Monday 20 March 2017

Are your snack foods causing Orangutan extinction: The Past, Present and Future of the Palm Oil industry?

Past- a history of the palm oil industry.


The African Oil Palm Elaeis guineensis originated from West Africa and has a history dating back over 5,000 years being used as a staple food crop and was highly valued in the Egyptian era, even being found in casks buried with the pharaoh.
  
It was found that crushing the fruit of the oil palm produced a high-quality oil with many uses. The international market for palm oil rose and expanded with the British Empire enabling international trade and later aiding the industrial revolution. The oil was use as a fuel in candle making and a lubricant for machinery and has been attributed to the expansion of industrial scale production processes.
A view between the rows of oil palms, a typical planting method for this tree

It was this increasing demand and opportunities for commercial use in soaps, lubricant and most importantly edible oils that ultimately lead to investment by Europeans in its production. Originally cultivated in West Africa it then expanded to the forests of Southeast Asia, which now has the highest densities of oil palm plantations, representing up to 40% of the total land area. 
% of total land area dedicated to oil palm plantations across Southeast Asia

It is now one hundred years since the first commercial scale palm oil plantation was established in Tennamaran Estate in Selangor, Malaysia, 1917. There was a slow expansion of palm oil plantations up until the middle of the century but after this point, rapid expansion occurred.

Since the mid 70’s global palm oil production has been growing at an almost exponential rate, with increases being greatest in recent years due to dramatically increasing demand for palm oil in the snack food industry and as a biofuel. The use of palm oil as a replacement for controversial fats found in food has further fuelled its growing demand and it is now the most commonly used vegetable oil worldwide.
Palm Oil production represents the largest share of the edible oil market


Economically oil palm is preferable to grow compared to any other vegetable oil, with oil palm plantations producing over ten times more oil per hectare per year compared to any other vegetable oil. Just 5% of the world vegetable oil farmland is used to grow oil palm with this producing over 1/3 of global vegetable oil supply. 
High production yields of Palm Oil compared to other vegetable oils


Just two countries Indonesia and Malaysia contain 80% of the remaining rainforests in Southeast Asia.
Primary rainforest of Southeast Asia

However, they also produce 85% of the world’s palm oil, but this comes at a cost. David Wilcove calculated that between 1990 and 2005 over 55% of palm oil plantation expansions occurred at the cost of cutting down primary (unlogged) and secondary (logged) forest.

Global increases in Palm Oil production over time (blue line), with green bars representing production by Indonesia the largest producer and red bars production by Malaysia the second largest producer



Present- why the bad press?


Oil palm is now grown across 13.5 million hectares of tropical, high rainfall, lowlands, area normally covered in wet tropical forest, the most diverse terrestrial ecosystem on earth.
Large scale Palm Oil plantation, within the tropical lowlands of Southeast Asia

The loss of these tropical forests is having a huge impact on this biologically diverse ecosystems. This deforestation driven partially by the palm oil industry is impacting iconic species including the Sumatran and Borneo Orangutan, Sumatran Elephant and Sumatran Rhino, driving them to the brink of extinction.
The deforestation isn’t just impacting the iconic species, a study by David Wilcove in 2008 showed that the number of forest bird species are 77% lower in palm oil plantations compared to primary forest and 83% lower for butterfly. 

Differences in the number of species of birds and butterflies present in varying types of forest

In recent years there has also been increasing demand for oil palm to make biofuels, which are carbon neutral fuels, that release no net carbon. Carbon locked up in plant matter is released on burning the fuel, but this is only releasing carbon originally removed from the atmosphere when the plant grew so no extra carbon is released as it with fossil fuels. 

However only when oil palms are planted on degraded grassland that has a low carbon content are they likely to result as net carbon sinks, taking in more carbon than they release on burning. Clearing of lowland forest and subsequent drying out of the peat soils they grow on releases huge amounts of carbon. It would take decades, if not centuries for the carbon emissions avoided by using biofuels grown there to compensate for the emissions released as a result of converting these forests and peatlands to oil palm plantations. 

An area of cleared lowland forest in North Kalimantan, Borneo for Palm oil plantations

Finally, there is the social impact of oil palm plantations, which can be both positive and negative. Employment opportunities are offered to indigenous communities via plantations as well as improving infrastructure and social services and alleviating poverty. However, this comes at a cost. Oil palm plantations are often developed on lands without prior consultation or even permission from the indigenous communities which ultimately results in varying degrees of social conflict. This has often given the industry a bad press, being viewed as bullies that have no respect for the environment or people living there.


Local cultures and indigenous groups are common through Borneo, an area at high risk of deforestation and conversion to Palm oil production.

With ever increasing demand for palm oil, only regulation of its practices will ultimately curb its multiple environmental and social impacts. Increasing consumer concern has helped initiate a movement towards more environmentally responsible practice within the industry, most importantly the establishment of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2004, with products containing certified sustainable palm oil being allowed to carry the RSPO emblem.

Members of the RSPO manage over one-third of oil-palm production globally and have established international standards for the production of sustainable palm oil. This includes aims to reduce their impacts on biodiversity and identifying areas for preservation, but policing of these commitments is often challenging. One issue with their policy is that they often value logged forest as an area of low biodiversity and therefore key areas for oil palm expansion. However, this is not the case as logged forests can and studies by scientists such as Jos Barlow in 2007 and David Wilcove in 2008 have shown that logged forest still maintain high levels of biodiversity and are still extremely valuable to wildlife. Finally, only 1/3 of RSPO members are actually following the criteria in order to be certificated sustainable producers, with many of these still having questionable practices. Sustainable palm oil currently represents between 6-10% of global production, and although this is low it is growing and will continue to do so with increasing consumer pressure.

A remaining tree from the original primary rainforest. This logged forest is seen to be of low biodiversity and is likley to be converted to Palm oil planations.


Future- could sustainability be achieved?


With ever increasing demand for vegetable oils in both the food industry and as biofuels combined with the high degrees of overlap between areas for oil palm production expansion and areas of high biodiversity, substantial losses of biodiversity are likely to occur in the future.

Historically it has been hard to assess the extent to which establishment of oil palm plantations has directly caused deforestation. However, it has huge potential to be a major driver of deforestation in the future. With the low biodiversity value of oil palm plantations, it will ultimately be the extent to which future expansion results in deforestation that will determine the palm oil industry’s future ecological impact.

Sustainable palm oil production, if managed to avoid further deforestation could be the answer. Improvements in practice both environmentally and socially are needed to ensure so-called sustainable palm oil is truly sustainable.

If sustainable palm oil is the answer then firstly you need to improve the traceability of palm oil. Currently, palm oil found in end products that are used by the consumer only have around 50% traceability, therefore, if consumer demand for sustainable palm oil increases, manufacturers will need to ensure palm oil used is really from a sustainable source. 


The large number of stages involved in palm oil production, transport and final use often make it hard to trace the origin of the oil


In the future improving the sustainability as well as traceability of palm oil combined with increasing consumer demand may prove enough to help curb the future risks of deforestation as a result of the palm oil industry.

For more information or to pass on the message, you can download a leaflet summarising the impacts of palm oil and potential measure you can take to reduce these costs if you so choose to. 

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