Thank you, Chair.
It's a pleasure to be able to speak with you today. I very much appreciate the opportunity.
I'm speaking from Tkaronto on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinabe, the Huron-Wendat, the Chippewas and the Mississaugas of the Credit.
Greenpeace is a global campaigning organization with a mission to maintain life on earth in all its diversity. We comprise 26 independent regional organizations, with a presence in over 55 countries around Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. These include an incredible team of people working on the ground with Greenpeace Indonesia as well as Greenpeace Canada, where we were founded over 50 years ago. Since then, we have invested significant resources in exposing the risky commodities driving deforestation and human rights violations around the world.
Palm oil, unsurprisingly, comes in near the top of the list. Palm oil is made from the fruit of oil palm trees, which come from west Africa originally but were brought to Southeast Asia in the 1960s. It's found in many of the products that we use every day—shampoo, bread, toothpaste, chocolate and even laundry detergent. Palm oil is grown in many tropical countries, although Indonesia is by far the largest producer in the world.
Palm oil can be produced sustainably, but a lot of it isn't. The problem lies with where and how it is grown. To make way for palm oil plantations, huge areas of rainforest are torn down by bulldozers or burned to the ground. Most Indonesian oil palm plantations are on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, where forest destruction has pushed all three species of orangutan to critically endangered status. Borneo has lost nearly 150,000 orangutans over the last 16 years. In Indonesia the palm oil industry is estimated to have caused 2.3 million hectares of deforestation between 1995 and 2015.
Deforestation is also a major contributor to climate change. Clearing forests releases enormous amounts of carbon. With fewer trees, less carbon dioxide is then removed from the atmosphere. Oil palm plantations need dry land, so companies drain the forests and peatlands, making it very flammable. Our analysis revealed that between one million and two million hectares of Indonesia's peatland burned between 2015 and 2018.
More than 900,000 people in Indonesia suffered acute respiratory infections due to smoke haze from those 2019 fires. The Dayak people, one of Borneo's original inhabitants, rely heavily on the forests for their livelihood. Now their culture and way of life are threatened.
When we talk about risky commodities, however, it's not just palm oil. Rubber was among the top five exports from Indonesia to Canada in 2019. Rubber plantations have also been connected to deforestation and indigenous rights violations.
Wood pulp was the third-largest export from Canada to Indonesia in 2019. This is a key component in writing paper, which is, interestingly, one of Indonesia's largest exports to Canada—the fifth-largest that year. What's more, the largest wood pulp producer in Canada, Paper Excellence, is said to be owned by the Indonesian family business behind the Sinar Mas palm oil and pulp wood empire. Sinar Mas has a long track record of deforestation and social conflict. The logging industry in Canada is itself already under pressure for “some of the worst forestry in the world”, responsible for a tremendous loss of biodiversity and massive greenhouse gas emissions from unsustainable logging.
Both Greenpeace Canada and Greenpeace Indonesia have significant concerns with the proposed Canada-Indonesia trade agreement. Almost 50,000 Canadians have already voiced their opposition. We have identified three priorities for any deal.
First, we need more transparency. The draft text should be shared with the public. Independent impact assessments should be conducted with the involvement of civil society.
Second, the public deserves to know how any deal will align with the government's commitments under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Paris Agreement and the most recent Glasgow leaders' declaration to end deforestation. Clear goals embedded in the treaty text and annual progress reporting are essential.
Third, any deal should distinguish between goods based on how they are produced, and guarantee traceability of all products. This requires enforceable guarantees that Canadian forest products are not originating without the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples, or originating in threatened species' habitat. The same goes for Indonesian products like palm oil originating from deforestation or linked to human rights abuses.
In conclusion, we need to see a Canada-Indonesia deal that truly reflects the most urgent global issues that require co-operation to resolve—climate change, the biodiversity crisis, rampant social inequalities and the concentration of resources in the hands of a wealthy few. Transparency and public oversight are the best ways to achieve this.
Thank you very much.
