Tracking the Pathways to Sustainability: Green Economy & Bio-Economy
Today, our continuing
progress is restricted not by the number of fishing boats but by the decreasing
numbers of fish; not by the power of pumps but by the depletion of aquifers;
not by the numbers of chainsaws but by the disappearance of primary forests.
Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism.
There is everywhere
the desire to conquer nature, but in the process the value of the conqueror
himself, who is man, is destroyed and his very existence threatened.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature, 1975.
Growing up in rural Kelantan in the 60’s was a real blessing
to me. At the age of five our family moved to a remote village only accessible
by boat along the mighty Kelantan River. My father was posted to the village to
become the headmaster of a makeshift school built with attap roofs and soiled
floors. Since there were no teachers’ quarters and there were no houses for
rent in the village, our family resorted to staying on a “rumah rakit” or a
“floating house”, a shabby hut built on a bamboo raft, tied to a big tree on
the river bank. The raft was our home for a few months until the villagers were
able to build a permanent one on the ground. Despite living in primitive
conditions, the little house on the raft was a heavenly experience to me,
forever cherished and well remembered in my life. Two years later the family
moved back to our kampong, which is also located along the river bank of Kelantan
River, about 90 km downstream. To me the image and the memory of the river was
one of might and magnanimity, of life and sustenance, of water so clear, cool
and fresh. As children we were taught to collect tiny clams called etak from the river beds, a delicacy
snack once they are sun-dried and slightly salted. We followed the adults at
night to scoop the giant prawns udang
galah from their nesting sites along the river banks. During play, we were
cautioned by the adults not to be too daring to swim into the deep pools or lubuks of the river, lest fishes as
large as we were would bite and eat us alive – a scare tactic to prevent us
from drowning, but big fishes were real, minus the biting mouthparts. Rivers
were once the centre of our life, our paradise, a place where life springs
forth and thence blossoms. But, these were only memories of my river paradise.
Today, I dare not bring my children to the Kelantan River
for them to experience a glimpse of my youth. For the pristine and clean
Kelantan River is gone, its water turbid brown with suspended soil particles,
its banks soft and muddy, the river beds thick with silt, and its etak and udang galah and ikan patin
are scarce. Seen from an aeroplane, the Kelantan River is a yellow band of line
cutting across the green landscape. We used to refer this colour to the colour
of our favourite drink “teh tarik”,
tea mixed with sweetened condensed milk. What is left with Kelantan River is
just a sight of shame and a burden of guilt. Decades of intensive clearing of
jungles and forests in its watershed area upstream for the extraction of timber
and for the cultivation of oil palm have caused an environmental catastrophe
beyond anybody’s expectation. In a landmark study by Ambak and Zakaria in 2009,
the investigators reported that nine major species of fish in the river was
considered as critically endangered. Earlier studies in the early and mid 90s
showed that the Kelantan river system was still rich in freshwater fishes,
supporting a total of 55 species. Within one generation, the Kelantan
River ecosystem is practically dead, devoid of its lustre and vigour. The role
of Kelantan River in sustaining a living ecosystem, irrigating paddy fields,
supplying drinking water, and freshwater fishes and prawns are no longer viable;
its river delta and estuaries turned shallow due to heavy siltation, the water
pumps supplying municipal water frequently clog due to silts, and during dry
spells the irrigation canals run dry due to blockages of mud and silt near the
pump houses – a dear price paid in the name of development and progress.
The 20th century has indeed witnessed an unprecedented
“progress” in man’s many abilities to dominate and conquer nature. Man has transgressed beyond their traditional
role as the custodian and guardian of nature and instead has become a master
that enslaves nature to the utmost benefits, only for himself. Man has crossed the
fine line between being a steward of the environment and being a dominator and
conqueror of the environment. The abilities to mass produce and mass consume,
to transport goods and travel over long distances, to scale mountains and
traverse rivers and oceans, to cultivate crops and breed animals in mass
quantities over large tracts of land, and to build roads and bridges across the
hinterlands are the many successes of the 20th century man, never
seen before in history. But, can this trajectory of economic growth continue
forever? Whether the growth is actually sustainable in the long run, and
continues to support life sustainably in the coming centuries remains as an
open contention. Can we continue to literally
treat mother earth as an Eden where “milk and honey” flow perpetually and profusely,
satisfying Adam’s and Eve’s every lusts and desires? Or is the mother earth
really a temporary abode that was once a paradise, but forever lost? In our
quest to restore and recover this lost paradise, we need to pursue business in
the unusual way. New paradigms of economic development have to be introduced. New
approaches and understanding on the concepts such as “growth and development”
and “sustainability” have to be clarified in depth. New economic agendas such
as the “green economy” and “bio-economy” have to be introduced and properly planned.
These are the pathways that will hopefully guide us back to the lost Eden.
As Malaysia emerges
to become a developing country from what was once a colonial outpost, where most
of its people were peasants and traditional farmers, economic growth and
development or in the Malay language pembangunan
were the jargons most popularly espouse by our political leaders in their speeches
over radios and televisions to explain what and how will they develop the
country. Growth and development became two most recurring mantras for the last five
decades since we achieve independence in 1957. Unfortunately growth is often
confused and thought to be synonymous with development. Robert Goodland in a
landmark article entitled The Concept of
Environmental Sustainability offered a very clear demarcation of the two seemingly
synonymous terms. According to Goodland, growth means to “increase in size”,
whereas develop means to “improve or to expand or realize the potentialities”.
While growth refers to quantitative or material increase, development is associated
with qualitative improvement. Planet earth never grows in size, but the quality
of the planet may develop, either for better or for worse. Quantitative growth
should not be mistaken with qualitative development at all times. The two may
not be synonymous compatible in all situations. While growth may be thought to
be infinite, the environmental resources are finite. The scale of economic
growth may exceed the capacity of the environment to absorb the impacts of
growth in a sustainable manner. There are limits to growth, and development has
to be sustainable.
The debate on sustainable growth and development hinges on
our grasp and understanding on the concept of “sustainability” itself. When Gro Harlem Brundtland, a three times Prime
Minister of Norway, a diplomat extraordinaire and a physician, during her
tenure as Chair of the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development
(also known as The Brundtland Commission) garnered a worldwide consensus that
nations should embark on a sustainable development pathway, many were grappling
with what is precisely the meaning of “sustainability”. It was clear that there
were three areas of development that would demand sustainability – the
environment, the society, and the economy. For all purposes and intents,
sustainability should encompass all the three areas mentioned. Sustainability
can be expressed as meeting the present environmental (ecological), societal
and economic needs without compromising the needs of the future generations. A
society where poverty is still rampant and social equity is conspicuously
missing will not achieve environmental sustainability. An economy which is
continuously liquidating the natural capital from its forests and natural
resources without achieving the goals of social justice and a well balanced
society will not be able to achieve economic sustainability. Sustainable
development should therefore integrate all three intricately related areas of
human development; the society, the environment and the economy.
Sustainability is a
popular buzzword for the politicians. Many would join the bandwagon by only
paying lip service without really understanding the far reaching significance
of the word. In launching the New Economic Action Plan, the Prime Minister of
Malaysia outlined three principles guiding the new development plan for the
country in 2010: high income economy, sustainability,
and inclusiveness. Beyond political rhetoric, achieving sustainability would
require immaculate planning, concrete steps to be taken and long term
investments to be allocated. Theoretically a high income economy can be
compatible with sustainability, only if it is non-invasive to the environment
and so long as it is not threatening to nature. For nature has to be
perpetually nurtured to ensure that the economy is to be sustainable. Malaysia’s
blueprint for the New Economic Model (NEM) issued by the advisory body National
Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) admitted that the country’s “dependence on
natural resource consumption as the primary engine of growth is clearly not
sustainable” and under the NEM “investment and policy decisions should only be made
after full consideration of their long term impact on the society, the economy
as a whole, and of course the environment”. Whether these commitments are
realized into concrete actions remain to be seen.
The Malaysian Government has announced and implemented a few
initiatives to include ‘green’ economy as part of the country’s development
process. The Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water was set-up by the
government to promote ‘green’ industry in the country. Malaysia’s vision of a
‘green’ economy would see it explores tremendous potential for ‘green’
technology growth within four targeted sectors namely energy, construction,
transportation, and water and waste management. But what is exactly “green
economy?” Is it just another buzzword that is politically potent but
economically not worthwhile for the country to pursue? The United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) defined green economy as an economy that improves
human well-being and social equity while significantly reducing environmental
risks and ecological scarcities. A ‘green’ economy aims at sustaining natural
capital and maintaining the long term viability of life on earth by eliminating
resource depletion, reducing wastage, optimizing the use of renewable sources
of energy, the production of new bio-materials and in general improving the
quality of the environmental services provided by nature.
The government of Malaysia seems to be receptive to the idea
of creating new opportunities to support the initiatives of becoming a ‘green’
economy nation. Two initiatives are being undertaken to help realise this goal,
which are the introduction of National Eco-labelling Programme and the National
Green Procurement Policy. Funding from the Green Technology Financing Scheme
was also launched to support the growth of green technologies in the country. The
New Economic Model (NEM) has identified five key global trends that have to be
taken into serious consideration in charting our nation’s growth. One of these
trends is that the whole world is undergoing a green revolution everywhere, and
we should follow suit. The NEM envisioned that, and being a hotspot of
biodiversity with rainforests covering more than half of our land mass,
Malaysia should “embrace a leadership role in green technology and become a
strategic niche player in high value green industries and services that play to
our competitive advantages”. An important competitive advantage for Malaysia is
the rich biological resources within the country’s land and sea territories.
The NEM sees that “Malaysia’s natural resource endowment can be used in
creative and sustainable ways as a base to build new, diverse, high value, high
tech industries and services”.
The constant struggle between the ruthless exploitation of
nature by governments and corporations and the environmental awakening movement
driven mostly by private citizens in the 20th century is probably coming
to a desirable conclusion: victory is near for the environmentalists, even
though at times victory is always elusive.
At the dawn of the 21st century, a new economic shift has
taken shape globally, led by the developed world. Following the pathway of the
Green Economy in the developed world, the rest of the world is now gradually entering
into a new economy, one that is characterised as the “bioeconomy”. From a broad
economic perspective, bioeconomy refers to the set of economic activities
relating to the invention, development, production and use of biological
products and processes to help improve human lives and societal well-being. It
is a new economy based on the applications of the knowledge and discoveries
made in the biological and life sciences. The applications of these
technologies are expected to improve health and well-being, boost the
productivity of agriculture and industrial processes, and enhance environmental
sustainability. One of the core technologies driving the bioeconomy is the field
of biotechnology, defined as the application of knowledge, science and
technology derived from our understanding on how biological molecules and
organisms work. Our recent understanding on biological processes such as the
intricate functions of the smallest DNA fragments, the workings of microbes in
decomposing organic matters on the forest floor, the fine techniques of rearing
and releasing biological control agents in pest eradication, the use of enzymes
in converting cellulosic materials into simpler compounds in ethanol fuel
production– all these knowledge are being used to transform we made our
medicines, improve our industrial processes and save our environment.
Due to the knowledge intensive content of the bioeconomy,
the concept is often coined as the “Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy” (KBBE), an
economy which would rely heavily on knowledge workers who are well educated and
trained in the field of life sciences. If applied in its full rigour the impact
of the bioeconomy on our national economy and the society is wide and
pervasive. Various sectors of the
economy that manage and otherwise make use of biological resources such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries,
food, chemicals, tourism, pharmaceuticals and energy will have their relevance in the new bioeconomy. However
one challenge remains to be very formidable; by nature bioeconomy is knowledge
intensive, therefore it would require a well developed knowledge infrastructure
to be instituted, a rich and varied talent pool of knowledge workers to be made
available and a totally conducive environment for these knowledge workers to
thrive have to be in place. Developing and maintaining adequate talent pool is
a strong pre-requisite to the bio-economy. Otherwise the vision of a
knowledge-based bio-economy will be just castles in the air, without any
entrenched foundations firmly footed on earth.
To the credit of the Malaysian government, concrete initial
steps towards the adoption of the green economy & bioeconomy were charted in
the National Key Economic Action Plan. Datuk Seri Idris Jala, the Minister in
the Prime Minister’s Department and the Chief Executive Officer of PEMANDU
presented the government’s audacious plan for the Malaysian bioeconomy at the
BioBorneo Conference 2012 in Kuching, Sarawak, outlining six major government
initiatives (called entry point projects, EPP) to drive the transformation of
the country’s economy towards becoming a high income nation by 2020 with a
target Gross National Income of USD 15,000 per capita by the year 2020). The
six EPPs are:
1.
EPP 1 – the development of nutraceutical and
botanical drugs from the bioactives derived from Malaysian herbal materials;
2.
EPP 6 – the development of high value oleo
derivatives and the downstream processing of oil palm products;
3.
EPP 7 – the acceleration of commercialization of
second generation bio-fuel from biomass;
4.
EPP 10 – the increase in renewable energy uptake
by the country’s electricity generation from 1% to 5.5 % by 2015;
5.
EPP 14 – the development of high quality
breeding materials in animals and crops using DNA marker technology;
6.
EPP 20 - the establishment of premium ecotourism
destination through the promotion of Malaysia as a biodiversity hub.
However promising these entry point projects are, they are
actually only “entry points”. There are follow-throughs that need to be
carefully implemented and watched. Green economy and bioeconomy are not mere
rhetorical jargons for the consumption of the politicians to win elections.
These are not licenses to pillage the environment, land grab in the rainforests
and further intrusions into the hinterland either. In the past decades we have
sacrificed many of our natural environments in the name of poverty eradication
& national development. It is also not a license to invite multi-national
corporations to exploit our national resources and given access to acres of
farming lands at the expense of local farmers and taxpayers money in the name
of Foreign Direct Investment. Often these multinationals were given tax breaks
and other fiscal and financial incentives not enjoyed by local entrepreneurs
and farmers. The Malay proverb says, “kera
dihutan disusui, anak yang dikendong kelaparan”, (monkeys in the jungles
were milked, child in the arm left hungry). The bioeconomy’s success is
therefore not guaranteed. There are many pitfalls and harnessing its potential
will require coordinated policy action and meticulous planning by governments. Corruption, greed, inefficient and inept
bureaucracy, incompetency and poor resource allocation will render the
governments’ entry point initiatives to suffer premature death, or worst still,
becoming stillborns.
A major unresolved issue in Malaysia is the question of the
sustainability of the country’s oil palm industry, one of the country’s biggest
income earner. Malaysia is a world leader of the industry by enjoying the “first
mover” advantage and being ahead of the curve in planting and managing huge
plantation estates. However we may have become the victim of our own success.
Despite the competitive advantage, the industry suffers from three major
limitations, namely (1) Land scarcity – we just cannot expand anymore, (2)
Labour scarcity – the industry thrives on cheap foreign manpower, and (3)
Rising production costs – input costs are increasing. These challenges are increasingly becoming
real threats to the long term sustainability of the industry. The country
simply cannot ignore these issues and continue its business as usual. To be sustainable
the palm oil industry must make sure that it continues to operate at minimal
impact on the environment from the time of planting through to processing the
oil in the mills. However, the current practice in the industry, from forest
clearing to the cultivation and agronomic practices, from planting the seedlings
to the fruit production and finally to the processing the fresh fruit bunches
at the mill – are teeming with numerous threats against sustainability,
impacting a trail of many possible collateral damages to the environment along
the way. Deforestration, displacement of wild animals, species extinction,
destruction of watershed, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, siltation of
streams, displacement of local communities, and many more environmental and
social threats.
In response to these environmental and social
concerns, non-governmental organizations, the industry and government
stakeholders teamed up to launch the Round-Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
in 2004. One of the body's top mandates was to define and develop credible
standards entailing what is considered as a "sustainable" palm oil
production. The standard was released in 2005, containing certain prescribed principles
which include “a commitment to transparency on environmental, social and legal
issues; environmental responsibility with regard to waste, resource use, and
climate; and responsible consideration for workers, individuals, and
communities affected by palm oil production”. More than 70 producers worldwide
are beginning to implement the RSPO principles as of last year, more than half
of them are from Indonesia. In total about 1.5 million tons of palm oil was
certified last year.
RSPO is at best “work in progress”. The greatest
challenge for RSPO is to manage tensions between the market that are demanding
for better and stricter criteria in defining sustainability and the pressure
from growers to reduce costs but at the same time wanting to claim a price premium
over certified sustainable products. One
of the most contentious issues is on the criteria of sustainability when it
comes to growers opening up the forests for a new plantation area. A grower is
accorded the sustainable status if it opened up forests that are deemed not
“high value conservation forest”. How this is defined remains vague and it is
up to the countries themselves to make the definition. In October, 2011 GAPKI
(an independent organization representing 500 growers in Indonesia has quit
RSPO) and in April, 2013 the Malaysian counterpart (MPOA, representing 130
members) is mulling to quit as well.
However RSPO still commands
respect and authority among the major industry consumers around the world. For
example Unilever, which consume about 1.6 million tons of palm oil and its
derivatives per year (amounting to 3% of world production), is making strong
commitments to purchase only from certified sustainable palm oil by 2015.
Unilever defines sustainability in Agriculture as “productive, competitive, and
efficient, while at the same time protecting and improving the natural
environment and the conditions of the local people”. The company believes that
sustainable agriculture should support the following principles:
- • It should produce crops with high yield and nutritional quality to meet existing and future needs, while keeping resource input as low as possible;
- • It must ensure that any adverse effects on soil fertility, water and air quality and biodiversity from agricultural activities are minimised and positive contributions are made where possible;
- Itshould optimise the use of renewable resources while minimising the use of non-renewable resources;
- • Sustainable agriculture should enable local communities to protect and enhance their well-being and environment.
There is also a widespread resistance and
negative campaigning against the oil palm industry, especially in Europe. Anti
Palm Oil website saynotopalmoil.com for example claimed that most of palm oil
in Southeast Asia comes from unsustainable sources. They also alleged that RSPO
an organization that cannot be trusted. Our local oil palm industry indeed has
a long way to go to be on the path of sustainability.
Another major issue in Malaysia is the question of the
sustainability of our forestry industry. Malaysia is said to be duly committed
to manage her forests in a sustainable manner, not just for economic reasons
but also for maintaining environmental stability and ecological balance. In
order to achieve this noble objective, the government said they will continue
to maintain at least 50% of its land area to remain under forest cover on a
permanent basis. Out of the total land mass of 32.9 million hectares, half or
about 18.9 million hectares are covered by natural forest. As mentioned in
Chapter 1, out of this, a total of 14.1 million hectares of natural forests
have been designated as the Permanent Forest Estate or PFE, protected through
various legislations. The PFE will be permanently managed to serve the various
objectives such as production, protection, social and education purposes. For
purposes of conservation and education 3.39 million hectares were allocated in
the form of national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and nature reserves. Beyond
the PFE there are pockets of Virgin Jungle Reserves (VJR) such as Templer Park,
Ampang Hills, and Bukit Damansara reserves around Kuala Lumpur city. To date, a
total of 120 VJRs covering 111,726 hectares have been established in Malaysia.
Taking into account the network of protected areas and the VJRs the area that
has been designated for the conservation of biological diversity around the
country totals about 5.19 million hectares or 27.3% of its total forested land.
The cost of maintaining these assets in the most sustainable manner is also
very high, estimated around MYR 1.2 billion per year, financed mostly through
timber royalties and levies. The goal has always been to ensure a continuous
flow of the desired environmental related products and services from the
forests, without “undue reduction of its inherent values and future
productivity and without undue desirable effects on physical and social
environment”.
A good example worth examining is on how an otherwise wasted
forest biomass could be turned into valuable natural capital or assets. By
today’s timber industry practice in Malaysia as well as in other developing
countries around the world, biomass from the forests where trees are harvested
for timber are almost entirely wasted. The term biomass in general refers to
the organic matters that are available on a renewable and recurring basis that
includes trees, plant matters, offal, animal refuse and tallow from living
organisms. In terms of forest products, biomass usually refers to the materials
that are lower in value as compared to those that are being used for food,
feed, lumber or fibre. During harvesting operations, quite a major volume of
the tree biomass is left behind as “woody debris” such as the tops, branches,
stumps and the roots. Only the trunks are being transported out for lumber or
for pulp and paper. These “biomass wastes” are often left behind in the forest
as slash piles, sometimes being burnt or just left on the forest floor to
decompose. Decomposition is a very slow
process especially when the ecosystem is already being destroyed. Actually
these materials are considered as waste because they are not being put to commercial use, and there is no
economic value to the materials. It is estimated that the so-called waste may
be as high as 75 to 80 percent of the volume of a forest stand. A study
commissioned by the USDA and USDE estimated that the value of these biomass
could reach USD 1 billion per year in the United States, almost all gone to
waste. Now scientific and technological advances have changed on how we view
these biomaterials. A range of new technologies called torrefaction where woody
biomass are being burned or underwent pyrolysis at temperatures typically
ranging between 200 and 320 °C in order to obtain a much better fuel
quality for combustion and gasification applications.
One may rightly say that the paradise that was of our
rainforests and natural ecosystems are already lost, probably forever. The
collateral damages on the environment brought by decades of unsustainable
logging practices and massive clearing of virgin forests to give way to
agriculture were too detrimental and had been very costly. However, the
pathways to restore our lost paradise seem to be quite clear and the beacons of
hope can be seen in the horizon, but not devoid of challenges and obstacles. We
may have to pay dearly to recover this paradise.
References
1.
- Goodland, Robert. The Concept of Environmental Sustainability. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 26 (1995), 1 – 24.
- National Economic Advisory Council. The New Economic Model. 2010.
- OECD. The Bioeconomy to 2030: designing a policy agenda. OECD Publications (2012).
- Columnist – Making palm oil sustainable. New Straits Times. 22 Dec 2011.
- RSPO
- Unilever
- Ambak & Zakaria
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