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The Real Smoking Gun: Is the EU funding the Friends of the Earth's anti-palm oil campaigns?
| In California, a building corporation has come up with an innovative idea to sell their houses. They think that a good way to make their houses more appealing is to have a family in each show house. So they hire actors and actresses to play happy families in their corporation's model homes. Prospective buyers could ask them questions about the house. Each fake family cooks, watches television and play computer games whilst house hunters wander through. That type of faking may not do any harm, but think about the sham of the EU funding green groups to lobby it! For some years now, the Palm Oil Truth Foundation has postulated that green groups like Friends of the Earth are funded by "anti-palm oil lobbies" to run their anti-palm oil campaigns to rein in the cheapest cooking oil in the world. Now, we have the smoking gun! The "anti-palm oil lobby" funding the Friends of the Earth's anti-palm oil campaigns is likely the EU Commission itself, either wittingly or unwittingly! In a well researched and written paper entitled "Friends of the EU"i, Caroline Boin and Andrea Marchesetti points out that the EU "funds many NGOs operating in Brussels whose main purpose is to influence EU policy-making and implementation." Their report focuses on an analysis of one program of funding, in which the DG Environment (the division of the European Commission responsible for environmental affairs) distributed €66 million to environmental NGOs between 1998-2009. What makes disconcerting reading is that during those years, the Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE) funding from DG Environment had increased by a whopping 325%! In 2008 alone, FOEE had received more than three quarter million Euros funding from DG Environment, a sum which represents 52% of FOEE's annual income.ii It is no coincidence that in those same years, as the funding from DG Environment to the FOEE's coffers increased, the intensity and scale of the FOEE's attacks against palm oil had also increased concomitantly! One environmental NGO, in a presentation on the Green 10 grouping, boasted of "Regular meetings with Commissioner for Environment" and "Regular meetings with the Council".iii A Parliament working paper also observed these close ties - including financial relationships - between that environmental NGO and the Commission.iv Say Ms Boin and Marchesetti: "The Commission in particular readily promotes the fact that it funds NGOs to advance its policy agenda and to influence the public debate on topics such as climate change: "In particular in the area of climate change, NGOs have been reported to be useful in reaching out and supporting EU positions through their networks." It also funds NGOs to extol the virtues of EU regulation among the general public, "raising awareness and promoting EU environment policy beyond EU borders." This confirms what the Palm Oil Truth Foundation has been asserting for some years now. Green groups like Friends of the Earth are really proxies in a well disguised, cleverly planned and coordinated trade war against palm oil! The EU argues that environmental NGOs provide a "necessary balance in relation to the interests of other actors… including industry/business, trade unions and consumer groups. However, Ms Boins and Marchesetti points out that, contrary to popular misconception, "the interests of some business and some NGOs are often aligned," and "big businesses often collude with environmental groups to push through regulations that benefit them at the cost of smaller business competitors." Calling for the funding of environmental NGOs by the EU to stop forthwith, the authors of the Report observed that the EU meddling in the funding of NGOs has had ruinous effects.'," as "not only does it undermine the financial independence of those NGOs, but it also threatens their political independence and ability to determine their own priorities." "Despite their best intentions, recipient NGOs could find themselves becoming front groups for the bureaucratic apparatus or consultative groups in an advisory capacity". This probably accounts for the reason why an environmental NGO like FOEE should launch such strident attacks against a commodity that is indisputably the most sustainable of all oilseed crops. For instance, the Waginingen University, in a recent independent report had found that palm oil, along with sugar cane and sorghum were the most sustainable of all crops! In fact, palm oil is cultivated in less than 1% of the world's agricultural areas and yet the crop is so productive and demonstrably sustainable that it accounts for more than 30% of the world's total production of edible oil! That explains why Malaysia which is such a small country could be the world's largest producer of palm oil for more than a century. Yet after cultivating the crop for more than a hundred years, Malaysia can still boast of more than 56% forest cover, which dwarfs the 25% forest cover existing in the EU today. This proves that the crop requires far less land than the critics would want the world to believe. Indonesia has elected to adopt the same standard as the EU and preserve 25% of its forests. The Palm Oil Truth Foundation would like to pose this question: If 25% forest cover is acceptable to the EU, why should Indonesia be denied the right to adopt the same standard considering that it is a developing country with hundreds of millions of mouths to feed? In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, to put it bluntly, any green group that receives 52% of its annual income from DG Environment cannot help but lose their independence, transparency and objectivity. It is almost inevitable that such groups would become servile to the policy positions and vigorously promote the environmental agenda of the EU, despite making strenuous efforts to conceal that fact and maintain the gloss and veneer of an independent green NGO! There is little doubt that the European Commission is heavily lobbied by the edible oil industries of the EU such as rapeseed and sunflower, both of which are competitors of palm oil for the lucrative biofuel market. The final piece of the anti-palm oil platform jigsaw has now fallen into place - The EU itself is implicated in this sordid episode of a surreptitious trade barrier being erected against palm oil by Friends of the Earth Europe with the help and witting or unwitting connivance of DG Environment of the European Commission! Whether the European Commission has done so wittingly or unwittingly, this cannot be good for their reputation and the Palm Oil Truth Foundation calls for the European Commission to end this shambolic charade immediately! THE END ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ i. http://www.policynetwork.net/accountability/publication/friends-eu ii. Page 6 of the Report iii Silina, M. "Forms of Civil Society cooperation at the European level: Act together now!? Example of joint forces in environmental policy." P2P study visit / DG ELARG, Brussels, 8 September 2008. Slide 16. ec.europa.eu/enlargement/taiex/dyn/create_speech.jsp?num=7284 iv. European Parliament Directorate-General for Research. 2003. "Lobbying in the European Union: Current Rules and Practices." Working Paper, Constitutional Affairs Series. Page 7. http://ec.europa.eu/civil_society/interest_groups/docs/workingdocparl.pdf |
About the Author
Palm Oil Truth Foundation is an international non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation, without strings to the world of commerce and power. We are a people organisation, organised for the people and founded upon the principles of integrity and responsibility as a global citizen with the sole purpose of representing TRUTH to the global community about health, environmental and economic benefits of palm oil.
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