Thank you!

Just wanted to post a quick thank-you to everyone who Liked, shared, commented on and voted for my blog post in the Great Apes Survival Partnership – UN Environmental Programme (GRASP-UNEP) Blog Competition!

I came in with 2,033 votes and truly, every vote counted! Thank you so much. It was really wonderfully affirming to find that people like my idea and think this app will make a difference.

A very special thank-you goes out to all the organizations and individuals who asked their followers to vote for me. The “viral” effect was huge in this competition, and since the voting was so close in the end, I can honestly say that everyone who voted for me because an organization they followed on Facebook or Twitter asked them to do so, helped tremendously.

Friends of Borneo, Friends of Sumatra, Medicinal Nutrition, Serbian Unity Congress, and others asked their followers on Facebook and Twitter to vote for me. A huge thank you to all of them!

You can expect more news on how the app is coming, more news about palm oil and sustainable palm oil, and of course, about the 2nd GRASP Council Meeting, which I will be attending in November. If you’re interested, please Subscribe to my blog.

If you’re interested in current efforts and issues in great ape conservation, you should follow GRASP on Facebook or Twitter. And if you’re interested in orangutans and palm oil specifically, you should also check out the Facebook pages for Friends of Borneo and Friends of Sumatra, and the Twitter and Facebook pages for Orangutan Land Trust, or any of the organizations I link to at right. These organizations use social networking sites to send followers frequent updates on their work and developments in great ape (and especially orangutan) conservation efforts, and a lot of the articles they link to and pictures they post are really interesting and informative.

Friend’s of Sumatra reached out to followers to ask them to vote for me. Thank you!

Finally, the biggest thanks goes to GRASP for holding this blogging competition, and for picking me as a finalist! There were so many great ideas submitted, and this was a wonderful way to get people thinking about the challenges to continued great ape survival and sharing these ideas. I am so thrilled that my project has been so well-received. I think the work you do is so important, and it’s very affirming to know that experts in this field think there is value in the time I have spent working on this app. I’ll see you in Paris!

A new report on the major drivers of deforestation

This article from Mongabay, which links to a new report funded by the governments of Norway and Great Britain, briefly describes findings that “drivers [of deforestation] differ on a regional scale. For example, cattle ranching and large-scale agriculture are major drivers of deforestation in Latin America, whereas palm oil development, intensive agriculture, and pulp and paper plantations are principal drivers in Indonesia” (Mongabay, Sept 2012). In total, the report found, various agricultural uses for deforested forest land account for 80% of deforestation word-wide.

Agriculture causes 80% of tropical deforestation http://t.co/wT5ZZof3

— Mongabay (@mongabay) September 27, 2012

It makes sense that any complete attempt to address the challenge of curbing deforestation–without compromising economic growth or agricultural development–will need to take into account, among other things, “historical lack of transparency around land use and powerful interests keen to maintain business-as-usual approaches to forest management” (Mongabay, Sept 2012).

Where Indonesia is concerned, it seems that addressing the way land is managed in palm oil planting could be a major part of the puzzle. For this reason, it also seems logical that supporting palm oil farmers who are making strong efforts to move to sustainable practices is an important step in addressing the agricultural drivers of deforestation in Indonesia.

And since the ongoing increases in globalization, “consumption and human population” (Mongabay, Sept 2012) are also clearly at play, it is exciting to me that people can make a difference from afar just by choosing to buy products with ingredients grown sustainably, and by demanding the inclusion of such ingredients in their goods.  🙂

If you agree, and think that my idea, based on this principle, can help consumers easily play a role in curbing forest loss and preserving great apes’ habitats, please vote for my blog in the Great Apes Survival Partnership‘s blog competition. Choose my name, Adriana Klompus, from the list, and press Submit.

“Barcode Activism”: Use Your Wallet and Your Smartphone in a Wired Marketplace to Help Great Apes

Background

I’ve never seen an orangutan in person, but I will do so one day. Like the other great apes, however, orangutans face an uncertain future.

According to the IUCN, habitat destruction, primarily for planting oil palms, is a leading threat to orangutan survival. Frustratingly, palm oil is extremely lucrative for corporations, and sadly, appeals to morality are often trumped by the drive for economic viability. This is where technology can prove a game-changer.

The influence of technology in streamlining conservation efforts on the ground cannot be overstated. But ape lovers have an enormous opportunity to make a difference from afar with technology we use every day.

We need to choose what kind of world we wish to inherit.One with forests and wild orangutans or barren wastelands and cheap cooking oil?

— Biruté Mary Galdikas (@DrBirute) August 13, 2012

Social networking has already provided a call to action for me personally. Every day my Twitter feed fills with stories from the field, some of triumph, some of loss. Tweets from Dr. Birute M. Galdikas, Michelle Desilets, and others have inspired me to flex my consumer muscle and vote with my wallet. I completely stopped buying or using products with palm oil or palm oil derivatives.

The ingredients label on the shampoo I stopped using. Can you find the palm oil ingredients? Hint: I count three.

Sound easy? It wasn’t. Palm oil is in a lot of common products. I have spent hours combing through the fine print on ingredients labels looking for any hint of palm oil and then trying to find alternatives without it. The most common reaction I got (I’ve been sharing this effort online): “That is really great, but I wouldn’t have the patience.”

Most people wouldn’t. I believe that most people will do the right thing when doing so is easy, but spending three hours looking at shampoo is “hard-core”; most people I know, even those who care, won’t spend that kind of time. So I started working on something bigger.

My Idea: Barcode Activism

I’ve created a database of over 3,000 products containing palm oil. It lists each product’s name, Universal Product Code (UPC), manufacturer contact information, and comparably priced alternatives without palm oil. I’ve also written letters to each manufacturer saying that I will no longer be buying any products that contain palm oil ingredients and will switch from the product in question to the sustainable alternative. I am turning this into a mobile app.

The technology exists to turn this into a barcode-scanning app, which would use the UPC to find the product in my database. If the product is in my database, the other database information will also appear, telling the user what alternatives are available, and allowing him or her to send an instant letter—my pre-written letter—to the manufacturer over the mobile network, requiring only an electronic signature.

This gives people who love apes, but don’t know how to help, an easy way to act; it simultaneously puts manufacturers on notice that demand for their products is being squeezed by the ethical concerns of conscientious consumers armed with social media and mobile technology. Let’s use technology to tell companies who use palm oil in their products that forest destruction in Indonesia and throughout Central Africa is unacceptable—and we expect action.

Thank you to the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP) for the opportunity to share this idea on their Facebook page. Visit their website For information on their work and the upcoming 2nd GRASP Council. 

Video credit: Borneo Orangutan Survival.