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Norway says will not ban palm oil but demands sustainability
Last year, Indonesia and Norway were involved in a spat following the Norwegian parliament’s move to ban crude palm oil.
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Harvest time: A worker gathers oil palm fruit bunches at a plantation in Lampung. Indonesian Ambassador to Norway Todung Mulya Lubis said in Oslo on Friday that Norwegian officials had assured him that there would be no ban on palm oil. (The Jakarta Post/R. Berto Wedhatama)
T
he Norwegian government has told Indonesia that despite pressures from its parliament to adopt stricter measures against palm oil, the country will not ban crude palm oil and its derivatives, though it has demanded that Indonesia work toward sustainable production.
Indonesian Ambassador to Norway Todung Mulya Lubis said on Friday that Norwegian officials had assured him that there would be no ban on palm oil, neither in policy nor in the newly signed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between Indonesia and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), of which Norway is a member.
“I scrutinized the agreement, and I did not see that palm oil was excluded. So as a matter of policy, the Norwegian government has not banned palm oil despite the fact that we hear so much noise coming from politicians and environmentalists,” Todung told a stakeholder forum on palm oil in Oslo.
Marit Vea, political adviser to the Norwegian minister of climate and the environment, told the same forum that the parliament had pressured the government to draw up a comprehensive proposal for measures aimed at regulating foods that contribute to deforestation. The measures have to be in place by January 2020.
“But let me clarify, this is not going to be a ban on palm oil or other crops […] because we know that the palm oil sector is important for the Indonesian economy. We know that it employs millions of people, including many smallholders,” Vea told the forum.
Nevertheless, she suggested that Indonesian producers improve the sustainability of palm oil production and help protect the country’s forests and peatland, saying that “Indonesia can increase palm oil production without destroying forests and peatland.”
To put the call into action, Vea said, the Norwegian government had agreed to provide soft loans to oil palm smallholders in West Kalimantan to increase production at their farms. In addition, she said, Norway also supported a green fund that would provide capital for deforestation-free production of commodities in several provinces in Indonesia.
