KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 5): Germany’s palm oil ban is based on false information and it signalled a wilful blindness to environmental facts, Palm Oil Monitor said in a post on its website.

Recently, the country’s Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety Minister Svenja Schulze announced that Germany would be phasing out palm oil-based biofuels in 2023.

“The German government accomplished a key goal, and the hypocrisy here is breathtaking. It diverted attention away from its own destruction of peatland and grassland for cornfields/ maize for biogas.

“European forest biomass is the dominant fuel source in the European Union’s (EU) Renewable Energy Directive, and Germany generates more energy from biomass than any other country in the EU.

“And this is precisely why German lawmakers are criticising and banning palm oil,”  it said.

Palm Oil Monitor also pointed out that leaders in Berlin had ignored the dramatic drop in Indonesia’s deforestation rate — which is currently at a near all-time low, having fallen by 75%.

This fact has been verified by the World Resources Institute and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation report on the state of the world’s forests, among others, it said.

It also noted that Chancellor Angela Merkel had visited Malaysia and Indonesia back in 2016, and indicated that Germany had no plans to discriminate against palm oil.

Source : The Edge Markets