         
This is actually the second of my entries as I tried to give a short intro to who I am before, but this is my first blog from the field! I have spent a week in Malaysia so far based mainly in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. I attended two conferences, one organised by the British High Commission on climate change in the region and the second organised by the Global Carbon Project and Wetlands International on palm oil produced on peatlands. Both were fascinating opportunities with several preeminent people on hand offering a variety of opinions on biofuels. No surprise biodiesel from palm oil came up at both of these events as well as the notion of earning carbon emission credits from avoided deforestation. At the British High Commission event, a representative of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) presented their recent research done on life-cycle analysis of palm oil production focusing on the overall carbon emissions and energy balance. This is especially important as recent proposals from the Netherlands have suggested making at least a 30% greenhouse gas reduction in the production process be necessary in order for a biofuel to be used for transport fuel or electricity production. According to their calculations palm oil generates a 60-80% reduction in greenhouse gases. However, for those interested in this debate, a recent report produced by Crutzen calls into question the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) methods for estimating emissions from nitrous oxide, another potent greenhouse gas beside methane and carbon dioxide. The peatlands and palm oil conference was quite different, organised as more of a "stakeholder outreach" in order to invite palm oil producers to listen to findings from a two day experts meeting on the issue. As you can imagine the discussion got quite tense at times, with producers stating their frustration with the science to date on emission rates from drained peatland. A recent report by Wetlands International really set this debate by calculating that including emissions from drained peatland in national carbon emission calculations would put Indonesia as the third largest emitter in the world (after China and the US)--(incidentally I also found out that China is expected to surpass the US later this year in terms of carbon emissions!) According to one of the organisers, Prof. Pep Canadell, of the 30 million hectares of peatland in Indonesia, 8 million hectares have been opened up for agriculture and of that 3 million hectares have been converted and then abandoned. It is important to mention here that Indonesia is by no means the only country that produces food on drained peatland. China is producing significant volumes of soy, the EU cultivates maize and the US (in Florida) has drained peatland to grow sugar. The palm oil producers there were genuinely concerned that this sudden revelation of the emissions from their livelihood could be a 'death nail for palm oil on peatland.' A few didn't want to accept that even minor drainage would expose the organic matter in the soil to the air causing it to decompose rapidly, otherwise it is stored in highly acidic conditions (pH~3.5)where it cannot break down. Anyway, I overall was very impressed with the level and candidness of the discussion. Both sides seemed respectful of the other's position, although I am not convinced a great number of minds were changed. The final open panel did see the more serious mention of the interest in investors in finding peatland rehabilitation projects; as restoring degraded peatland could mean serious emission reductions. Time will tell if that will make a difference on the industry. So as I am rapidly fading here, I will save an entry on Borneo (where I have finally arrived!) for another time. Blog post by amorel on Nov. 04, 2007 at 2:52 p.m.
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