Palm Oil is everywhere.

It's in the food we eat and in everyday household cleaning products and personal care products, and is it being used progressively more for biofuel. There has been a great deal of negative media coverage recently over Palm Oil - one of the world’s most controversial commodities.

The deforestation of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia has caused an alarming rate of biodiversity loss, and in particular endangered species. A striking example is the near extinction of the Orangutan. This species is a native to Indonesia and its counterpart Malaysia and lives in rainforest trees. Because palm oil companies are shredding the rainforest to make way for palm oil plantations, wild orangutans have lost a severe amount of their natural habitat. 

The majority of orang-utans are killed when palm oil companies set fire to the rainforests to clear the land in order to create palm oil plantations. The few that survive must adapt to their new surroundings and this causes an enormous amount of psychological and physiological stress, to the point where they no longer want to procreate. 

Even if they can adjust to their new environment, they are destroying the palm oil cultivated area by using it to eat, sleep and simply live in and therefore are killed by humans, also referred to as pest control. In the journal ‘Cruel Oil’, Brown reveals, “Biologists found a loss of 45% of orang-utans in just six to seven years beginning in 1993” (Brown, 2005).

Needless to say, deforestation has other catastrophic repercussions.

Carbon footprint and Greenhouse gas emissions - we hear these relatively newly formed words uttered frequently. But what do they actually mean? GHG emissions along with carbon footprint are basically one in the same, the giving off of Carbon dioxide; the dire, toxic matter that commands climate change. 

Palm oil companies in Indonesia and Malaysia produce 85% of the world’s palm oil supply which means that they are a major supplier of carbon dioxide principally by way of deforestation (NAZDAQ, 2010). According to British government figures, deforestation causes 18% of Co2 emissions. 

Greenpeace have calculated that last year alone the deforestation of rainforests and peat lands in South East Asia produced 1.8bn tonnes of GHG, a staggering 4% of global climate-change emissions from 0.1 per cent of Earth's land (Hickman, 2009). 

Ironically, palm oil is increasingly sought after for its biodiesel properties – a fuel that leaves a lower GHG footprint than other sources of fuel. The ramifications of deforestation leave devastating yet contradictory results although recent laws and sustainable development methods of growing and producing palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia have been introduced.

The turn of the century saw an almost “green” movement of the masses. Consumers grew increasingly more aware of global ecological dilemmas, so naturally it was a smart move for corporations to implement a “green” image. In 2004 the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was founded by WWF and leading palm oil companies and manufacturers. The organizations primary objective is to “promote the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders” (RSPO, 2009). 

So what measures have been developed in order to preserve the already distressed rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia? The most important measure the RSPO have established is to conserve the remaining natural rainforests by growing palm oil plantations in existing cultivated, agricultural lands. This in turn will minimize further loss of biodiversity such as the Orangutan. One palm oil company, Golden Hope has adopted a ‘zero burning replanting’ method, “Instead of burning stands of unproductive oil palm, Golden Hope cuts and shreds them and lets them decompose. This helps fertilize the soil for future crops - shortening the fallow period and lessening the need for chemical fertilizers - and reduces both "haze" and greenhouse-gas” (Butler, 2007).

To conclude, there is nothing we can do to change the past practices of palm oil production, but we are now well informed of the short and long term damage it causes if it continues to be produced in the same way.  It is not plausible to completely obliterate this product altogether, but we should support developing sustainable production practices to preserve our planets ecosystem.

References 

Palm Oil Products List. (2007). Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://www.angelfire.com/planet/palmoilproducts/personalcare.html


Promoting the growth and use of sustainable palm oil. (2009). Retrieved April 30, 2010, from http://www.rspo.org/?q=page/16
  
How the palm oil industry is Cooking the Climate - full report. (2007). Retrieved April 25, 2010, from http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/cooking-the-climate-full/

Hickman, M. (2009). The guilty secrets of palm oil: Are you unwittingly contributing to the devastation of the rain forests? Retrieved May 01, 2010, from http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-guilty-secrets-of-palm-oil-are-you-unwittingly-contributing-to-the-devastation-of-the-rain-forests-1676218.html


Impacts on the Rainforest and Wildlife in Borneo, Sumatra and Papua New Guinea. (n.d). Retrieved May 01, 2010, from http://www.palmoilaction.org.au/pages/deforestation.html


MacKinnon, I. (2007). Palm oil: the biofuel of the future driving an ecological disaster now. Retrieved May 02, 2010, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/apr/04/energy.indonesia

Lim, S. (2010). Palm Oil Producers To Meet May 3 To Discuss Deforestation Charges. Retrieved May 03, 2010, from http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201004280532dowjonesdjonline000429&title=palm-oil-producers-to-meet-may-3-to-discuss-deforestation-charges#ixzz0mppHGlgL


Sumatran Orangutan Society. (2010). Retrieved May 03, 2010, from http://www.orangutans-sos.org/campaigns/


Butler, A.(2007). Palm oil doesn’t have to be bad for the environment. Retrieved May 04, 2010, from http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0404-oil_palm.html


Brown, E., & Jacobson, M. (2005). Cruel Oil: How Palm Oil Harms Health, Rainforests & Wildlife. Retrieved May 02, 2010, from http://www.cspinet.org/palm