by George Walton – 

In this post, we’re going to explore one of the most destructive and large-scale global environmental issues – palm oil.  The removal of native trees makes way for oil palm plantations – in return, having a devastating effect on the local biodiversity.

We will take a look at one of the most significant drivers of deforestation across the world and decide whether choices we can make on a small scale can influence how demand for certain products could be changed.

Oil palm plantation in Cigudeg, West Java, Indonesia. Image: Achmad Rabin Taim, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Effects of deforestation on the ecosystem

As most of us know, tropical rainforests are home to swathes of native species that aren’t found anywhere else on the planet and not to mention, the existence of indigenous people who live in balance with these forests to survive.

• With the current trend, an extreme-case scenario predicts that by 2050, that South-East Asia would lose as much as 5.2 million hectares of forests [5]. This equates to around 10 million football pitches!
• Two-thirds of the world’s species live in these tropical forests, and the trees contribute to the storage of carbon – 68% of the global carbon stock. [5]
• The removal of the forests this century has resulted in the endangerment of countless species, while a handful are now completely extinct in the wild, such as the Spix’s Macaw – the inspiration for the 2011 movie, Rio. [6] 

South-East Asia and Palm Oil

Both commercial and subsistence agriculture contribute to over 70% of deforestation across the tropics [1], and over a 12-year period from 2000 to 2012, satellite imagery was used to calculate a trend for deforestation rates; with the tropics losing around 2100 km2/year [2].

Using this data, we need to highlight the leading driver of this deforestation.

• In one study of drivers, areas of tropical rainforest cleared for palm oil plantations were found to be the single most destructive driver of deforestation across Indonesia [3]. Looking at Figure 2, we can see that 23% of all deforestation comes solely from oil palm plantations. This is a huge number for one single product, compared to the meagre 15% contributed by all small-scale agriculture across the nation. [3]
• The islands of Indonesia and Malaysia churn out 84% of the world’s palm oil, dominating the global market and it is expected that the demand will keep growing as these developing nations progress economically. [4]

To conclude, we know that many large trans-national corporations use palm oil in their products, with it contained in over half of all packaged products! Huge companies such as Colgate-Palmolive, Kellogg’s, Nestle and Heinz – to name a few – are guilty of using palm oil.

With this in mind, the population across the globe needs to make changes to diets and fashion habits, with the aim of reducing demand for resources such as palm oil which in turn could make a huge impact on the rate of deforestation; and hopefully the developing nations behind the mass export of palm oil can find alternative industries to support their economies.

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References

[1] – Gibbs et al 2010, Hosonuma et al 2012, as cited in Austin et al 2019 – What causes deforestation in Indonesia? – Environmental Research Letters Vol. 14, Number 2.

[2] – Hansen et al 2013 – High-Resolution Global Maps of 21^st Century Forest Cover Change – Vol. 342, Issue 6160, pp. 850-853

[3] – Austin et al 2019 – What Causes Deforestation in Indonesia? – Environmental Research Letters Vol. 14, Number 2.

[4] – OECD/FAO Agricultural Outlook 2015 – as cited in Dilip Khatiwada, Carl Palmen & Semida Silveira 2018 – Evaluating the palm oil demand in Indonesia: production trends, yields, and emerging issues.

[5] – Estoque et al 2019 – The future of South East Asia’s forests – Nature Communications 10, Article Number 1829

[6] – Sarah Ruiz 2020 – 4 Species That Went Extinct This Century Because of Forest Loss [Online] – Available at: https://blog.globalforestwatch.org/data-and-research/four-species-that-went-extinct-this-century-because-of-forest-loss/ – Accessed [01/12/2020]