THE PALM OIL PLANTATIONS OF MALAYSIA WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?

It is impossible to miss Malaysia’s palm oil plantations.

Visitors get their first glimpse of the palms that are now ubiquitous across the country on the descent into Kuala Lumpur International Airport; itself built on land that was previously a plantation.

Once on the ground, palm oil trees line the highways into Kuala Lumpur and beyond.

Palm oil is not native to Malaysia but it is now the country’s second biggest export, worth 83.4 bn Malaysian ringgit in 2011.

After Indonesia, Malaysia is the world’s biggest producer of the commodity, which is used in an eclectic range of products from ice cream to cleaning fluids and chocolate.

These are the kind of things that rarely go out of fashion and navigate recessions unscathed, which helps explain why Felda made such a strong debut on Thursday. The sale helped the company, which was set up as a co-operative 30 years ago to help rural Malaysians out of poverty, raise more than $3bn for expansion.

But while palm oil has helped turn Malaysia into one of the world’s trading powerhouses and lifted the incomes of hundreds of thousands of people, it is also triggered global controversy.

Environmental concerns 

We gathered in Rio from 190 countries, to review what we have done since the historic Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and what our world should look like in the coming decades. There was no cause for celebration and much to regret and fear as we continue to lack vision and leadership.

I did not travel to Rio with much optimism. Actually I must have been the only Head of State who did not attend the previous conferences in Copenhagen, Monterey and Durban which as I had feared had not reached a substantial, binding agreement that could meet the challenges of climate change.

We are still in the midst of an unprecedented financial, economic and social crisis that began in the U.S. in 2008, spread into Europe, and is still affecting countless world economies.

Again as I feared we emerged from the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, June 20-22, with a Declaration entitled “The World We Want,” and lacking in substance and solid financial commitments.

We all knew it would be impossible to bring all parties to agree on a binding international agreement entailing deadlines and costs. So pragmatism and realism cautioned U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil that to avoid abject failure we must lower our expectations to the lowest possible common denominator.

The truth is that the financial, economic and social crises that affect the U.S. and almost all of Europe have tempered the political willingness of the rich countries of the North regarding substantial contribution to any bold sustainable development program to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Even before the 2008 crisis, most rich countries were never able to mobilize the political and human will to allocate 0.7 percent of their GDP for development aid.

Aid pledges made in international conferences have been rarely kept. When they are, the funding has not always been effective in achieving the intended benefit for the receiving countries.

The path taken over the past decades in the relationship between rich and poor countries, between North and South, had ups and downs, with much waste and mismanagement, programs based on wrong concepts, wrong assumptions and wrong policies. The mistakes were not only on one side of the relationship. Donors and recipients shared in the mistakes, and share the responsibility for the lost decades.

So where do we go from here? I believe that rather than attempting to forge the one agreement that will change the course of the world, or being satisfied with one without much substance, it may be more realistic, practical and effective to think of agreements and plans on a regional level.

For instance, shouldn’t Asia consider an Asian Road Map for 20-30 years for an integrated, equitable, sustainable Human Development, targeting eradication of poverty, illiteracy, TB, malaria, HIV/Aids, etc. and restoration of our forests, rivers and seas?

Asia, with half the world population, extracts a lot more from our planet to satisfy our needs of survival and development than any other region in the world. For our own survival, and in solidarity with our brothers and sisters from other parts of the world, we must act with vision and determination. We must do more to free our people from extreme poverty and save our common planet.

China, India, Pakistan, Japan, Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, together have an unparalleled pool of know-how. They have enough financial resources to transform Asia into a prosperous, peaceful and happy region for our four billion citizens.

Africa, the Middle East and Latin America should and could do the same. Each region in the world should adopt its own road map for sustainable, equitable, integrated development, adapted to the conditions of each region and sub-region, and mobilizing regional resources and seeking additional funding from other partners if and as needed.

The U.S. and Europe still lead in science and technology and they should invest even more on education, research and new technologies for the benefit of their own peoples and the world.

The U.S. and Europe should contribute with know-how, technology and financially to the programs in each region or sub-region. But Asia should create its own fund, the Asian Fund for Sustainable Development, that can be managed by an existing institution such as the Asian Development Bank, in partnership with U.N. Specialized Agencies such as UNDP, UNICEF, WHO or NGO’s with solid regional or international reputation such as OXFAM.

Each country should mandatorily contribute to such a fund, according to its GDP. The leading Asian economies can easily mobilize $100 billion to be invested during the next decade. Asia’s industrialized nations such as Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, India or natural resource-rich countries, i.e. the oil, gas, gold, and diamond producers should lead by example and contribute 0.7 percent of their GDP to this fund. The Asian private sector would also be invited to contribute.

Asia’s poor, low income countries with little or no mineral resources, vulnerable to climate change, would qualify to benefit from this fund, to develop programs targeting extreme poverty, illiteracy, TB, malaria, HIV/Aids, etc. and reforestation as well as cleaning up their rivers, lakes and seas.

Asia, the most populous region in the world, represents half of all mankind. The largest, oldest, richest civilizations appeared and met in Asia. Fifty years ago the region was extremely poor. Today it is emerging as a center of world power. But the challenges it faces are immense and complex. The region is the most dangerous in the world, the most militarized, the most nuclearized, with complex land and maritime border disputes, regional rivalries, ethnic and religious conflicts that have exploded frequently in and among states.

It cannot, however, continue to demand from the aging and impoverished Europeans and from today’s less powerful U.S. to come to our rescue and lead or to continue the blame game.readmorehttp://malaysiaonlinetoday.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/the-palm-oil-plantations-of-malaysia-what-does-that-actually-mean/