PALM OIL AND RAIN FOREST DEFORESTATION

PROBLEMS WITH PALM OIL

Palm oil from Ghana Natasha Gilbert wrote in Nature: Palm oil was once touted as a social and environmental panacea — a sustainable food crop, a biofuel that could help to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and a route out of poverty for small-scale farmers. In recent years, however, a growing body of research has questioned those credentials, presenting evidence that palm-oil farming can cause damaging deforestation and reduce biodiversity, and that the oil’s use as a biofuel offers only marginal benefits for mitigating climate change. [Source: Natasha Gilbert, Nature, July 4, 2012]

Human rights abuses such as child labor and forced evictions are also connected with the palm oil trade. On the Indonesian island of Sumatra, palm oil companies have bulldozed entire indigenous villages, leaving their residents homeless and reliant on government handouts. Jason Motlagh wrote in the Washington Post, “The huge global appetite is yielding billions in revenue for Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s first- and second-largest producers of palm oil. But environmental and human rights activists warn that the boom is accelerating the effects of global warming, with no concern for long-term social costs. They add that indigenous people are being pushed off their ancestral land to make way for plantations staffed by tens of thousands of migrant workers, who are often denied health care and education services. Many families that have labored for decades still do not have the legal documents that would grant them and their children basic rights. [Source: Jason Motlagh, Washington Post, November 26, 2012]

The New York Times reported in June 2010, “ Biofuel goals meant to fight climate change are worsening the problem by giving growers an even greater incentive to destroy virgin forests and peatlands that serve as huge carbon sinks, environment advocates say. The forests provide livelihoods to indigenous people and are the only home to endangered species like the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger. [Source: New York Times, June 3, 2010]

Palm Oil, Deforestation and Climate Change

Much of the world’s palm oil is produced on land formally occupied by rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia. Much of the destruction is in Indonesia, where the United Nations Environment Program warned in 2007 that 98 percent of the forests in Sumatra and Borneo could be gone by 2022. In neighboring Malaysia, which is also a major palm oil producer, much of the low-lying forest has already vanished.

Environmentalists complain that clearing trees for palm oil plantations threatens the rain forest and animals like elephants, orangutans and tigers. Only 14 percent of palm oil produced is sustainable, Choice spokesman Tom Godfrey says, resulting in deforestation and catastrophic environmental damage. Palm oil production has been linked to the destruction of orangutan habitats. People in the palm industry argue that only a few errant growers cause environmental damage.

Ben Webster wrote in The Times, “ “Deforestation, mainly in the tropics, accounts for almost 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The expansion of the palm oil industry in Indonesia has turned the country into the third-largest CO2 emitter, after China and the US. Indonesia has the fastest rate of deforestation, losing an area the size of Wales every year. The expansion of plantations has pushed the orangutan to the brink of extinction in Sumatra. * [Source: Ben Webster, The Times, August 15, 2009 **]

According to the New York Times: Much of the forest now being cleared for palm oil is peatland, with marshy soils that are crucial holders of methane, a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide. Environmentalists argue that abandoned grasslands could be used for palm cultivation, but the industry’s hunger for enormous plantations to create economies of scale, and its close links with timber extraction, create relentless pressure for forest clearance, Mr. Kaat told the New York Times. Logging companies, often affiliated with palm oil companies, generally begin by removing valuable hardwood trees, and then drain swamps and burn vegetation, releasing enormous volumes of greenhouse gases, he said. [Source: New York Times, June 3, 2010]

Environmental Impact of Palm Oil on Borneo

As recently as the 1970s, three-quarters of Borneo was covered in lush rain forests but Borneo’s role in meeting the demand for palm oil has taken a huge toll.. Hillary Rosner wrote in National Geographic:“ Since 1973, nearly 16,000 square miles of rain forest on Borneo, the island shared by Malaysia and Indonesia, have been logged, burned, and bulldozed to make way for oil palm. It accounts for a fifth of the total deforestation on Borneo since 1973 — and for 47 percent since 2000. [Source: Hillary Rosner, National Geographic, December 2018]

“Industrial oil palm plantations have caused 47 percent of the deforestation on the island since 2000. Some 877,000 acres are currently lost each year. Over 32,000 square miles, an area about the size of South Carolina, have been planted with oil palms.

All that deforestation has been devastating for wildlife. Nearly 150,000 critically endangered Bornean orangutans perished from 1999 to 2015, and although the main culprits were logging and hunting, palm oil was a major factor. It also exacerbates climate change — nearly half of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and other land-use changes — as well as acute air pollution. The haze from Indonesian forest fires, many deliberately set to clear land for oil palms, caused at least 12,000 premature deaths in 2015 alone.

Palm Oil Expanding in Africa

The oil palm tree, Elaeis guineensis, is native to west and central Africa, and commercial plantations that produce the oil are expanding in the region. According to National Geographic: “Palm oil is an ancient staple in West Africa, and its origins are artisanal rather than industrial. In Benin most palm oil is still produced by women for domestic use. The fruit is boiled and pounded to extract oil from the pulp. In Africa as in Southeast Asia, the crop is here to stay and it is an important source of income.

Gabon is one country that is starting to get into palm oil in a big way. It’s economy is largely petroleum based and it imports much of its food. The government sees industrial agriculture as an important part of the nation’s future and invited the Singapore-based palm oil company Olam to set up plantations. Hillary Rosner wrote in National Geographic: “In Gabon, one of Africa’s most forested countries, palm oil is coming home, and a boom may be on the horizon. Situated on the Equator and on the continent’s west coast, Gabon is roughly the size of Colorado with a third of the people. More than 76 percent of the country is covered in forest, with 11 percent of its land area protected in national parks. It’s a wildlife wonderland. “It’s exactly the kind of large, intact forest you want to protect from any kind of development,” says Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of Mighty Earth, a Washington D.C.-based environmental organization that has criticized Olam’s palm oil operations in Gabon. “There’s so much degraded land [across the tropics]. Why would you send your palm oil plantations to countries that have so much existing forest?” [Source: Hillary Rosner, National Geographic, December 2018]

“One answer is that Gabon wants them. The former French colony has the fourth highest GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa, but much of the revenue comes from petroleum. Gabon imports much of its food: Wheat and milk come from France; beef is flown in from India and Brazil. The government of President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who won a controversial election in 2016 to a second seven-year term, wants to add commercial agriculture — including palm oil — to Gabon’s economy. That requires cutting down trees. Recognizing the conflicting demands on its land, the government has embarked on a project few other nations have tried: a national land-use plan.

“Two and a half hours from Libreville, we pull onto a red dirt road toward the Awala plantation. This area is secondary forest, one of the places where logging first began in Gabon. The government gave Olam roughly 50,000 acres here — of which the company has planted oil palms on about a third. Another third is conserved as one block of forest, and the rest remains standing in smaller parcels, some of it on steep hillsides.

Palm Oil and Biofuel

According to the New York Times palm oil "is quickly gaining use as a diesel fuel substitute, particularly in Europe, where demand is being driven by a European Union goal requiring that 10 percent of all transportation fuel should come from renewable sources by 2020. While the Union requires that such fuels must generate fewer emissions than conventional sources, it fails to take sufficient account of rainforest clearance, making the standard meaningless, the advocates say." [Source: New York Times, June 3, 2010]

Ben Webster wrote in The Times,“In 2008, British motorists used 27 million litres of palm oil from Indonesia and 64 million litres from Malaysia, according to the Renewable Fuels Agency, the government-funded watchdog that monitors biofuel supplies. Fuel companies also supplied 32 million litres of palm oil from “unknown’ countries. The agency knows which companies are using palm oil but is refusing to name them on the ground that the information is commercially sensitive. [Source: Ben Webster, The Times, August 15, 2009 **]

Vast tracts of rainforest are destroyed each year by companies seeking to take advantage of the world’s growing appetite for plant-based alternatives to fossil fuel. In theory, greenhouse gas emissions from burning biofuel are lower than those from fossil fuel because crops absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. But clearing rainforest to create biofuel plantations releases vast quantities of carbon stored in trees and soil. It takes up to 840 years for a palm oil plantation to soak up the carbon emitted when rainforest is burnt to plant the crop. [Source: Ben Webster, The Times, August 15, 2009 **]

Palm Oil Biofuel: Not as Environmentally Friendly as Touted

Palm oil factory in Cote d'IvoireThere are two types of biofuel bioethanol which is produced from carbohydrate-based plants namely sugarcane, corn, beet, wheet and sorgum while biodiesel is made from vegetable oilseeds such as rapeseed, sunflower, soybean and palm oil. Biofuel can be derived from dozens of crops but many fuel companies choose palm oil because it can be cheaper than the more sustainable alternatives such as rapeseed.

Natasha Gilbert wrote in Nature: In principle, biodiesel made from palm oil could be environmentally friendly, because the carbon dioxide released when it is burned is roughly the same as that absorbed as the plant grows. But vast swathes of forest have been cut down to make way for the crop, often in carbon-rich peatlands, where tree burning and soil degradation release extra stores of the global-warming gas. A recent life-cycle assessment suggested that it could take up to 220 years for a plantation to become carbon neutral (W. M. J. Achten and L. V. Verchot Ecol. Soc. 16, 14; 2011). [Source: Natasha Gilbert, Nature, July 4, 2012]

In January, after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that palm-oil fuels emitted only 11–17 percent less greenhouse gas than diesel over their entire life cycle, it suggested that the oil should not be classified as a renewable fuel. Although a public consultation on the matter concluded in April, the EPA has not set a date to issue its final ruling. But the European Union (EU) continues to encourage the use of fuels based on palm oil. The EU has a binding target to raise the share of biofuels used in road transport to 10 percent by 2020, and most of that is expected to be met by blending biofuels such as palm oil with conventional fuels.

Legal action has been taken at the World Trade Organization against EU restrictions on palm-based biofuels. [Source: Mei Mei, Reuters, July 29, 2020]

Big Oil Companies, Palm Oil Bioefuel and Deforestation

Ben Webster wrote in The Times, “Fuel companies are accelerating the destruction of rainforest by secretly adding palm oil to diesel. Twelve oil companies supplied a total of 123 million litres of palm oil to filling stations in the year to April, according to official figures obtained by The Times. Only 15 percent of the palm oil came from plantations that met any kind of environmental standard. Much of the rest came from land previously occupied by rainforest. [Source: Ben Webster, The Times, August 15, 2009 **]

“Under a European Union initiative aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, 3.25 percent of the total amount of fuel sold by each oil company must be biofuel. The proportion is due to rise to 13 percent by 2020. In practice most companies meet the obligation by adding biofuel to diesel, creating a blend that contains about 5 percent biofuel. The companies are not obliged to inform motorists that the petrol or diesel they buy contains biofuel. **

“Several leading fuel industry figures sit on the agency’s board, including a director of the oil company BP and a senior executive from the coalmining group Anglo American. The agency said that the directors had not been involved in the decision to withhold the names of the companies. It is almost inevitable that we will use palm oil because the amount of biofuel we will need is increasing. Palms deliver one of the highest volumes of oil per hectare of any crop. That means we can use less land to produce the same amount of oil. **

Ian Duff, a forest campaigner for Greenpeace, said: “It cannot be right that the watchdog on biofuels has oil company directors on its board. The agency is preventing the public from discovering which of these companies are selling us palm oil, one of the cheapest and most environmentally damaging biofuels.” Several major oil companies are exploiting a loophole in the agency’s reporting system to avoid declaring what type of land has been used to grow their biofuel. They are obliged to submit a sustainability report but in the section on the previous use of the land are allowed to say ‘unknown’. When calculating the greenhouse gas savings from biofuel the agency ignores the previous use of the land. **

“Esso said that it did not know the previous use of the land on which 95 percent of its biofuel was grown. It also refused to say whether it had used any palm oil. BP said that its biofuel included palm oil but claimed that it all came from certified plantations. It failed to declare the previous use of the land for 79 percent of its biofuel. Total refused to say whether it used any palm oil. Murco admitted using palm oil but did not respond to questions about its origins. Total, Chevron and Murco all failed to declare the previous use of the land that was the source of more than half their biofuel. Chevron admitted using palm oil from uncertified sources.Shell had the best record of the major companies for declaring the sources of its biofuel. It said that it did not use any palm oil last year because it could not find any from a sustainable source.

Image Source: Mongabay mongabay.com ; Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated May 2026