Palm Oil

Why Palm Oil is Popular

·        It’s a versatile and efficient crop

·        You can produce high quantities of palm oil over small areas of land all year round, making it an appealing crop for farmers, as they are able to rely on the income that palm oil provides particularly in developing countries.

·        Rising global demand for edible oils and biofuels à fuel that comes from plant matter e.g. oil palm

·        Higher-paying less laborious jobs with fairly high yield – people can now provide for their families as well as for themselves, don’t have to worry as much about the cost of education for children either.

How It’s Affecting the Rainforest

·        Intense air, soil and water pollution, soil erosion à causing blankets of smog to fall regularly on nearby cities and settlements – LINK TO JAKARTA!

·        Logging of rainforests releases greenhouse gas emissions

·        Large scale devastation of rainforests across south-east Asia to make room for palm plantations à widespread habitat loss for critically endangered species – orangutans. à orangutans sustain rainforest biodiversity and food and non-food products. à tree seeds germinate in their stomach before being excreted à species could be extinct in the wild within 20 years

·        Conversion from natural forests to oil palm plantations destroys native foods

·        Thousands of indigenous hunter-gatherers such as the Penan and Dayaks who depend on the rainforest for food and non-food products have been forced off their land à land conflict between palm oil companies and indigenous people

·        Burning peat soils difficult to control – continue to burn à peat can contain 10x as much carbon as a regular forest.

·        Destroys the natural environment + biodiversity along with it.

·        Endorses deforestation

·        When we destroy rainforests, we get rid of their ability to store carbon à carbon gets released into urban settlements

Responses

·        Organisations such as WWF (World Wildlife Fund) work with palm oil companies to lead them away from unsustainable palm oil production and instead towards more sustainable practices within the certified RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) à global scheme that sets environmental and social standards for the production and use of sustainable palm oil. 

·        WWF developed the RSPO  - requires oil palm growers to obtain a GreenPalm certificate for sustainable production.

·        Certification process brings immediate environmental benefits like reductions in the use of chemicals and the protection of valuable ecosystems.

·        RSPO farming methods enable farmers to produce higher yields so increasing their profits à means that they don’t have to expand their plantations into the rainforest etc.

·        Have small land holdings to produce palm oil rather than slashing and burning vast amounts of tropical rainforest.

·        Increased transparency in supply chains

·        Individual

-            Shop sustainably

-            Buy from businesses or certain products that have RSPO certification

-            Choose to completely boycott palm oil or palm oil brands

-            Raise awareness of the issue in your local community etc.

-            Adopt an orangutan

-            Educating people – workers and consumers – to buy and produce sustainably.

·        Businesses

-            Set a target and timetable to move to segregated sustainable palm oil. Be transparent in reporting palm oil use and take responsibility for all the palm oil in products sold.