IPB Lecturer Urges Students to Answer the Termination of CPO Import by the European Union with Researches
Students Association of Agribusiness held Agribusiness’ House of Discussion with students of Agribusiness Department, Faculty of Economics and Management, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB). With the theme “the Impact of the Termination of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) Import by the European Union towards Indonesian Economy”, the event was held in IPB Dramaga Campus, Friday (5/25).
Secretary of Agribusiness Department, FEM IPB, Dr. Amzul Rifin, while opening the event expressed his appreciation to the student association which had organized this House of Discussion. He hoped that students would more actively organize such discussion with various theme. “Not only discussions, I hope that students should be more sensitive with current problems. Competent speakers are not necessarily sought out of IPB, even inside the campus we have many national and international qualified lecturers,” he said.
Representative student of Agribusiness Department IPB, Stiffen Firdaus, at the beginning of the event conveyed the issues related to the impact of the termination of CPO import by the European Union towards Indonesia. He conveyed issues related to deforestation, negative stigma such as the issue of environmental damage was done to destroy the palm oil market of Indonesia, because palm oil is only able to be cultivated in tropical climates. Meanwhile, palm oil greatly affects the development of the Indonesian economy. “Oil palm plantations directly absorb 4 million workers and indirectly prop 12 million,” said Stiffen. The number of Indonesian palm oil exports in 2017 was 31.05 million tons, which increased 23 percent compared to 25.11 million tons in 2016. Indonesia’s palm oil export destinations including: India (22.5 percent of total exports), China (12.93 percent), Pakistan (8.75 percent), and Spain with 1.37 million tons. “The prohibition of CPO imports in 2021 will cause an unfair trade. It will cause a major impact for Indonesia,” Stiffen said. It will also affect other countries that prohibit palm oil imports that could result in the industries’ closure.
Dr. Ir. Harianto, MS, keynote speaker of this House of Discussion discussed the policy of the European Union. Dr. Harianto conveyed that the emerging policy derived from its community’s grievances. “We must see the reasons for 2014-2019 European parliamentary policy. The EU has an SDGs target, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, us as the world community have the same task. From several studies they found deforestation and forest degradation have a major impact on climate change. Hopefully student researches, especially graduate and postgraduate students of IPB, can answer that.” Said Dr. Harianto. Dr. Harianto also highlighted the unclear data. How Indonesia has such weak data. “A lot of research topics are complained of by Europe. We must be able to answer it with researches,” he continued. (RYF)
