorium on palm expansion in rainforests and peatlands.” While this nominally recognizes the importance of these ecosystems, it makes no permanent commitment to their protection. Dunkin’ Brands leadership is already well aware of the palm oil issue, and they seem poised to release a stronger policy, but that is by no means a sure bet.

Taking action

Demonstrators in Massachusetts asking for Dunkin’ to strengthen its palm oil commitment.

Thousands of UCS supporters have already weighed in to let companies like McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Brands know that they expect more out of their favorite brands. Earlier this month, activists held a demonstration outside of the Dunkin’ Brands annual shareholding meeting demanding that it adopt a strong palm purchasing policy. In addition, over a hundred thousand e-mails and letters have been sent to both Dunkin’ and McDonald’s leadership and management. But with McDonald’s annual shareholder meeting taking place May 22 and Dunkin’ higher-ups working on a policy, both companies need to continue to hear from consumers.

So whether you’re grabbing a Dunkin’ donut before your flight, a Big Mac on a long road trip, or just a cup of coffee on the way to work, take a second to send these companies a message letting them know that you do not want a side of forests with your meal.

Forest clearing for palm oil, like this in Sabah, Malaysia, destroys habitat for endangered species and contributes to climate change. (Photo: Rhett Butler)

So, as I delved into the commitments these companies have made to address palm-related deforestation and peatland destruction I was disheartened to see how little some brands I love are doing to address the problem. That research was part of a project to score 30 top consumer companies in the fast food, personal care, and packaged food sectors on their commitments to source deforestation- and peat-free palm oil. The report, which was released this week, shows that while a few companies are leading the way, most have a long way to go to fully address palm-related habitat destruction and climate emissions.

F is for fast food

Fast food menu items, like doughnuts, are sometimes prepared with palm oil. (Photo: Flickr-roboppy )

Most of us realize that fast food isn’t great for our health, but I was shocked to see how bad it was for the health of our planet as well. The fast food sector was far and away the worst-scoring of the sectors we evaluated. Only two companies (McDonald’s and Subway) out of ten had palm commitments which were strong enough to receive points, and even those companies were pretty low scoring. This means the palm oil that’s going into our Dunkin’ doughnuts and McDonald’s apple pies is still likely driving the destruction of habitat for the endangered orangutans and tigers, and spewing millions of tons of carbon dioxide (the leading greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.

Learn more about the fast food sectors scores at www.ucsusa.org/palmoilscorecard

Over-reliance on half-measures

On average, personal care companies scored better than the fast food sector. However, only two companies, L’Oréal and Reckitt Benckiser (which makes Clearasil and other products) have committed to buy traceable deforestation- and peat-free palm oil. Many of the other companies rely on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards to meet their palm oil commitments. I’ve written before on the limitations of the RSPO to address deforestation and peatland conversion. Companies in all three sectors that currently rely on the RSPO need to go further in order to fully address the deforestation and peatland destruction associated with palm oil.

Learn more about the personal care sector at www.uscusa.org/palmoilscorecard

Leading the way but a long way to go

The packaged food sector has the strongest commitments overall. Four out of ten companies (Kellogg’s, Mondelēz, Nestlé, Unilever) are leading the way with commitments to buy traceable deforestation- and peat-free palm oil. The rest of the companies in this sector have a lot of work to do to catch up with the leaders.

Even those companies that have made strong commitments, however, still have a long road ahead of them. Commitments are only the first step, and are only as good as the paper they’re printed on. The real change takes place when companies act on their commitments and put them into practice. A journey might start with a single step, but you’ll never reach your destination if you don’t take the rest of them.

Learn more about the packaged food sector’s scores at www.ucsusa.org/palmoilscorecard

Consumers speak, companies listen

What can you do to make companies change their ways? The best thing you can do is demand that these companies take deforestation off their ingredient list. We know from experience that when consumers talk, companies listen. For example, back in 2010 consumers and NGOs organized a massive campaign against Nestlé, after it was linked to deforestation and other problems related to the palm oil it used. As a direct result Nestlé now has the strongest palm oil commitment out there.

Chemicals derived from palm oil are found in many deodorants, soaps, and moisturizers. (Photo: iStockphoto-alexpurs)

Does this mean you should stop buying products with palm oil? The short answer is “no.” The longer answer can be found in this post. It’s more effective to pressure companies than it is to change global buying habits.

So, let’s make sure we can buy our favorite products without feeling a pang of guilt and demand that ALL companies stop buying palm oil that destroys forests and peatland. Based on our review of 30 companies, UCS has chosen six of the largest palm oil buyers in the fast food, personal care, and packaged food sectors that have the ability to help move the entire industry—if they act now. We need your help to convince these big brands to take palm oil seriously. Visit www.ucsusa.org/palmoilaction to send a message to the companies demanding that they do better.

Oil palm plantations are more productive and store more carbon than any other vegetable oil crop, but when they replace forests and peatland there are serious climate and biodiversity implications.

First, different vegetable oils can be easily substituted in many applications. Most of us have experienced this firsthand. If you’re cooking dinner and realized you’re out of olive oil, rather than head to the store and buy some, you just reach for the canola oil instead.

Second, because of this substitutability, a decrease in demand for palm oil from one company or country won’t mean an overall decrease in palm oil demand. If customers in the U.S. stop buying palm oil, then to meet its vegetable oil demand the U.S. has to import more of another oil to meet its current demand. If the U.S. is buying more, say, canola oil then it means that another country somewhere else is buying less. The other country needs to find something to meet its demand and is likely to buy the cheapest vegetable oil on the market: palm oil.

Finally, the oil palm is a great crop. It’s a tree that doesn’t have to be replanted every year and the typical rotation for a palm plantation is 25 years. It also stores a lot of carbon. Not as much as a forest, but more than grasslands and other agricultural crops. And above all else, it’s highly productive. To replace all palm oil on the global market with another oil would take between 5-8 times as much land.

So the problem isn’t with palm oil, but arises when forests and peatlands are converted to plantations. This leads to loss of habitat and millions of tonnes of carbon emissions. The solution isn’t to boycott palm oil, but rather to demand that companies use and produce palm that is deforestation- and peat-free.

Wilmar’s “No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation Policy” requires that all of the palm oil it produces and trades is free of deforestation, peatland destruction, and exploitation. However, not everyone is enthusiastic about Wilmar’s announcement and particularly its peatland protections.

I asked my colleague, Lael Goodman, an analyst with the Tropical Forest Team and our resident peat expert, to explain the situation. Here’s what she had to say:

Wilmar’s announcement had three main points relating to peat soils.

1. Wilmar will not buy palm oil from plantations that have been established on peat soils of any depth after its December 5 announcement.
2. Wilmar will continue to buy palm oil from plantations that were established on peat soils prior to December 5, 2013. However, these plantations must follow a certain set of best practices guidelines by the end of 2015.
3. Wilmar will explore options for peatland restoration in some areas.

The peat swamp forests of Sarawak are being cut down to make way for oil palm plantations, releasing thousands of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. Photo: flickr/Wakx.

One of the most vocal groups concerned with these new policies is the Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owner’s Association (SOPPOA), which represents oil palm plantation owners in the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. Sarawak is rich in peat soils, so this new policy could have real implications for where oil palm plantations can expand in that state.

The SOPPOA is making claims that currently there are no credible scientific studies to justify the policy of ‘No Peat’ planting because all planters in the Sarawak adhere to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board’s Best Management practices for planting on peat, which they claim are scientifically sound and sustainable. Additionally, in a newspaper article, a SOPPOA spokesperson is quoted as saying that there is not a scientific consensus that peat has either high carbon stock or releases high levels of carbon dioxide. All of these statements are scientifically untrue.

Peat soils contain high levels of carbon

Tropical peat is formed when vegetation, such as dead branches or leaves, does not decompose fully, storing carbon in dead organic matter. High water tables in peatlands limit the amount of oxygen that reaches the organic material. In total, Malaysia alone is estimated to have 9 Gt of carbon contained in its peatlands.

Draining peat soils releases carbon dioxide

While high water tables are responsible for preventing the organic material from decaying, the flipside is that when these peat soils are drained, they are again exposed to oxygen.

As organic material decays, the embodied carbon, much of which has been building for thousands of years, is released as carbon dioxide. While intact peatlands also emit carbon dioxide, it has been shown that disturbed peatlands lose carbon not only from the upper levels of soil and from plant growth, but also the carbon that has been stored in the soil for centuries. And many studies (like this one) have shown that planting oil palm on peat soils leads to carbon dioxide emissions.

If all the carbon in Malaysian peat soils were to be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it would be equivalent to the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2008-2012.

The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) guidelines for oil palm cultivation do little to protect peatlands

In its introduction, these guidelines make the point that, “It is the prerogative of any government to develop its land resources for the socio-economic benefit of its people.” However, it does not then necessarily follow that these practices are, as stated previously, “scientifically sound and sustainable.”

A worker carries an oil palm sapling onto smoldering peatlands in the Indonesian province of Sumatra. Drained peat soils are particularly flammable, and peat fires can burn for weeks or even months. Photo: Paul Hilton Photography

By far the largest problem is that these guidelines do not take into account the enormous importance, both in terms of carbon and biodiversity, of these lands. Other than recommending that a survey “study” the biodiversity, hydrology, peat soil characteristics, potential yield, and social impact on local communities, there is very little on which areas of land should be left undeveloped.

The only explicit guidance is that it is recommended that the “top part of the peat dome be not developed, but kept as a high conservation value forest and water catchment area.” This shows a lack of understanding of the hydrology of peat domes. Peat domes are sensitive ecosystems, such that changes (e.g. draining for agriculture) in one part of the dome could have cascading effects elsewhere.

The MPOB guidelines also allow for controlled fires. However, drained tropical peat soils are extremely flammable and in the past have gotten out of control, causing fires that have raged for months, releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere and causing health concerns. During particularly dry years, such as 1997, fires burning peat and vegetation in Indonesia released an amount of carbon equivalent to 13 to 40 percent of mean global carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Just this year, it has been reported that there have been more than 7,000 bush and peat fires in Malaysia since the beginning of February.

The Malaysian Palm Oil Board states that Sarawak has about 1.6 million hectares of peatlands. By the early 2000s, Sarawak had already lost about 100,000 ha (~247,000 acres) of peatlands to oil palm plantations. It is estimated that only 10 percent of peatlands from Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo, and Sumatra are either intact or only slightly degraded.

Wilmar’s peat-free palm oil policy does not mean it will stop sourcing palm oil from Sarawak, but rather that it recognizes that peatlands are a valuable resource to be protected. Around 71 percent of oil palm plantations in Sarawak are located on non-peat soils, so Wilmar can continue to source from those plantations. Further, Wilmar’s policy doesn’t prohibit it from sourcing from the 29 percent of palm plantations currently established on peat, only that those plantations use best management practices to reduce carbon emissions and environmental damage.

Products we buy every day contain palm oil, which is driving tropical deforestation. See our infographic and get the whole story at www.ucsusa.org/palmoilstory

Palm oil is everywhere. It is found in thousands of products we use every day from cookies, ice cream, and doughnuts to lotions, soaps, and make up. While there are many benefits to the production and use of palm oil, it is also a major driver of tropical deforestation. How was it that my choices as a consumer, which I thought were pretty “green,” could stand in such contrast to the work I’d spent the better part of a decade devoted to?

What I’ve come to learn over the last few years is that the convoluted path that palm oil takes from plantation to product makes it very difficult for even the most environmentally conscious consumers to know whether the products they buy contribute to deforestation. It’s taken me many years and a lot of firsthand experience to fully understand the scope and scale of the problem.

Starting at the beginning

Primary tropical rainforest in Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica. When forests like this are cleared for palm oil production about 80% of the biodiversity is lost.

The first time I ever heard of palm oil was while studying abroad as an undergrad. I’d just spent a week camping on the beach in Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica where I had my first exposure to intact tropical forests. I woke up every morning at dawn to the sound of countless species of birds and insects; saw Agouti, Kuwaiti, and Peccaries (the tropical equivalent of rabbits, raccoons, and wild pigs) every time I hiked through the forest; and dodged mangoes and cashews thrown by White Faced Capuchin monkeys.

Shortly after our bus left the park we drove through a palm oil plantation. What I saw was worlds apart from the forest I’d just left. Gone were all the diverse species of plants and animals, replaced instead with row upon row of identical palm trees, with very little growing underneath, and no animal life in sight.

As I’d come to learn later, only about 15 percent of animal species that are found in primary forests remain after the forest is converted to palm plantations. That two-hour drive was my first experience with the stark reality of what we lose when forests are cleared and replaced by palm oil.

Getting the whole picture

A palm oil plantation on Sumatra in Indonesia. Over the last twenty years plantations like this one have replaced millions of acres of natural forests.

It wasn’t until nearly ten years later, though, when I again spent two hours looking at nothing but palm oil plantations, that the full scope of the problem really hit me.

This time, I was flying over Sumatra, Indonesia. From take-off until landing the view as far as I could see was nothing but palm oil plantations. What I’d seen in Costa Rica was just the tip of the iceberg.

Globally, there are more than 16 million ha of palm oil plantations. That’s an area larger than the state of Georgia! Most palm oil plantations are located in just two countries, Indonesia and Malaysia. While not all of that area has come at the expense of forests, it’s estimated that between 30 and 80 percent of oil palm plantations in those two countries are the result of deforestation. Those forests are some of the last remaining habitat of critically endangered species, like the Sumatran Tiger, Rhinoceros, and Orangutan. When I toured rescue facilities on Sumatra and Borneo I saw dozens of orangutans saved from palm oil plantations, many of which were orphaned babies who’d lost their homes and mothers when the forest was cleared.

Deforestation doesn’t just affect the home of those animals, but ours as well. The clearing of tropical forests releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide, the leading cause of climate change, into the atmosphere.

Worldwide tropical deforestation accounts for around 10 percent of all climate change emissions, and one study estimates every year from 2000 to 2010 land-use from palm oil in just Indonesia produced as much global warming pollution as between 45 and 55 million cars. Flying over the sea of oil palms, spotting the occasional plume of smoke as producers illegally burned their lands for replanting, it was not hard to imagine how demand for palm oil is having such global effects.

What can be done?

Baby orangutans being transferred at a rescue center in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Many orangutans at the center had been rescued from new palm plantations.

Which brings me back to my peanut butter. Having seen firsthand the destruction and devastation that irresponsible palm oil development can cause, I was left wondering if the food I eat and the products I use are contributing to the problem. The answer is that it’s very hard to know for sure.

The road from plantation to product is long and complex. At many points along the supply chain palm oil from different plantations is mixed. This allows palm oil plantation owners who are destroying forests to hide behind the lack of transparency. The best way to hold these bad actors accountable is for the companies that make our cookies, chocolates, conditioners, and cosmetics to commit to not buy any palm oil that causes deforestation and to trace their palm oil back to its origin to ensure it is deforestation-free.

And the best thing for me and you to do to protect tropical forests? Well, the first thing you can do is breathe a sigh of relief, because it’s OK to keep buying products that contain palm oil (no need to give up those Girl Scout cookies quite yet). For reasons I won’t get into here (they involve words like “fungibility” and can be found in our report Recipes for Success), boycotting palm oil has little effect on the amounts and ways its produced.

Part of the problem with palm oil is that very few of us have heard of it. Most of us don’t know it’s an ingredient in the products we buy or that it contributes to global warming. So, a few colleagues and I developed an infographic explaining this hidden part of the climate problem.

So be part of the solution—view the infographic.

Then help raise awareness about what palm oil is, how it’s causing global climate change, and how we can pressure companies to adopt deforestation-free palm oil policies.

It may seem like a small thing, given the magnitude of the problem, but little things add up. For instance, last December when the world’s largest trader of palm oil announced a no-deforestation commitment, it called out the role consumer demand played in shaping its policy:

“We know from our customers and other stakeholders that there is a strong and rapidly growing demand for traceable, deforestation-free palm oil, and we intend to meet it as a core element of our growth strategy”

The time to act is now, and companies will listen to you, so what are you waiting for?

This guy was about as impressed with the new RSPO P&C as he was by Indiana Jones 4.

A rose by any other name would still destroy forest…

Back in November of 2012, I wrote that the RSPO was in the process of revising their principles and criteria (P&C), the standards that every RSPO member must meet. UCS was particularly concerned about the lack of protection for biodiverse secondary forests and carbon rich peatlands. Along with other groups, we submitted comments highlighting where the P&C fall short. In addition to our comments, more than 200 tropical scientists sent a letter to the RSPO urging them to heed the science and add the needed forest protections (PDF).

Unfortunately, the RSPO didn’t listen. The new standards, which were made public in late March and officially approved in late April, leave vast areas of secondary forest and peat swamps at risk of destruction. How can something that causes deforestation and massive amounts of carbon emissions be called sustainable? Unless we decide to change the definition of “sustainable”, it really can’t. UCS and a number of other NGOs, including World Wildlife Fund, a founding member and longtime advocate for the RSPO (PDF), recognize that the RSPO P&C are not strong enough and that to end forest and peatland destruction from palm oil expansion we must move beyond the RSPO’s minimum requirements.

The new RSPO standards still leave peatlands vulnerable, like these which were clear for palm oil plantations in Borneo.

 …so RSPO would, were it not “sustainable” call’d

To ensure deforestation-free palm oil, we need to go straight to the source and tell RSPO member companies directly that we want them to do better. This is exactly what UCS has been doing in the months since the RSPO passed their new P&C. In June, we asked our supporters to voice their discontent with the RSPO. More than 17,000 sent letters letting the RSPO know that member companies would be feeling a lot more public pressure to move beyond their weak standards. UCS received a kindly written letter from the RSPO explaining the process of P&C review and inviting us to an “open dialogue” on the issues of deforestation. While we welcome open dialogue and will continue to work with the RSPO to strengthen their policies, we will be spending much more of our time and energy in the coming months dealing directly with the businesses that buy, trade, and produce palm oil.

Actions speak louder than words

Businesses don’t respond to the demands of NGOs alone; they need to hear from the millions of consumers who use their products every day. If you don’t want to unlike the word “sustainable” you can reach out directly to companies like Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and Kraft Foods to let them know that you expect them to source deforestation-free palm oil and that hiding behind the RSPO isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Finally (shameless plug alert), you can sign-up for UCS’s mailing list. We’ve got a lot of really cool stuff coming done the pike including lots of great opportunities for you to make a difference.  Getting on our list is the best way to stay up-to-date. I’m not ready to give up on the word “sustainable” quite yet and together we can make sure it keeps its meaning long after “fauxhawks” or “jorts” have run their course.

High Forest, Low Deforestation

The Congo Basin houses the second largest tropical rainforest in the world. That forest, however, is under potential threat from the future expansion of palm oil. Photo: Flickr; Fizzr.

The Congo Basin holds the second largest expanse of tropical wet forest on earth. Despite the large area of forest, countries within the basin have had historically low deforestation rates. Such countries are often referred to as high forest low deforestation (HFLD) countries. The opposite of HFLD countries are nations like Indonesia which have lots of forest but are cutting it down at a rapid pace and are known as (you guessed it) high forest, high deforestation (HFHD) countries.

While HFHD countries are the focus of most conservation efforts today, HFLD countries have a potential to be a major source of emissions and deforestation in the future. This is because many HFLD countries, particularly those in the Congo Basin have not (for the most part) maintained their high forest cover out a desire for conservation, but because low deforestation rates have more to do with lack of economic and infrastructure development.

Leakage

Tropical deforestation is driven mostly by industrialized agriculture and timber extraction, and globalization means that no country (save for maybe North Korea) is free from these market trends. This means that HFDL countries are at risk of deforestation pressures, particularly due to something called leakage. The most common analogy used to describe leakage is to think of a balloon: If you squeeze a balloon at one end, what happens to the other end? Right, it gets bigger. The air never goes away it just moves from place to place. Get it? For our purposes it means that if you reduce deforestation in one country it will “leak” into another country because the demand that is driving the deforestation is still there.

Land Grabbing

The issue of land grabbing is a thorny and pernicious one that crops up throughout the tropics but is particularly important in Africa. It is also, however, extremely complex and deserves a blog post all its own. And, in fact, in the not too distant future my colleague Doug Boucher will be writing a post on just this topic, so I’m going to leave it alone and you’ll just have to stay tuned to The Equation to find out more…

Back to Africa

Oil palm plantations, like this one in Malaysia, could  become commonplace in Africa. Photo: Flickr; Marufish.

So what does this all mean for palm expansion in Africa? Palm oil production is going to continue to expand for the foreseeable future because demand continues to grow. While most of today’s production is concentrated in Malaysia and Indonesia, pressure on the industry there to stop clearing forest may reduce the amount of land for expansion in these countries.

As the Forest Foundation report shows, many of the large palm oil producers are already looking to African countries as sources of new, cheap land for expansion. Without proper pressure from the public and policies from governments, it is possible that palm oil expansion in Africa will cause the same environmental damage as it has in Southeast Asia.

However, African countries also have the potential to be a major player in the deforestation-free palm oil market. Since many African countries produce little palm oil now, they aren’t hindered with a legacy of deforestation and have the ability to ramp up their production without damaging ecosystems. This would allow producers to declare that all palm oil from a given country is deforestation-free. This makes it much easier for consumers and companies to make informed decisions of what palm oil to buy. If they know that all palm oil for Nigeria, for instance, is deforestation-fee (it’s not), that is much easier than trying to determine if a given batch of oil from Indonesia comes from peatlands or not.

Much attention will continue to be turned to Southeast Asia and stopping palm oil-related deforestation there. However, as we do that we need to be sure that deforestation in emerging markets is stamped out early, before it becomes standard practice.

Populations of orangutans have plummeted by as much as 80 percent, and habitat loss is a major driver of their decline.

What determines distributions?

The study looked at factors affecting the distribution of orangutans across the island of Borneo. The researchers compiled over 6,000 data points ranging 1990-2011. They examined a number of factors affecting the distribution, including annual rainfall, land-use type, mean daily temperature, soil type, and others. They found that the two most important factors for predicting the presence of orangutans were rainfall and land-use type. While the rainfall finding is interesting from a scientific standpoint, it was the details of the land-use finding that really struck me.

A place to call home?

The researchers classified land use into 5 categories: Protected areas, which are theoretically off limits to human disturbance (but which do suffer from some illegal logging, hunting, and farming); logging concessions, which allow for some selective logging but which can’t be clear cut; industrial tree and palm oil concessions, forests that can be (or already have been) clear cut and converted to either palm or timber plantations; and finally areas outside of concession, basically the miscellaneous category. The pie chart below shows the percentages of the populations found in each land-use type:

This graph shows the distribution of Bornean orangutans by land-use type. Over three quarters of the population exists outside of protected areas.

What strikes me (and the authors) about these findings is that over three quarters of the orangutan habitat is outside of protected areas and is therefore at risk of being cleared. Such clearing could cause the existing populations to plummet. The authors estimate that clearing forests for timber plantation would result in the death or displacement of more than 95% of orangutans in that area and describe palm oil plantations as “the poorest land use type” for the ape.

How do you define sustainable?

This study comes at an important moment in the debate over sustainable palm oil, as the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is in the process of reviewing its principles and criteria (P&C). The current P&C does limit development in forests where orangutans are present; however, they still allow clearing of logged and secondary forests (often categorized as “degraded” forest), which, as this study demonstrates, can provide potentially important habitat for orangutans. Over 200 scientists (including the lead author of this paper) signed a letter urging the RSPO to make clearing of these types of forests off limits. Let’s hope that the RSPO takes steps to protect secondary forests, which could provide vital habitat for orangutans before it’s too late.

2012 has been a big year:  France, Egypt, South Korea, and the U.S. all held presidential elections; Apple released the iPhone 5, the iPad 3, the iPad 4, and the iPad mini; and my hometown little league team nearly won the world series (my home city major league team actually did win the world series). But politics, technology, and sports aside, 2012 has seen some major victories and defeats for tropical forests as well. I’ve spent the last week reflecting on the events of the 2012 and wanted to share with you what I think are the milestones for 2012.

Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva win UN Forest Heroes Award

Rhiannon and Madison met with EPA Director Lisa Jackson at her office

The year started off on a high note, when two 16-year-old Girl Scouts were awarded the first ever UN Forest Heroes Award. Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva have been campaigning since the age of 11 to bring attention to the links between palm oil production and deforestation. The girls were not only recognized by the UN, but on a trip to DC the two met with their home state senators (Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow) and representatives (John Dingell and Thaddeus McCotter), EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and a number of State department officials.

Lacey Act and forest get some relief from RELIEF

In Washington, D.C. this year, the biggest fight to protect tropical forests involved defending the Lacey Act, which bans the importation of illegally sources animals and plant products (including illegal tropical timber and wood products), from a number of congressional attacks.

Thankfully, relief came to the Lacey Act when congressional leadership decided at the last minute to pull the Retailers and Entertainers Lacey Implementation and Enforcement Fairness (RELIEF) Act from the congressional calendar, essentially killing it. Lacey enters 2013 looking strong, free of congressional challenges, and ready to continue protecting tropical forests and US jobs.

Rio+20: The future we don’t want

A banner hanging at the Ri0+20 summit. Based on the lack of decisions in the Rio text, the future does not look too bright.

The biggest environmental flop of the year was the failure of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (aka Rio+20) to lead to any concrete decisions and commitments. The meeting, a follow up to the original Earth Summit in 1992, which gave rise to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity, shut down large parts of Rio for two weeks in June as representatives from over 190 countries descended on the city.

Widely seen as a failure, the meeting highlighted the difficulty and frustration of decision-making at an international level. The only glimmers of hope during the summit came from businesses, cities, and individuals that continue to push the sustainability movement forward in the absence of national and international leadership.

Brazil Forest Code: Taking the good with the bad

Following the theme of environmental disappointments in Brazil, that country’s national government made some substantial changes to its forest code, leading to a decline in forest protection. The debate over the forest code, which had raged in the Brazilian congress for nearly two years, concluded when the pro-agriculture block of legislators passed a bill which greatly reduced forest protections, over the objection from Brazil’s leading scientific bodies. A series of presidential vetoes and congressional responses led to a final law that, while better than it could have been, still reduced protections for Brazilian forests.

Brazil’s continued deforestation reductions

However, not all environmental news out of Brazil was bad. In early December, it was announced that for the eighth year in a row, Brazil has reduced its deforestation rate. Deforestation this year was down by 27 percent and has fallen by 75 percent from the years of peak deforestation. This effort has involved cooperation amongst governments, business, and land owners on the state, national, and international levels to address the drivers of deforestation (mostly soy and beef production) and change the way forests are managed and protected. It’s not yet clear what effect the changes to the forest code will have on deforestation rates, but for now it’s enough to marvel at how far Brazil has come.

Looking ahead

This time of year is as much about looking forward as it is about looking back. With the new Tropical Forest Alliance between the U.S. government, major businesses, and NGO’s to address deforestation in supply chains, the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil reviewing its principles and criteria for certification, and the UNFCCC scheduled to resolve the remaining technical issues concerning REDD+, 2013 promises to be an eventful year.  We here at UCS will be keeping a close eye on these, and countless other developments, so stick around, it should be a fun year.

A pile of palm fruit. Palm oil is the world’s must used vegetable oil and also a major contributor to tropical deforestation. (Photo Credit: Rhett Butler)

Out of the frying pan and into your shampoo

Palm oil, which is currently the world’s most used vegetable oil, is found in thousands of products we use every day. It’s not only used for cooking, but can also be found in everything from candy bars and cookies to cleaning products and shampoo and even fuel. But there is a flip side: palm oil production drives more tropical deforestation (a major contributor to climate change) than any other vegetable oil. The area used for palm oil production (primarily in Indonesia and Malaysia) has doubled in just a decade, and much of this land has come from clearing vast amounts of tropical forests and peat swamps that release significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when drained of water and then burned (or left to decompose).

“Sustainable” solutions?

If you’ve ever checked product labels or company websites from the brands you buy, you’ve probably come across references to “sustainable palm oil” but what exactly does that mean? The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) provides the Principles and Criteria (known as the P&C)  for “certified sustainable palm oil” and has members from many stakeholder groups, including palm oil growers, refiners, and traders, financial institutions, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, and non-governmental organizations. From Walmart and McDonalds to Kraft and Unilever, many companies you know and love are part of the RSPO and working towards solutions for their palm oil foot prints. The RSPO also includes the Union of Concerned Scientists – we joined in October to get more involved in pushing RSPO standards to be science-based.

Peatland being cleared for palm oil plantations in Borneo. (Photo Credit: Rhett Butler)

Despite the RSPO’s good intentions, there are a number of ways that the group’s efforts fall short of producing truly sustainable palm oil.  The most glaring omission is that the P&C allow for conversion of peatlands and high-carbon secondary forests. Thus, “certified sustainable palm oil” can still drive tropical deforestation and still have an enormous carbon footprint.

There is hope however. The RSPO is currently undergoing a review of their P&C, as they plan to do every 5 years. This process has included two public consultation periods, the second of which ends on November 30^th. Though the current draft is still very weak in terms of forest and GHG rules, UCS, along with other stakeholders, has developed a set of specific text changes which would ensure the protection of peatlands and secondary forests and reduce the GHG emissions from palm oil development. Additionally, a group of 10 prominent scientists, including UCS board member Stuart Pimm, sent a letter to the RSPO echoing similar points.

The future of sustainable palm oil

The success of the RSPO will rely heavily on the result of this review period. The group is set to meet in January to discuss the comments received and hopes to build consensus to move forward with a vote on updated standards in the spring of 2013.

Many companies from around the globe, including the Consumer Goods Forum, which includes 650 consumer goods manufacturing companies and major retailers, have made public commitments to achieving zero net deforestation in their supply chains. If the RSPO does not improve standards now, these companies will not be able to use RSPO-certified palm oil to meet their deforestation-free commitments.

In the meantime, the lack of these standards in the RSPO has not been preventing action. There are palm oil growers who have voluntarily banned planting on peat and have created strong protections for secondary forests. And there are consumer goods manufacturers that are specifically demanding palm oil with these additional criteria. This shows that it can be done – and can be done without the RSPO if the RSPO won’t add these standards.

Eye in the sky

The most informative and dramatic maps I’ve found come from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Geodetic Survey (NOAA NGS).

The NGS took high-resolution low-altitude photos of the coastal regions affected by Hurricane Sandy and overlaid them on top of a Google map interface. What emerges is a fascinating and sobering overview of the extent of the damage and the scale of the recovery ahead. The site also offers property owners and displaced residents an opportunity to assess the damage to their homes and communities from afar.

Images of Mantoloking, New Jersey before and after Hurricane Sandy (NOAA 2012). Visit the NOAA website for more pictures.

An even more dramatic picture of the destruction can be seen on another NGS site. This site takes photos of the heavily damaged areas and couples them with Google maps satellite images of the same region before the storm. The viewer can seamlessly swipe between the two and see the contrast between life before the storm and current reality.

Welcome to Yugoslavia: The risks of relying on old, outdated maps

The dynamic and up-to-date nature of these maps highlight a limitation of most maps we use, which is, they are static. Maps capture what the world looks like at the time they are drawn, but as Sandy and many climate change models have shown, the world is not a static place. Using yesterday’s maps to make decisions for our future is like using an atlas from 1986 to plan your next European vacation (“Ooo, Yugoslavia, that place sounds fascinating”).

Yet the government is making investments based on maps that are just as outdated

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood insurance maps, which are used to make important investment and development decisions in low-lying areas, date from the 1980s. The maps are currently being redrawn, but the agency is still relying on historical data to update the maps and is, as of yet, not taking future climate scenarios into account.

The shortcomings of using this outdated data can be seen in a series of maps of the Boston area from the 2007 Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment. The maps show the difference in the current 100-year flood maps (hatched darker blue) for downtown Boston (top), Back Bay (center), and South Boston (bottom), with what a projected 100-year flood map would look like in 2100 based on a high-emissions climate scenario (light blue).

Maps are powerful tools. We use them constantly to find the nearest supermarket, or plan a route to work, or even to predict presidential election results. But they are only useful as long as they describe reality. The reality is that our climate is changing, our oceans are rising, and our coastlines are receding. Our maps — and our policies — must also change to address this new reality.

View from my parents’ back deck, my office away from the office.

My mother is sitting just inside at the antique oak table in the very kitchen that I saw rise from a concrete foundation and wooden frame, grading her students’ first papers of the school year. My step-dad is out “on the property” among the scores of redwoods, birches, fruit trees, willows, and pines (the last remnants of the Christmas tree farm that once stood here) which have grown nearly to a forest over the last 15 years.

But what are the consequences of all this wood? Should my parents have used something else to build their house? Should my mom have her students turn in homework electronically and skip the paper all together? Should I be finishing the Hunger Games on an e-reader or in paperback? (The only thing I don’t feel conflicted about is the oak table, as it’s been in our family for a few generations).

Thankfully a new report from UCS, Wood for Good: Solutions for Deforestation-Free Wood Products, the last in a three part series, helps answer some of these questions.

A world of wood

The market for wood products, like so much of the economy these days, is global. Timber harvested from Vietnam, Indonesia, Russia, or Canada, is shipped to a processing plant in China or some other manufacturing hub and crafted into the tables, chairs, desks, or paper products we use every day.

Where this wood comes from has a major effect on biodiversity and carbon emissions. Complete clearing of tropical forests is a major problem in Southeast Asia, while destructive selective logging is rampant throughout the tropics. Most of the growth in the timber industry over the next decades is expected to be in the tropics so these pressures are likely to increase.

What makes wood good?

A teak plantation in southern India. Plantations can reduce logging pressures on natural forest (source: CIFOR/Flickr)

There is hope, however. Wood can be a sustainable and carbon-neutral material if producers take certain steps to ensure there products are deforestation-free. When taking timber from natural forests, loggers should use low-impact logging techniques to ensure they are doing as little damage as possible. Also, loggers should not remove any trees from untouched primary forests.

Plantations within the tropics also offer a sustainable way to produce timber. Tropical plantations are often very fast growing and allow for wood production without disturbing intact forests.  However, natural forests should never be cleared to make way for plantations. This type of clearing, called conversion, leads to a loss of biodiversity and ecosystem carbon. To be sustainable, plantations should be established on degraded, abandoned, or other non-forest lands.

What can you do?

Beyond steps that producers can take, there are things that consumers can do to make sustainable choices. First, they can recycle paper and wood products and use recycled and reclaimed products (who knew that that advice everyone got in third grade would still be true). Wood and paper can be recycled and reused very efficiently and using more recycled materials means that less new production is needed.

The FSC logo spray painted on a cut log. The logo indicates that the timber was produced with the FSC sustainability standards(Source: Eric Goethals/FSC).

Second, consumers can look for wood products that are sustainably certified. The leading timber certification is called FSC, which stands for Forest Stewardship Council. FSC establishes certain standards and criteria to ensure that the products containing their label are produced in a sustainable way with minimal impact on the environment.  While the FSC standards aren’t perfect, they are a step in the right direction.

Finally, consumers should be engaged with the products they buy. If they don’t see recycled or certified products in stores, they should ask the store to start carrying such options or find a store that already does.

The Winners

Me with three of the Ecoservice awardees.

This year we had two incredible front runner candidates, and for the first time ever, we decided to give the Eco-service award to them both.

Jessica Shade is a PhD student at UC Berkeley studying the genetic patterns on two Lupine species.  In between research and course work she found time to found and direct the Diversity Mentorship Program, which trains graduate student instructors how to use inclusive teaching practices.  In addition to that program, she also mentors students from elementary to high school who are underrepresented in science. She also uses science as a tool to teach English as a second language students.

The other winner Talia Young is a PhD student at Rutgers University. In addition to her research on aquatic food webs, which includes field sites in Mongolia and Baja California, she works with underserved students of color in Philadelphia. She views herself as a “science translator” and designed and taught an extracurricular science class for those students. The class includes a trip to an ecological field station and even uses actual datasets from her research to teach high school students the basics of the scientific method and data analysis.

The Honorees

In addition the two winners we give a certificate of merit to Franklin Egan, a PhD student at Pen State, for his work running a community garden on campus there.

Rounding out our honorees, we gave honorable mentions to two candidates. One went to Tanya Cheeke, a PhD student at Portland State University, for her work mentoring students and communicating science to the general public and the second went to Monica Granados, a PhD candidate at McGill University, for her work as a science ambassador to her local community.

All of us here at UCS are impressed with what these early career scientists are able to achieve outside the realm of science.  We know they will go on to do great things in the future and we look forward to seeing the amazing candidates who apply for next year’s award.

Dr. Sally Ride aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. ( Image Credit: NASA)

A Scientist in Space

Dr. Ride was best known as the first American woman in space, a distinction she earned when in June 1983 she was among the five crew members on the second mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger.  Although that flight earned her a place in history, her gender was not the reason she was aboard the shuttle.  She was there because she had a desire to fly, weightless in space, there because she answered a job advertisement in the newspaper, and above all, there because she possessed the foremost trait sought by NASA during the shuttle era: a brilliant analytical mind.

By the time she reached space, Sally Ride had received four degrees including a B.A. in English and three in physics (B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.). While at NASA, she switched from physics to engineering, helping to design the shuttle’s robotic arm, which she would later operate while in space. She flew on the Challenger twice and was scheduled for a third flight which was canceled after that shuttle exploded on a cold Florida morning, killing all seven aboard.  Dr. Ride served on the panel which investigated the Challenger disaster, and 17 years later would serve on the panel investigating the Columbia shuttle crash (she was the only person to serve on both panels). She retired from NASA in 1987.

Inspiring and Educating

Dr. Sally Ride, with her partner of 27 years, Dr. Tam O'Shaughnessy, in 2008, discussing the role of women in science. (Flickr/The American Library Association)

Dr. Ride spend the majority of her career educating and inspiring millions of Americans to love (or at least appreciate) science.  Soon after leaving NASA, Dr. Ride began teaching physics at the University of California, San Diego where she also directed the California Space Institute and instilled a love of science in her students.  In 2001, she established Sally Ride Science, an organization that designs engaging science and math educational materials for grades K-12.  Perhaps influenced by her degree in English, her organization emphasizes teaching science through telling stories, rather than presenting cold, hard facts.

Beyond her direct efforts in science education, Dr. Ride has been a role model and inspiration for many young women and men. For instance, the wife of one of my colleagues, a professor at University of Central Florida, had this to say about hearing Dr. Ride speak as a student:

“She stood in front of what was probably hundreds of girls in an auditorium and described what it was like to be an astronaut, including answering questions about how they used the toilet up there. With her curly black hair and astronaut stories, I was completely wowed by her and decided right then that I was going to be an astronaut too.  While I ultimately ended up as an ecologist and not an astronaut, having Sally Ride as a role model helped me to see that science was cool and fun.”

Another colleague of mine was so inspired by Dr. Ride as a child that she used her budding detective skills to track down Sally Ride’s parents in the phone book and ended up interviewing Sally’s mother for a third grade class report.

From a young age I dreamed of exploring space, but my idols were never the hot shot space jocks of early NASA. To me space always meant science and the archetype of Scientist Space Explorer was Sally Ride.

Ride, Sally, Ride

"More than anything else, our venturing into space has taught us to appreciate Earth — it’s revolutionized our view of our planet and our understanding of its complexity, and made us see the impact that we’re having on it." -Sally Ride, on the 40th anniversary of Earthrise. ( Image Credit: NASA)

In the end, what makes Sally Ride such an inspiring person is that she was always a complex human being, never a two-dimensional figurehead. She was known to be a fiercely private and reserved individual. For instance, it was not until her obituary that her nearly thirty-year relationship with Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy was made public. And few knew about her cancer until her death. Yet during the Challenger disaster hearing, she publicly hugged a witness who presented particularly difficult testimony. She was the only panelist to do so.

Dr. Ride did not enter NASA for fame and glory, but out of a love of science and a desire to fly. This human desire, even in the face of such historical significance, is best summed up in two quotes from the time of her first historic flight. Of that flight Gloria Steinem said, “millions of little girls are going to sit by their television sets and see they can be astronauts, heroes, explorers and scientists.”

For her part, Dr. Ride simply said, “I’m sure it was the most fun that I’ll ever have in my life.”

This lemur is NOT happy. It may have something to do with the fact that over 90% of lemur species are threatened with extinction. (Flickr/Luca Mortellaro)

A report released last week by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (the folks who are experts on this kind of stuff, and like UCS, not an actual union) found that about 95 percent of the 103 lemur species are or should be on their Red List of Threatened Species. Since a coup in Madagascar in 2009, there has been a major increase in illegal logging which severely threatens lemurs’ habitats.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress seems to be doing about all it can to gut one of the few laws we have to help protect lemurs and other tropical species.

Congress and Lacey

Back in April, I wrote a post about a congressional briefing we held to highlight the release of our report Logging and the Law, and also mentioned that the Lacey Act was under threat in the House of Representatives. Since April, this seemingly small threat has become a serious one. The anti-Lacey bill, titled the Retailers and Entertainers Lacey Implementation and Enforcement Fairness (RELIEF) Act has been rapidly making its way through Congress.

The RELIEF Act was introduced in response to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raiding Gibson Guitars, as part of the Justice Department’s case against the company for allegedly importing illegal rosewood from Madagascar. Since then RELIEF has expanded to include not only hardwood products (like guitars) but also paper and pulp products. Despite a hearing in May, which featured industry, environmental, and musicians’ testimony against RELIEF, the House Natural Resources Committee voted in favor of the bill. Because, of course, when the regulated industry, environmental groups, former Bush Administration officials, and celebrities support a law, the first thing Congress should do is gut it (by the way, that’s sarcasm, folks).

Lacey good, RELIEF bad

The Lacey Act makes it a crime to import illegally harvested wood. (Flickr/tybeeney)

What’s this law that Congress is so eager to demolish? The hundred-year-old Lacey Act makes it a criminal offense to import illegally harvested animal products. In 2008, Congress amended the law to include the import of timber and wood products. This was a ground-breaking step. Illegal logging not only harms forest ecosystems and animal habitat, it’s also associated with other criminal activities like drug and human trafficking, and hurts U.S. industries by making domestic companies compete with stolen timber. Essentially it prevents Best Buy from having to compete with a dude who sells iPods out of his van.

Since stopping illegal logging is such a win-win, it’s no surprise that the 2008 efforts to amend Lacey had bipartisan support (including President Bush) and strong support of both industry and environmental groups.

No RELIEF

What is a surprise is that, despite the continued effort of the diverse supporters of the Lacey Act, Congress continues to move ahead with RELIEF. It’s still not clear why Congress is pushing this so hard. It might have something to do with Gibson’s continued lobbying efforts to modify the Lacey Act, or it might be something else. Congress works in mysterious ways (when it works at all).

Regardless of the reason, The House of Representatives is planning to bring RELIEF to the House floor for a vote next week as a part of a broader “Anti-Regulation” themed week.

Things are moving fast, but there is still time to make a difference.  Please take a couple of minutes to send your member of Congress a message asking them to vote “No” on the RELIEF Act (H.R. 3210).

Remember, you’re doing it for the lemurs.

[UPDATE] Over the last few weeks there have two major victories in the fight to defend the Lacey Act.  The first victory came on July 27 when Congressional leadership canceled the scheduled vote for the RELIEF Act. With Congress only in session for a handful of days before the November election, this move has essentially killed the RELIEF Act, leaving the Lacey Act free from imminent Congressional threat.

The second victory came last Monday when Gibson Guitars admitted to violating the Lacey Act in a settlement with the US Justice Department. This settlement brings to a close the case that prompted the introduction of the RELIEF Act and marks a successful end to the US Governments first attempt to enforce the 2008 amendments to the Lacey Act.

This lemur has a message for Congress… Vote “No” on the RELIEF Act. (Flickr/Tambako the Jaguar)

Given that the text was never reopened, the summit itself was little more than an opportunity for politicians to make speeches and congratulate themselves on a job poorly done. When not having their pictures taken, the politicians spent most of Thursday and Friday discussing how to implement the steps laid out on the document. I can’t help thinking that if the text included more on implementation, with real targets and benchmarks, they would have less to discuss now and yet more would actually get done.

The central sign reads "Come share your vision of the future".

To be honest, my time in Brazil has left me exhausted and with a little bit of a cold, so I am finding it difficult muster the energy to write about three days of wasted opportunity, so I’m going to end here. I will be back next week with my own reflections on Rio. For now, I will let the words of Alden Meyer, who opened the week with his blog post, close the week as well:

“The political declaration issued by leaders in Rio has no hope of giving the peoples of the world ‘the future we want.’ Without much stronger action, we are clearly headed for a future we can’t live with – and quicker than most leaders realize.
“The message from scientists and other experts is crystal clear: humanity is placing stresses on the Earth’s carrying capacity that threaten the health and wellbeing of both current and future generations. The response to this threat from world leaders in Rio is totally inadequate, as many of them would readily admit. Today’s declaration is the result of several factors: the focus of most leaders on current short-term economic challenges, the untoward influence of corporate polluters over public policy, and sharp divisions among countries on key issues such as equity and finance.
“But Rio also saw numerous initiatives launched and commitments made by countries, companies and other actors. More than 400 companies which comprise the Consumer Goods Forum pledged to achieve zero net deforestation in their supply chains by 2020. While collectively these initiatives are significant and offer some hope, they simply aren’t adequate to the scale of the challenges we face.
“Fortunately, we have the solutions we need, and they are far more affordable than the impacts we will suffer if we don’t implement them.  For example, the cost of electricity from clean renewable sources has dropped significantly in recent years, and there are tremendous opportunities to use energy more efficiently in every sector of our economies. What’s in short supply is political will by leaders to rise above pressure from polluters and their own short-term thinking, and do the right thing for the future of all of us.
“Despite the disappointing outcome in Rio, we will continue to press for the actions to move us onto the sustainable path the people of the world deserve.”

The state of the science is… mixed

On the whole, the inclusion of science is a mixed bag within the document.  The words science and scientific appear 33 times, while research appears 17 times, and evidence-based appears just 3 times.  Technology appears 60 times, mostly in the context of energy technology, which has its own dedicated section (B) in the means of implementation (VI) part of the document.

The official title of the Rio text is "The Future We Want", but it's not clear that anyone wants the future laid out in the document

Among the stakeholder groups, the science and tech community has good representation:

48. We recognize the important contribution of the scientific and technological community to sustainable development. We are committed to working with and fostering collaboration among academic, scientific and technological community, in particular in developing countries, to close the technological gap between developing and developed countries, strengthen the science-policy interface as well as to foster international research collaboration on sustainable development.

However, as I highlighted in my post yesterday, it is the verbs that count, and for the most part the science verbs are weak ones.  Science is often “recognized” or “acknowledged”, while the science-policy interface is often called to be “strengthened”, but the only science related commitment I could identify was buried at the end of paragraph 163:

We further commit to take action by 2025, based on collected scientific data, to achieve significant reductions in marine debris to prevent harm to the coastal and marine environment.

Otherwise there are few action items associated with science and, where science is used as an action, it is mostly in the form of a report with no guarantee that that report will actually inform policy decisions.

There is no mention that green economy policies in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication should (paragraph 58) be based on science (although there is a call to close the technology gap among countries). The text later acknowledges that it is important to use the best available scientific data when conducting cost-benefit analyses of these policies (paragraph 63), but this is as strong as that section gets.

International venues for sustainable development

Pavilion for the conventions that were established at Rio+0. Scant progress has been made on these in the past 20 years and given what was produced at Rio+20 little good is expected to happen in the next 20.

The Rio text as a whole highlights a number of international venues to address sustainable development.

When calling to strengthen the “institutional framework for sustainable development” (paragraph 76) science is again called out explicitly:

(g) promote the science-policy interface through inclusive, evidence-based and transparent scientific assessments, as well as access to reliable, relevant and timely data in areas related to the three dimensions of sustainable development, building on existing mechanisms, as appropriate; in this regard, strengthen participation of all countries in international sustainable development processes and capacity building especially for developing countries, including in conducting their own monitoring and assessments;

However, strengthening a vague framework to promote the science-policy interface sounds to me like a whole lot of nothing.

There is also a call to establish a high level policy forum that could (not should) produce a science-based global sustainable development report (paragraph 85k). It is unclear what this forum will do and there is no guarantee that the report will be used to inform policy decisions.

Many groups had expectations the Rio text would strengthen the historically weak UN Environment Program (UNEP) and it has taken some steps towards doing that by asking the UN general assembly to beef up UNEP in a number of ways (88). But here again, the requests for science are just to write a report (88d) and to disseminate the results (88e).

Science is not where the action is

A banner hanging in Riocentro. Based on the lack of decisions in the Rio text, the future does not look bright.

In the “framework for action and follow-up” section of the text (V) there is no general call for actions to be science-based (not that such a thing was expected, but a boy can dream, can’t he?) but it is highlighted in a few of the issue areas.  The agriculture (paragraph 114), population (paragraph 144), oceans (paragraph 160), climate change (paragraphs 190-191), biodiversity (paragraph 204) land-use (paragraph 207-208), and chemicals (paragraph 220) sections all highlight the role of science, but again have no explicit calls to translate that science into action. The countries do commit to mobilize funding for a science-based sustainable development information system (paragraph 251), but with no indication how this data will be used.

More than a missed opportunity

There are countless scientific papers which underline and address the issues addressed in the Rio text.  The vast majority of these papers show that we are pushing the boundaries of our planet, and many offer solutions of how to address this. For example, in 2009 Johan Rockstrom and others published a paper which showed that we are already well outside the sustainable planetary bounds for biodiversity loss, climate change, and nitrogen cycling, and well on our way for a number of other categories.  As recently as this month, Nature published a piece grading the world’s progress on commitments since Rio+0, and the results were not good. Yet none of this made it into the text in any actionable way.

Figure from the Rockström et al. paper showing the areas where humans have already exceeded the planets bounds. (Nature 2009)

Why should that be? It is not as though science is absent from Rio. There are no fewer than three scientific conferences happening in Brazil around the time of Rio+20 (the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation annual conference, the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development, and the International Society for Ecological Economics meeting ) in addition to the numerous side events highlighting the latest work at the “science-policy interface”.

With so much evidence and so many scientists speaking so loudly, this document seems like more than a missed opportunity, it seems like an outright insult. The scientific and technical community, so valued as a stakeholder, working at the science-policy interface has well documented what we are doing to this planet and offered many solutions on how to achieve the future we want.  The science-policy interface does not need to be strengthened; it is plenty strong and getting stronger. What is needed is for policy makers to open their eyes, uncover their ears, and pay attention.

Just as Preppy had his set of prepositional phrases, the countries at the international negotiations have a go-to set of phrases to describe actions they can take. Although, as my colleague Doug Boucher highlighted yesterday, most of these are ways to describe lack of action in a way that makes it sound like action. So without further ado here are…

A group of vegans demonstrating outside of RioCentro. Given his love of honey, the Winnie the Pooh costume seems an odd choice.

The Top Ten International Negotiation Terms for [In]action

Ranked from strongest to weakest (the numbers in parentheses represent the number of times the term appears in the Rio text):

10. Commit (40) — This is as strong as it gets. Countries actually agree to take a given action… However there is no way to hold countries accountable for these commitments and all too often they are able to back out of them with little consequence beyond some public shaming.

9. Decide (5) — Also a strong term but, as the word only appears five times, countries obviously dislike actually deciding anything.

8. Reaffirm (59) — Countries LOVE to reaffirm past decisions and commitments, but reaffirmations are only as strong as the original commitments and decisions. “Yup, we totally still want to do that thing we promised to do but haven’t gotten around to yet. But we are super serious this time.”

7. Take note (8) — Similar to reaffirm, but tends to be used for actions taken by individual countries, rather than those taken by the group as a whole.

6. Strengthen (70) — Negotiated documents seem to like to point out how weak things are.  They highlight initiatives and actions which need to be strengthened, but rarely take on the responsibility to do it. That’s kind of my approach to exercise.

5. Encourage (49) — Here we start to get into the bread and butter of international negotiation inaction. One can encourage a lot of things without actually doing anything. There is no action here, but there is a tacit approval of whatever is already happening.

4. Underline (7) — This is a way of emphasizing something’s importance without agreeing to do anything about it.

3. Recognize (147) — 147 mentions! Clearly, the countries  LOVE to recognize things.  Recognition requires no action or even an expression of an opinion, countries get to point out that things exist without having to say whether they approve or disapprove.

2. Acknowledge (33) — About as weak as “recognize.”

1. Bracketing — This is not a term, but rather an action.  When text is too controversial to be accepted by every country, but also too controversial to remove entirely, that text is put in brackets. It is a way of making a declaration but at the same time disavowing it. This irks me the most because you get a preview of what agreements would look like if the negotiations were ambitious, but are left with a document that is still toothless. It’s kind of like taking a kid to the pet store, letting him play with a puppy, asking him if he would take really good care of it and then going home empty-handed. It’s just plain mean.

Bonus Jargon

This helpful sign was posted in the computer room. It reads "Area with Computers" just in case you were confused.

The fun doesn’t stop with terms for inaction, below are a few more of my favorite negotiating terms:

Consensus — Technically all negotiated outcomes are made by consensus decisions-making, where all countries agree. In practice however, protests (mostly from small countries which lack clout) can be “gaveled” over and “consensus” can be pushed through. It’s sort of like putting your hands over your ears and repeating “la la la, I can’t here you.”

Informal-informals — A meeting so casual they named it twice? Not exactly.  In negotiation speak an “informal” meeting is still pretty formal, including standard parliamentary procedures and policies.  “Informal-informals” are more like what normal people would consider informal, people sitting in a room having an actual discussion without all of the pretense. These are often where the real progress gets made.

Non-paper — Despite its name, this is actually a paper. However, in the highly politicized environment of the international negotiations, even proposing an idea can be considered taking a position, so countries must produce these non-papers to indicate that they don’t reflect official positions.

Treaty, Convention, Agreement, Accord, Platform, or Protocol — Various names for the different final negotiated texts.  The difference among them? Your guess is as good as mine. Much like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie-pop, the world may never know.

Meanwhile, back at Rio

I pass this statute on my way to the shuttle. It appears to be a mosquito wearing a pink crown. I kind of love it.

For more on the substance of what’s happening at Rio be sure to check out Rachel Cleetus’ post, Rio+20: What Does It Mean for Climate Change and Renewable Energy?

Rachel, a senior climate economist in the UCS Climate and Energy program, writes on increasing access to renewable energy around the globe and the prospects of this and other issues at Rio.

P.S. That puppy thing actually happened to my step-dad when he was young.