KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 — Sarawak’s rapid expansion of oil palm plantations may result in its unique peat forests being wiped out by the end of the decade, says environmental watchdog Wetlands International.

The Netherlands-based group claimed Sarawak had destroyed nearly 800,000 hectares or 10 per cent of its entire forest in the past five years, nearly four times faster than the rest of Asia which lost 2.8 per cent of its forests in the same period.

The loss included over a third of the one million hectares of peat in Malaysia’s largest state that was drained and cleared between 2005 and 2010 alone for the plantations, it added in its report this week.

“Expansion of oil palm plantations may lead to the complete loss of these vast, unique forests by the end of this decade,” the organisation said.

A study using satellite imagery commissioned by Wetlands International also showed that the rate of deforestation was increasing each year and just under two-thirds of the 353,000 hectares of peat swamp that was opened up was converted into oil palm plantations.

The palm oil industry is worth RM60 billion to the economy, employing about 600,000 workers and Malaysia is the world’s second-largest producer behind Indonesia of the oil that is used to produce cooking oil, soaps, bread, chocolate and biofuel.

The rapid expansion of oil palm plantations is a result of the global increase in demand for vegetable oil, for food and for a large part also for biofuels. European targets to increase the use of biodiesel are causing a rapid increase in the global demand for vegetable oil crops.

Palm oil was last traded at RM3,895 a tonne or US$1,279 in the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives (BMD) today, according to palmoil.com. Prices have trended up as unrelenting rain has affected main oil palm-growing areas in Malaysia and Indonesia.

However, Wetlands International said that “growing crops on drained peatlands is largely unsustainable. In the long term, economic returns from sustainable forestry on undrained peatlands are greater than those from oil palm on drained peatlands.”

The watchdog also estimated that Malaysia’s half a million hectares of oil palm plantations on peat, which stores the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide that causes global warming, produces at least 20 million tonnes of the gas annually although it claimed that twice the amount was likely.

“As the timber resource has been depleted the timber companies are now engaging in the oil palm business, completing the annihilation of Sarawak’s peat swamp forests,” said Marcel Silvius, who heads the group’s programme and strategy division.

The group said that official government figures have been too optimistic, stating that only 20 per cent of Sarawak’s oil palm plantations were situated on peat.

Wetlands International’s study found that 44 per cent of plantations were on peat, and the expansion in the past five years saw 65 per cent of new plantations being located on peatland.

Its study was based on satellite maps provided by remote sensing institute Sarvision.

“This is the first time that detailed and verified figures on deforestation and peat swamp conversion come available for Sarawak.

“Free availability of satellite imagery and tools such as Google Earth are revolutionising forest monitoring,” said Niels Wielaard from Sarvision.

Sarawak has emerged as the fastest state in Malaysia to open up new oil palm estates and it now has more than 920,000 hectares at the end of 2010 compared with 840,000 hectares in 2009.

State Land Development Minister Datuk Seri James Masing told The Star in November that the state’s plan was to double its plantation area to two million hectares by 2020, making Sarawak the biggest producer in the country.

Masing said there was an estimated 1.5 million hectares of native customary rights (NCR) land, mostly under-utilised and without titles, and that the state government had identified several large tracts of state land for plantation projects.

He said crude and processed palm oil exports generated RM4.56 billion in 2009, making it the state’s third-largest foreign exchange earner after petroleum and liquefied natural gas.

But Wetlands International has claimed the expansion into Sarawak’s peat swamp forests will threaten many endangered and endemic species, with many undiscovered species already feared to be extinct in their natural habitat.

It called for a complete ban on palm oil production on peatlands and a halt on further conversion of natural areas as new developments should focus on the millions of hectares of degraded (non-peat) areas in Southeast Asia.

It said companies that use palm oil should demand for this.

The organisation, whose mission is “to sustain and restore wetlands, their resources and biodiversity for future generations,” was first called International Wildfowl Inquiry when it was formed in 1954.

But after merging with the Asian Wetland Bureau and Wetlands for the Americas, it became a global organisation in 1995 called Wetlands International.