Slow journey to change

protest against the ban on palm oil biofuel.

WE are all interested in sustainability. All human beings in their right frame of mind are. Not just the hard core environmental groups. We all want the best for our future generations. In the current European Union (EU) palm oil ban controversy, those who have come out in support of palm oil have somehow been branded as anti-sustainability. What a joke. This just goes to show that some among the environmental groups have no true understanding of the real meaning of sustainability. All they care about is the environment, forgetting the other two no less important pillars of sustainability. The other two pillars of sustainability, people and prosperity, have been inadvertently left out of their equation. Whereas in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the most prominent feature in the 17 goals concerns the well being of people and the society at large. This means people take precedence over all others.

At a recent talk on SDGs hosted by UCSI University, Tan Sri Dzul Razak who has always been passionate about sustainability, gave an excellent analysis of SDGs. He presented very convincing arguments on the fact that the ultimate objective of SDGs is to reduce the gross inequality among people. He provided clear statistics on the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in the world today. The latest figures showed that in 2017, the number of wealthy individuals who owned the equivalent wealth of half the world population can now easily fit into a Toyota Estima. They fitted into a bus the year before. He went on to ask what is the use of having a pristine tropical forest teeming with biodiversity when people living in its vicinity are poor and hungry. This is exactly the narrative we are seeing in the current palm oil ban by the EU. In their haste to satisfy the environmentalists, they have forgotten the people behind palm oil.