Pictured: A man walks past a World Trade Organization (WTO) sign. (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Former Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the 2005-2013 period Pascal Lamy opened up about the dislike of the European Union (EU) for Indonesia.
As is known, Indonesia is currently in a trade law dispute with the European Union at the WTO regarding the policy of banning the export of nickel ore abroad. But not only that, there are two other controversial issues that irritate the European Union with Indonesia.
The two controversial issues are deforestation and oil palm plantations.
Pascal Lamy said that the Indonesian government did not like the actions of the European Union which seeks to reduce consumption of palm oil and designated palm oil as a high-risk crop for deforestation. Currently, the process of the lawsuit submitted by Indonesia to the WTO against the European Union is already underway.
“There are two controversial issues between Indonesia and the European Union, palm oil and deforestation. Indonesia does not like the European Union’s actions to reduce palm oil and defines palm oil as a high-risk crop for deforestation and the European Union does not like Indonesia’s actions,” said Pascal Lamy to CNBC Indonesia in the Mining Zone, quoted on Wednesday (22/2/2023).
As is well known, palm oil (Crude Palm Oil/CPO) Indonesia often becomes an international debate because of the issue of deforestation. However, Indonesia has made progress in significantly reducing deforestation.
The beginning of Indonesian CPO was blown by a less fresh wind, starting with a report Time Toaston 1 January 2007, that UN organizations assess palm oil production as a major cause of deforestation in Indonesia, where illegal logging and planting of oil palm is prevalent in 37 of 41 national parks.
The impact of deforestation is certainly not small. Starting from the reduction of primary forests (forests that have never been touched by humans), the extinction of protected species and biodiversity, and global warming. This is clearly worrying considering that Indonesia’s forests are one of the lungs of the world.
As a result of this, in April 2017 the European Union Parliament issued a resolution on palm oil and rainforest deforestation. The ultimate goal is to ban imports of palm oil that is not compatible with sustainable development, and its derivative products, by 2020 into the EU. The resolution also urges palm oil to be excluded from the category of feedstock in the EU’s biodiesel program by 2020.
In early 2019, Europe published a Delegated Regulation which is a derivative of Renewable Energy Directive II (RED II), where oil palm is considered a high risk commodity for forest destruction or known as deforestation or indirect land-use change (LUC).
On the official Europa.eu website, RED II has targeted reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. In order to achieve this target, the European Union is trying to reduce the consumption of palm biodiesel gradually and will stop it completely by 2030.
(pgr/pgr)
