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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The Impacts of Oil Palm on Recent Deforestation and Biodiversity Loss

Affiliation Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas, Nazaré Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil

Affiliation Union of Concerned Scientists, Oakland, California, United States of America

• Varsha Vijay, 
• Stuart L. Pimm, 
• Clinton N. Jenkins, 
• Sharon J. Smith

• Published: July 27, 2016
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668
• Reader Comments

Palm oil is the most widely traded vegetable oil globally, with demand projected to increase substantially in the future. Almost all oil palm grows in areas that were once tropical moist forests, some of them quite recently. The conversion to date, and future expansion, threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Today, consumer pressure is pushing companies toward deforestation-free sources of palm oil. To guide interventions aimed at reducing tropical deforestation due to oil palm, we analysed recent expansions and modelled likely future ones. We assessed sample areas to find where oil palm plantations have recently replaced forests in 20 countries, using a combination of high-resolution imagery from Google Earth and Landsat. We then compared these trends to countrywide trends in FAO data for oil palm planted area. Finally, we assessed which forests have high agricultural suitability for future oil palm development, which we refer to as vulnerable forests, and identified critical areas for biodiversity that oil palm expansion threatens. Our analysis reveals regional trends in deforestation associated with oil palm agriculture. In Southeast Asia, 45% of sampled oil palm plantations came from areas that were forests in 1989. For South America, the percentage was 31%. By contrast, in Mesoamerica and Africa, we observed only 2% and 7% of oil palm plantations coming from areas that were forest in 1989. The largest areas of vulnerable forest are in Africa and South America. Vulnerable forests in all four regions of production contain globally high concentrations of mammal and bird species at risk of extinction. However, priority areas for biodiversity conservation differ based on taxa and criteria used. Government regulation and voluntary market interventions can help incentivize the expansion of oil palm plantations in ways that protect biodiversity-rich ecosystems.

Citation: Vijay V, Pimm SL, Jenkins CN, Smith SJ (2016) The Impacts of Oil Palm on Recent Deforestation and Biodiversity Loss. PLoS ONE 11(7): e0159668. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668

Editor: Madhur Anand, University of Guelph, CANADA

Received: March 1, 2016; Accepted: July 5, 2016; Published: July 27, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Vijay et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Data associated with each of the analyses performed in this paper: site analysis, vulnerable forest analysis and biodiversity prioritization are available through the Dryad data repository (doi: 10.5061/dryad.2v77j ) and Supporting Information.

Funding: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation ( www.nsf.gov ) under Grant No.1106401. CNJ received support from Ciência Sem Fronteiras (A025_2013). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

African oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is a tropical crop grown primarily for the production of palm oil. It is the world’s highest yielding and least expensive vegetable oil, making it the preferred cooking oil for millions of people globally and a source of biodiesel. Palm oil and its derivatives are also common ingredients in many packaged and fast foods, personal care and cosmetic products, and household cleaners. Driven by demand for these products, palm oil production nearly doubled between 2003 and 2013 [ 1 ] and is projected to continue increasing [ 2 , 3 ]. Palm oil is the most important tropical vegetable oil globally when measured in terms of both production and its importance to trade, accounting for one-third of vegetable oil production in 2009 [ 4 , 5 ]. The dominance of palm oil may be explained by the yield of the oil palm crop, over four times that of other oil crops [ 6 ], as well as its low price and versatility as an ingredient in many processed goods [ 7 ].

In this study, we seek to identify where oil palm has recently replaced tropical forests because this may best anticipate where future deforestation may occur. Furthermore, we wish to understand where future deforestation may cause the most harm to biodiversity.

The growth in demand for palm oil has led to a large expansion of the land used to produce it. Because the oil palm’s range is limited to the humid tropics, much of this expansion has come at the expense of species-rich and carbon-rich tropical forests. Oil palm was responsible for an average of 270,000 ha of forest conversion annually from 2000–2011 in major palm oil exporting countries [ 8 ]. One study found that >50% of Indonesian and Malaysian oil palm plantations in 2005 were on land that was forest in 1990 [ 9 ].

Cutting carbon emissions from tropical deforestation could play a critical role in limiting the impacts of climate change and contribute toward global mitigation efforts aimed at reaching the agreed goal of <2 degree C global temperature increase [ 10 ]. Annual carbon emissions from gross tropical deforestation are estimated at 2.270 Gt CO 2 from 2001–2013 [ 10 ], contributing nearly 10% of the global total of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. There is growing recognition of the need to limit or end such deforestation. More than 180 governments, companies, indigenous people’s organizations, and non-governmental organizations have signed the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF). It calls for ending deforestation from the production of agricultural commodities such as palm oil by no later than 2020 as part of a broader goal of reducing deforestation 50% by 2020 and eliminating it by 2030. The Consumer Goods Forum, representing more than 400 retailers and manufacturers, has taken up this goal and pledged to help eliminate deforestation in member companies’ supply chains by 2020.

Different scenarios of oil palm development will lead to very different outcomes in terms of deforestation and carbon emissions, such as the development of degraded land versus peatlands in Indonesia [ 11 ]. In recent years, consumers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have increasingly called on consumer goods companies to buy responsibly produced palm oil and companies have begun to adopt voluntary measures [ 12 ]. The main organization responsible for the certification of sustainable palm oil is the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a group composed of oil palm producers, palm oil processors and traders, manufacturers, retailers, investors and NGOs. This certification system requires the producers to follow several criteria including transparency of management, conservation of natural resources and the execution of social and environmental impact assessments [ 13 ].

Currently, there are 3.51 million hectares of RSPO certified oil palm plantations producing 13.18 million tonnes of palm oil, making up 21% of global palm oil production [ 14 ]. NGOs have raised concerns about the monitoring and enforcement of standards for certification [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. Furthermore, while primary forests and High Conservation Value forests (those deemed to have significant biodiversity or cultural value, or that provide ecosystem services) are protected under RSPO regulations, secondary, disturbed or regenerating forests are unprotected. RSPO certification has been criticized as insufficient from an environmental perspective [ 18 ]. Finally, there are concerns about the sources of palm oil that lacks certification, much of which is processed or traded by RSPO member companies and sold in the global marketplace [ 19 ].

Because Indonesia and Malaysia together account for approximately 80% of global oil palm fruit production [ 1 ], many studies focus solely on these countries [ 9 , 20 ]. As area for expansion in this region is limited, however, future expansion of oil palm plantations is likely to occur in other areas. Oil palm is currently grown in 43 countries ( Fig 1A ) so understanding the environmental impacts at a global level may help in understanding differences in development patterns that have led to deforestation. Fig 1B shows the percent growth in oil palm harvested area from 2003–2013. Despite having little plantation area currently, some countries in Latin America and Africa experienced greater percent growth during this period than did either Indonesia or Malaysia. If these growth rates continue, oil palm plantation expansion in these countries will likely have increased impacts.

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(a) Percent of FAO reported total global oil palm harvested area in 2013. (b) Percent changes in FAO reported oil palm harvested area by country from 2003–2013.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.g001

Other reasons past assessments may have focused on only one or two countries are the many obstacles that face regional and global assessments of land cover changes and land use history. Assembling imagery across many countries using local resources is prohibitively labour intensive. While global satellite datasets are available, such as Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery from 1984 to the present, identifying land cover transitions from these images can be difficult, especially in humid tropical areas with frequent cloud cover. This means that transitions between distinct cover types (e.g. forest and row crops) are more reliably identified than those between similar cover types (e.g. fragmented forests and shifting cultivation). Thus, while availability of high-resolution imagery over much of the globe makes it possible to identify current land cover with great accuracy, sometimes even specific crops such as oil palm, the assessment of historical land cover is limited to broad categories in global assessments. For example, when Gibbs et al. [ 21 ] made a global assessment of land cover changes for the expansion of agriculture in the tropics, they decided to classify using only five land cover types to reduce these types of errors.

We adopted a new approach. First, we identified current oil palm plantations in 20 countries using high-resolution imagery. Second, we examined what proportion of these sites were recently deforested and compared this to trends in the FAO’s estimates of the total area planted in oil palm. Third, we mapped where forests are vulnerable to deforestation for oil palm based on an FAO crop suitability model and the location of current IUCN category I and II protected areas. We did so for both current climatic conditions and those projected for 2080. Finally, we mapped the biodiversity of mammals and birds in these vulnerable forests to attempt to identify where future oil palm expansion may be most damaging.

Materials and Methods

Site analysis.

We studied oil palm plantations in 20 countries in four regions of interest: 1.) South America; 2.) Central America, Mexico and Caribbean (which we will refer to as Mesoamerica); 3.) Africa; and 4.) Southeast Asia. In each region, we selected the five countries with the largest values of FAO 2013 palm oil production.

We selected individual sample sites with oil palm monoculture using high-resolution imagery available from Google Earth of sufficient resolution to identify visually the pattern of individual oil palm trees. Whenever possible, we verified sample sites using corroborating news articles, geotagged photos, government and company records, or scholarly articles. We also used these sources to identify regions within each country (e.g. states and provinces) where oil palm is produced and examined each for oil palm to improve the spatial distribution of such sites within each country. A fully random selection of sites based on age would have been prohibitively time consuming, if even possible with available satellite imagery and mapping algorithms. The sampled oil palm areas covered at least 3% of the FAO 2013 total oil palm harvested area for each sample country. The percentage of sampled area was much higher for many lower production countries ( Table 1 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.t001

We used Landsat 8 imagery for 2013–2014 along with the high-resolution imagery from Google Earth to digitize sample plantation areas. For change analysis at each sample site, we acquired Landsat 4–5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM (SLC-on) images for three periods: 1984–1990, 1994–2000, 2004–2010 with some variation based on the availability of cloud-free imagery. We digitized deforested land within each sample area from the satellite imagery using ArcMap 10.2 [ 22 ]. We identified forest within the sample using visual classification, comparing spectral characteristics to nearby forest areas outside the sample but within the same Landsat scene. These reference forest areas were verified using high-resolution imagery from Google Earth. In each of the 20 sample countries, we examined the deforestation since 1989 for sample areas identified as oil palm in 2013. Fig 2 shows an example. For 2013, (bottom right) we used high-resolution imagery to outline an oil palm planted area. Using lower resolution Landsat imagery, we have outlined in black the area deforested in 2004, 1997, and 1990. Because of the lower resolution, we cannot confirm whether the deforested areas are indeed early stage oil palm plantations or land cleared for other reasons.

Each panel represents one sample year, with the deforested area in that year outlined in black and the 2013 oil palm planted area outlined in red. Imagery from Landsat 5 TM (1990, 1997 and 2004) and Landsat 8 (2013).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.g002

We did not evaluate regrowth for this study because we were interested in the earliest identifiable deforestation events in areas currently occupied by oil palm. Finally, to facilitate analyses at larger spatial scales, we linearly interpolated annual deforested area between image dates to produce an annual time series of deforested area in each sample. We used 1989 as a start date for analysis since satellite imagery for the first sample point of most sites was available by that date (85%). The latest starting sample was 1991.

We estimated historical deforestation within current oil palm plantations (relative to the 2013 plantation area) by summing the annual deforested area estimates for all sample sites and normalizing by the total sample area within each country. To scale up from country to regional deforestation trends within areas currently occupied by oil palm, we calculated the weighted average of individual country trends with weights based on FAO 2013 total oil palm harvested area. The underlying assumption is that the trend we observed in each country is representative of all current oil palm planted area within that country. We also compared country deforestation trends with overall growth in oil palm plantation area by plotting each country deforestation trend with FAO oil palm planted area, normalized by the 2013 value. For clarity, we refer to the FAO harvested area data as planted area in the rest of our analyses, since the time from planting until the first harvest is approximately 2.5 years [ 23 ], much shorter than the intervals of our measurement. We acknowledge that the accuracy of the FAO data may vary by country, but these data remain the best estimate of oil palm planted area available.

Oil Palm Vulnerable Forest Assessment

We determined the current suitable area for oil palm agriculture using the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Global Agro-Ecological Zones (GAEZ) model for agricultural suitability of oil palm [ 24 ]. The GAEZ agricultural suitability model primarily incorporates knowledge of crop specific soil nutrient and climatic requirements to determine the suitability of crop planting under varying management regimes. We used the model for rain-fed high input (industrial scale) agriculture because it represents the primary method of oil palm cultivation globally.

To determine future suitable area for oil palm plantations, we used GAEZ model outputs of suitability for 2080. To represent “business as usual” and reduced emission scenarios, we used IPCC emission scenarios A2 and B2, respectively. We averaged all the GAEZ outputs for global climate models Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma), Coupled Global Climate Model(CGCM2), CSIRO Atmospheric Research Mark 2b (CSIRO MK2) and Max Plank Institute ECHAM4 (MPI ECHAM4) for both emission scenarios to produce an average estimate for crop suitability in 2080. We considered, but excluded, Hadley model projections from the estimates because they were divergent from other projections.

Values for the suitability models range from 0–100 with 100 representing areas most suited to oil palm cultivation. We used a threshold suitability value of 30, which we based on the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval of suitability for 200 random points inside sample plantations with a minimum distance of 1 km between points. Because the GAEZ suitability used represents high-input rain-fed agriculture, not all sample plantations fit the suitability criteria and we excluded 4 of the 200 points that had zero suitability.

Once we determined suitable areas for oil palm plantations, we estimated the forest area within these areas that may be vulnerable to oil palm development. The MODIS 250m Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) tree cover dataset Version 5 2010 [ 25 ] provided forest cover classification. To reduce the incidence of random errors in the data, we used the median of MODIS VCF layers from 2008 to 2010.

As an additional filter to remove cropland area from the vulnerable forest layer, we overlaid the 300m GlobCover 2009 Cropland data on a rescaled median MODIS VCF 300m layer [ 26 ]. To remove pixels with crop presence from the forest dataset, we set a threshold for both layers at 50% to create binary classifications. We also excluded International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) category I and II protected areas, obtained from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), from the forest layer [ 27 ]. Finally, we excluded the sample plantation sites from the Site Analysis above from the vulnerable forest area as oil palm plantations occupy these areas currently. Eliminating both the crop areas and sample plantation areas were intended as a correction to remove much of the tree plantation area from the forest cover data. It is likely that some plantation areas remained misclassified as forest.

Biodiversity Assessment for Vulnerable Forest Areas

To estimate the potential impact on biodiversity of oil palm related deforestation, we analysed species range data for mammals and birds [ 28 , 29 ]. As these studies point out, the risk of extinction is more accurately determined by looking at impacts of development on small-ranged and threatened species rather than total number of species. Therefore, we overlaid the number of small-ranged and threatened species with baseline oil palm vulnerable forests, as determined by the analysis above. From the resulting maps, we attempted to identify areas of high conservation value within the forest vulnerable to oil palm in each region.

Data associated with each of the analyses performed in this paper: site analysis, vulnerable forest analysis and biodiversity prioritization, are available through the Dryad data repository (doi: 10.5061/dryad.2v77j ) and Supporting Information.

Regional Trends

For each sample site, we determined the percent of forest area within the current oil palm plantation areas for three dates from 1984–2010, as well as in 2013. We interpolated these data for each year and then aggregated them at the country scale relative to the plantation area of the sites in 2013 ( S1 Table ). Fig 3 shows percent forest within sample oil palm plantations for the four regions. Note that the absolute area of oil palm plantations in 2013 varied greatly by country ( Table 1 ) and country trends were weighted by each country’s total FAO plantation area for 2013 to calculate regional trends. All regions reach 0% forest in 2013 when the sample areas were fully converted to oil palm plantation.

Values are an average of the proportion of sampled 2013 oil palm plantation area classified as forest each year in five countries within each region, weighted by each country’s 2013 FAO-reported oil palm planted area.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.g003

Mesoamerican and African oil palm plantations had the lowest percent forest in 1989. Only 2% and 7%, respectively, of sample plantation area was forest at the beginning of the study. This need not necessarily indicate continuous production of oil palm on these sites. It may indicate other uses such as pasture or annual row crops before conversion to oil palm.

In contrast, Asian plantations had the highest estimated percent forest in 1989 (45%), while South American plantations were intermediate between the other regions (31%). Thus, a greater percentage of oil palm expansion in these countries came at the expense of intact forest since 1989. Examination of the deforestation trend in Southeast Asia shows that deforestation within plantations occurred more rapidly between 1989 and 1998, whereas in South America, the deforestation trend appeared to be linear during the study period.

Country Trends

For each sample country, we examined the recent history (1989–2013) of expansion in oil palm plantation area and the degree to which it was associated with deforestation for oil palm plantations. Fig 4 shows the trends in two metrics relative to their 2013 value: the total area of oil palm plantation FAO reports (open circle) and the percent deforested in our sample plantation (solid triangle). Note that all percentages reported in this section are relative to the 2013 values. Due to this rescaling, both values are 100% in 2013. The figure highlights two countries selected from the five sample countries in each region that either exemplify or show distinct trends from the rest of the region (see S1 Fig ). The percent changes in these quantities over the study period are given in Table 2 for all countries.

Trends of deforestation inside sampled oil palm plantations (solid triangle) and total FAO oil palm planted area for eight countries (open circle). Both trends are relative to 2013 values, thus both reach 100% in 2013. Countries represented are either representative of regional trends or distinct from regional trends for sample countries. (a, b) Mesoamerica, (c, d) Africa, (e, f) South America, (g, h) Southeast Asia.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.g004

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.t002

In Mesoamerica, all five countries showed large percent increases in the FAO estimates of oil palm area. All five countries also had little to no deforestation within the sample areas during the study period. Guatemala ( Fig 4A ) and Mexico ( Fig 4B ) are typical. In contrast, in Africa the total area of oil palm plantations has fluctuated considerably in the sample countries. The area of oil palm plantations increased from 1989 to 2013 in all five countries, but experienced some years without growth or with declines. The net increase was lowest for DRC ( Fig 4C ) and Nigeria ( Fig 4D ) with periods of dramatic decline in the area planted for both. In Cameroon, Ghana, and the Ivory, the increase in planted area was higher. As in Mesoamerica, sample countries in Africa were mostly deforested at the beginning of the study period. Of the five countries, we observed the largest amount of deforestation from 1989 to 2013 in Cameroon (16.9%).

All sample countries in South America showed large increases in the total area of oil palm. For some, the patterns of increase mirrored the patterns of deforestation, as seen in Ecuador ( Fig 4E ) and Peru ( Fig 4F ). Brazil also experienced large increases in FAO planted area accompanied by large increases in area deforested in the samples. Only for two countries, Venezuela and Colombia ( S1 Fig ), did we find sample sites 100% deforested by 1989 despite large increases in the FAO planted area ( Table 2 ). In Venezuela, the rapid increase in planted area occurred from about 1989 to 1995, after which the recorded planted area remained static ( S1 Fig ).

In Asia, all countries showed large increases in area planted for oil palm. Indonesia ( Fig 4G ) and Malaysia ( Fig 4H ) are typical of countries where deforestation mirrors increases in planted area. Papua New Guinea, to a lesser degree, was consistent with the trend of deforestation mirroring increases in oil palm planted area. In contrast, in the Philippines and Thailand, the sample sites had been 100% deforested in1989, despite marked increases in FAO planted area ( Table 2 ).

In summary, we observe two main trends in deforestation within sample countries. One is the conversion of previously deforested land to oil palm, resulting in low levels of deforestation during the study period. We observed this scenario in the sample countries in Mesoamerica and Africa, as well as in Colombia, Venezuela, Philippines and Thailand. Data from the other countries in South America and Asia suggest a second scenario, where deforestation in sample sites mirrors oil palm plantation expansion. We observed this trend in a majority of countries in South America (Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil) and Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea). This scenario suggests a rapid transition from forest to plantation, resulting in higher levels of deforestation during the study period.

Vulnerable Forest Assessment

Fig 5 shows the area that is suitable for oil palm that is forested (green) and deforested (blue), current IUCN category I and II protected areas (orange), and vulnerable forest area (current in dark and forecasted for 2080 in light green). We define vulnerable forest area as forest located inside suitable area for oil palm, but outside IUCN I and II protected areas, with total areas listed in Table 3 for both present and 2080. Though we excluded IUCN category I and II protected areas from the vulnerable forest areas, we determined that present rates of coverage of vulnerable forest by these categories of protected area were low in all regions, ranging from 4.4% of oil palm suitable forests in Southeast Asia to 11% in Mesoamerica.

Present (dark green) vulnerable forest area and predicted vulnerable forest area in 2080 (light green). Vulnerable forest is MODIS VCF forest inside GAEZ suitable oil palm land, minus croplands and IUCN category I and II protected areas (orange). Deforested area suitable for oil palm is shown in each region at two times, present (light blue) and projected for 2080 (dark blue).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.g005

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.t003

We predict decreases in vulnerable forest area in three of the four study regions, based on the mean climate model projection for 2080 (excluding the Hadley model) and the resulting shifts in climatic suitability for oil palm cultivation. Only Africa shows an increase in total vulnerable forest area in 2080. However, even though some forested areas may become unsuitable in the long-term, they will remain vulnerable to development in the coming decades. Additionally, areas in both South America and Africa that were not suitable for oil palm growth become suitable in these climate scenarios. This result changes not only the amount of vulnerable forest, but also adds new areas that need monitoring ( Fig 5 ). The vulnerable forest areas in South America and Mesoamerica lie mostly within countries that have some of the highest recent rates of increase in planted area of oil palm in the world ( Fig 1B ).

All countries with high percentage of current plantation areas coming from recent deforestation (1989–2013) had vulnerable forest comprising more than 30% of their present suitable areas for oil palm (dashed line in Fig 6 ). Countries that exemplify this trend are Indonesia, Ecuador, and Peru. Not all countries with large percentage of vulnerable forest had high deforestation rates within plantations. Examples include Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia and Venezuela. All countries with low percentage of vulnerable forest had low deforestation rates, likely a consequence of prior deforestation.

Percent deforestation in sampled oil palm plantations (1989–2013) versus percent vulnerable forest within suitable area for oil palm (2013). Shown for all 20 sample countries. Colours indicate region: Blue-South America, Green-Mesoamerica, Black-Africa, and Red-Asia. Country name abbreviations: BRZ-Brazil, CMR-Cameroon, CRC-Costa Rica, DRC-Democratic Republic of Congo, DRP-Dominican Republic, ECR-Ecuador, GHN-Ghana, GTM-Guatemala, HND-Honduras, IND-Indonesia, IVC-Ivory Coast, MLY-Malaysia, MXC-Mexico, NGR-Nigeria, PNG-Papua New Guinea, PRU-Peru, PHL-Philippines, THL-Thailand, VNZ-Venezuela.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.g006

Biodiversity Analysis

Having identified areas presently vulnerable to oil palm, we explored conservation prioritization based on the richness of threatened and small-range species of birds and mammals. We identified the vulnerable forest areas that were within the 10 percent richest global land area for threatened (blue), small-ranged (red), or both (purple) species within each taxon ( Fig 7A and 7B ).

Vulnerable forest areas for (a) mammals and (b) birds within the 10 percent richest global land area for threatened (blue), small-ranged (red), or both (purple) mammal and bird species (Jenkins et al. 2013, Pimm et al. 2014).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.g007

For mammal species ( Fig 7A ), we would prioritize different areas for conservation depending on the richness criterion selected. A combination of small-range and threatened mammal species would prioritize areas of the Amazon, Brazilian Atlantic Forest, Liberia, Cameroon, Malaysia, and western Indonesia. Prioritizing for only threatened mammals would greatly increase the area targeted for conservation in the Amazon and Indonesia. On the other hand, prioritizing for only small-ranged mammals would target more areas of Mesoamerica, coastal Colombia and Ecuador, the Congo Basin, eastern Indonesia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.

Looking at a combination of small-range and threatened bird species ( Fig 7B ), we would prioritize different areas than for mammals. As found for mammals, the prioritization also differs based on richness criteria used. Priorities for both small range and threatened birds include areas in Cuba, coastal forests of Colombia and Ecuador, Western Amazon, Brazilian Atlantic Forest, the Philippines, Sulawesi, and eastern Papua New Guinea. Prioritizing for only threatened birds, like for mammals, would target large areas of the Amazon and Indonesia. It would also include areas of Brazilian Atlantic Forest, Liberia and Malaysia. Also similar to mammals, prioritizing for small-range birds would target areas of Mesoamerica, coastal Colombia, eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Deforestation of tropical moist forests increases carbon emissions. The replacement of natural forests with monoculture palm plantations reduces overall plant diversity and eliminates the many animal species that depend on natural forests [ 30 , 31 , 32 ]. Understanding the recent trends in deforestation related to oil palm production requires an understanding of both the use of satellite data and the longer history of plantation agriculture in the four major oil palm producing regions. We followed this by an assessment of the vulnerabilities of tropical moist forests and the vertebrate species living in them to future development for oil palm. While this exercise highlights some critical areas for future monitoring efforts, it also highlights the need for closer study of the drivers of oil palm development in each region and the need for clearly defined conservation goals in prioritizing areas for protection.

Monitoring using satellite imagery

In monitoring oil palm’s impacts, we must look to the past as well as predict future expansions. Our estimates of recent rates of deforestation inside oil palm plantations differed by region. Asia and South America experienced high rates of deforestation while Mesoamerica and Africa had low ones. While Southeast Asia is currently responsible for ~68% of the area planted in oil palm, there is rapid expansion in other regions (FAOSTAT, Fig 1B ).

Our estimate for Indonesia (54% from deforestation) is similar to a previous study (56%) [ 9 ], while our estimate for Malaysia (39% from deforestation) was lower than the 55–59% in their study. Differences in data, methodology, and period of study may explain this. Another estimate of deforestation (49%), for oil palm plantations in Ketapang District, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, was similar to our estimates at the country scale [ 33 ]. A related study found reported that 47% of lands converted to oil palm across Kalimantan from 1990–2010 were intact forests [ 34 ]. These distinct regional trends suggest that studying only Southeast Asia would give a skewed perspective of the patterns of deforestation that have occurred and might occur in the future.

While the country trends mostly match the regional deforestation trends, some individual countries deviate. For example, in Cameroon 17% of sampled plantation area came from deforestation, in contrast to 2% of sample plantation areas at a regional level in Africa. In Thailand and the Philippines, none of the sample plantation sites came from deforested areas, while Asia overall had the highest net deforestation for sample oil palm plantation areas (45%). There is also the caveat that the weight we give each country in calculating regional trends is based on FAOstat data, the accuracy of which may vary due to differences in reporting among countries.

In areas where we observed low levels of deforestation for oil palm, we suspect that cropland or previously degraded land was converted to plantation area. Depending on patterns of displacement of crops and farmers, cropland conversion for oil palm expansion may be less damaging for biodiversity than forest conversion. However, even when it is, concerns may arise from conflicts over land seizure and violence in some areas [ 35 , 36 ]. Areas classified as having low deforestation rates were cleared before our starting date of 1989, a date we set based solely on the availability of global satellite datasets. There is little “deforestation-free” oil palm. The real question is when landowners cleared the forests on which oil palm now grows.

Our methods reflect the limited availability of historical high-resolution imagery. We cannot determine the specific land cover transitions leading up to the planting of oil palm. Such data are needed to decide whether oil palm expansion was directly responsible for deforestation or whether the land was converted for another use first before planting in oil palm. Even if we had data on such transitions, land conversion for other purposes could simply be a pretext for deforestation followed by a rapid transition to oil palm. While high-resolution satellite imagery should be useful in future monitoring efforts such as those associated with RSPO certification, the limitations of our approach highlight that such approaches should supplement, not replace, ground-based data collection, case studies [ 37 ], and economic projections [ 38 , 39 ].

Impact of historic land use

The lack of Landsat TM imagery before 1984 restricts what we know about prior changes in land use. Our study period began later than this, in 1989, due to cloud cover issues and gaps in the Landsat TM data. Other sources suggest that significant land clearing occurred historically in the two regions with low observed deforestation in our study: Africa and Mesoamerica.

In Mesoamerica, oil palm area increased after 1989, but deforestation was still low. The history of export monoculture in the region may explain this. Plantation agriculture, including coffee, sugar and bananas drove deforestation of moist forest areas beginning in the late 1800s [ 40 ]. By the mid-twentieth century, the expansion of cattle ranching areas emerged as a significant driver of deforestation [ 40 , 41 ]. While our data only reveal when deforestation in current oil palm plantation area first occurred in the Landsat record and do not reveal intervening land uses, it seems likely that many areas that are now oil palm plantations were previously used for other plantation agriculture or pasture.

In Africa, there was no consistent expansion of oil palm area since 1989. Indeed, all surveyed countries experienced some declines during the study period. We also observed low levels of recent deforestation for oil palm. These trends may be explained by historical land use in the region. There is a long history of oil palm agriculture in Africa with semi-wild groves established by the time of European exploration [ 42 ]. During the colonial era in West and Central Africa, industrial plantations of crops like cacao, sugar cane, oil palm and rubber greatly expanded, in part through deforestation [ 43 , 44 ].

In both of these regions, this past agricultural history shapes the current forest cover within oil palm suitable zones and, consequently, the availability of prior agricultural land for conversion to oil palm plantation.

Vulnerability of forests to future oil palm development

The largest forested areas that future oil palm development threatens are in South America and Africa ( Fig 5 ). Countries with less than 30% vulnerable forest (forest without IUCN I and II protection) in suitable areas for oil palm had little of their plantation areas coming from recently deforested areas ( Fig 6 ). Possibly, the same factors that have prevented the conversion of these forests to other forms of agriculture—such as relative inaccessibility and steep slopes—also make them unsuitable for oil palm. In our samples, countries with>30% vulnerable forest either established the majority of their oil palm plantations on recently deforested land (like Indonesia and Ecuador) or, in contrast, they established very few of their plantations on recently deforested land (such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Costa Rica, or Colombia).

The discrepancy in observed deforestation trends for countries with >30% vulnerable forest we might explain by country-level variation in production, land clearing policies, or other barriers to development, such as political instability or the accessibility of forested areas. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, there has been little expansion in oil palm planting over the last 25 years ( Fig 4 ). In Costa Rica, deforestation for plantation establishment may be low because of high coverage of protected areas or because of the conversion of other plantation types, like banana, to oil palm. Protected areas cover one-fifth of the country [ 45 ]. Moreover, the 1996 ban on deforestation reduced deforestation for crop expansion [ 46 ]. Similar to our study, another study also found under 15% deforestation for oil palm plantation establishment in Colombia, mostly in small fragmented patches [ 47 ]. This may be attributed to high costs of land clearing and the inaccessibility of the contiguous forest areas.

A better way to characterize the expansion of oil palm may be to include proximity to infrastructure rather than relying solely on the biophysical requirements for the crop. More localized studies could accomplish this by including distance to population centres or road networks as factors that may determine oil palm development. For example, in Indonesia, village areas suitable for oil palm remained undeveloped because of low accessibility, a circumstance that changes with added infrastructure [ 48 ]. For monitoring purposes, we need to understand the factors associated with likelihood of oil palm development in other regions as well. However, it is possible that outside of Southeast Asia or for larger plantations, likelihood of development is determined by factors other than accessibility. Our observation of sites in South America showed oil palm plantation establishment in areas far from roads or population centres, with some infrastructure built specifically for the palm plantations.

Prioritizing vulnerable forests for conservation

Within forests vulnerable to oil palm development, there is relatively low protection by IUCN category I and II protected areas (4.4% in Southeast Asia to 11.5% in Mesoamerica). In our assessment of vulnerable forest areas, we excluded the IUCN category I and II areas but did not exclude other protected areas and indigenous areas. Therefore, it is possible that some of the areas identified have such designations, some of which may lend a similar degree of protection as IUCN category I and II areas.

Protected areas are a primary strategy for species conservation, but there remain questions about which places to protect. One strategy is the protection of high biodiversity areas, specifically focusing on the places with highest concentration of species with the greatest vulnerability to extinction: those with small ranges or deemed threatened by the IUCN. Applying this strategy, our results indicate that, even if biodiversity of vertebrate taxa were an agreed upon priority, the areas selected for conservation would depend on the specific taxa and vulnerability criteria. In a larger view across taxa and vulnerability criteria, it is clear that expansion of oil palm plantations at the expense of existing tropical forests threatens biodiversity ( Fig 7 ).

Another strategy is the protection of the most accessible forests, those closer to roads and cities and on flatter land. Protecting areas of high accessibility prevents deforestation more effectively than protecting remote and high slope areas [ 49 ]. As we stated in the previous section, accessibility may be a factor important in determining the areas most likely to be developed for oil palm. If this is the case for all regions of production, the two approaches could be combined to address both likelihood of development and biodiversity conservation.

Conclusions

Our findings show high rates of forest loss for palm oil production across a range of countries and continents, raising concerns about future expansions of oil palm plantations. This legacy of forest loss points to the need for increased monitoring and interventions with a particular emphasis in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea in Southeast Asia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil in South America, and Cameroon in Africa. We also find that conservation priorities depend on taxa and selection criteria. By one criterion or another, almost all of the forests vulnerable to oil palm development have high biodiversity. Expansion of oil palm at the expense of natural forest is a conservation concern in all regions. We propose that government regulations, enforcement, and monitoring, combined with voluntary market initiatives by the largest buyers and sellers of palm oil, hold promise for stemming oil palm driven deforestation.

Supporting Information

S1 fig. additional country trends..

Trends of deforestation inside sampled oil palm plantations (red) and total FAO oil palm planted area for twelve countries (black). Both trends are relative to 2013 values, thus both reach 100% in 2013.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.s001

S1 Table. Interpolated Annual Percent of Sample Area Deforested by Country

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159668.s002

Acknowledgments

We thank D.H. Boucher, C. Giri, C. D. Reid, and J.F. Reynolds for their helpful comments. We also thank R. A. Butler for the use of his striking aerial photo of oil palm driven deforestation in Malaysian Borneo.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: VV SLP CNJ. Performed the experiments: VV. Analyzed the data: VV. Wrote the paper: VV SLP CNJ SS.

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Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Institute of Medicine. The Nexus of Biofuels, Climate Change, and Human Health: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2014 Apr 2.

The Nexus of Biofuels, Climate Change, and Human Health: Workshop Summary.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

2 Case Study: The Palm Oil Example

Palm oil accounts for 33 percent of all of the world’s production of vegetable oils, with soybean oil—at 27 percent—its nearest competitor. One of its uses is as a raw material in the production of palm oil–based biodiesel fuel. In the workshop’s second session, Jamal Hisham Hashim, a research fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health and a professor of environmental health at the National University of Malaysia, described Malaysia’s efforts at using palm oil to produce biodiesel fuel. The example highlighted some of the major benefits and challenges of developing biofuels.

• THE MALAYSIAN PALM OIL INDUSTRY

Malaysia is located in Southeast Asia and is split into two land areas; one is on a peninsula south of Thailand and the other is on the island of Borneo, which borders with Indonesia and Brunei. Malaysia and Indonesia together produce 85 percent of the world’s palm oil. The climate of these two countries is particularly well suited for the growing of palm oil, Hisham Hashim said. There have been attempts to grow palm oil in countries farther north, such as Cambodia, but it is possible only in the southern part of the country because it is too dry farther north.

Although the palm oil is not native to Malaysia—it was brought over from Africa—it is now well established, and it serves as both a food crop and a cash crop. The Malaysian palm oil industry has been around for more than 100 years, and there are now 5 million hectares of palm oil plantations—almost 14 percent of the country’s total land area ( May, 2012 ). Until recently, Malaysia was the world’s largest producer of palm oil. It is now second to Indonesia, which has much more area available to grow the palms. Because Indonesia consumes a portion of its palm oil domestically, Malaysia remains the world’s largest exporter of palm oil and palm products. In 2011, it exported 24.3 million metric tons of the oil ( Chin, 2011 ).

The Malaysian government has identified the palm oil industry as 1 of the 12 national key economic areas to spearhead its economic transformation program, whose goal is to transform Malaysia into a developed nation by 2020. The growth strategy for the palm oil industry is not to increase the acreage being planted with palm oil, but rather to increase production to 6 metric tons per hectare per year. “It is already a very productive crop,” Hisham Hashim said, “but we intend to increase productivity further through genetic methods and so on.” Another focus is on value-added downstream activities, such as processed foods, oleo derivatives, phytonutrients, and palm biodiesel.

Most of Malaysia’s palm oil–derived exports—almost 75 percent—are in the form of the crude palm oil itself, with products such as oleochemicals, palm kernel cake, palm kernel oil, and biodiesel making up far smaller percentages ( May, 2012 ). The government would like to increase the amounts of these value-added products. “We are investing a lot in research and conservation to improve the products, especially the oleo chemicals and also the potential of turning it into biodiesel,” Hisham Hashim said.

The palm oil industry is a valuable segment of Malaysia’s economy; accounting for 8 percent of the country’s gross national income per capita, and is the fourth-largest contributor to Malaysia’s economy ( RSPO, 2011 ). World palm oil production more than tripled between 1995 and 2011, so the global demand the palm oil products is very strong. In 2011, heavy rainfall, which disrupted harvesting, combined with increasing demand, caused the price of crude palm oil to jump to US$1,065 per metric ton. The main importers of Malaysia’s palm oil are China, the European Union, India, Pakistan, and the United States. Malaysia’s major competitor for these imports is Indonesia.

• PALM OIL AS A BIOFUEL

Palm oil has a variety of uses, Hisham Hashim said. Its traditional use has been as cooking oil, but it is now used as a food additive and an industrial lubricant as well as in the production of various cosmetic ingredients. “We have a very active palm oil research area in Malaysia that helped to generate these other important products,” he said. One particularly promising use is in the production of phytonutrients—plant-derived chemicals that are added to food which contribute to health. Recently, palm oil has been used as a feedstock in the production of biodiesel.

The Malaysian government’s plan is to combine 5 percent palm biodiesel with 95 percent petroleum diesel, in a way similar to the addition of 10 percent ethanol into gasoline in the United States. In response to a question about why the percentage should be just 5 percent, Hisham Hashim explained that it is simply an economic issue. At present, the cost of palm oil is more than US$1,000 per metric ton, and any price over about US$600 per ton makes palm biodiesel noncompetitive in Malaysia when compared to petroleum-derived diesel. However, Hisham Hashim said, much of the situation is driven by the government’s subsidy framework. “Diesel is highly subsidized in Malaysia, and at the moment the government is not yet extending this subsidy to palm oil biodiesel. So, that makes it very uncompetitive with other uses of palm oil,” he said. Hence, it is better for palm oil producers to sell the product for uses other than biodiesel.

Nonetheless, palm oil has several advantages as a potential biofuel source, Hisham Hashim said. It has a larger yield than any other source of vegetable oil, for example at 3.93 tonnes per hectare per year, it has nearly three times the yield of rapeseed, its closest competitor. “It is cheaper than any other vegetable oil used in biodiesel production,” he said. “And it is a perennial crop with a life-cycle of 25 years, so it can be very productive over a significant duration of time.” Indeed, one issue in Malaysia is that the overall yield per hectare is declining because so many of the palms are getting close to the end of their productive period and their yield is decreasing, but the plantation owners are putting off replanting because the cash flow is still substantial.

When compared to petroleum-based diesel, biodiesel from palm oil has certain advantages in its physical and chemical characteristics, Hisham Hashim said. For example, its sulfur content is much lower; this is an advantage because the sulfur dioxide release from the use of petroleum-based diesel is a serious atmospheric pollutant which can lead to acid rain and is hazardous to human health. A recently developed variety of palm biodiesel has a very low pour point so that it pours more easily at cold temperatures, making it a possible product for use in colder climates. Palm biodiesel also has an advantage in its cetane number—which is analogous to the octane number for gasoline—when compared with petroleum-based diesel. It also produces far less carbon residues, which means that it will leave less carbon build-up in a diesel engine than petroleum diesel.

Palm biodiesel also has some physical and chemical disadvantages, such as a higher viscosity, a higher flashpoint, and a lower gross heat of combustion. But all in all, Hisham Hashim said, the potential is there for palm biodiesel to be a valuable and promising product. One of the most intriguing products is the low-pour-point palm biodiesel, which is not yet being made on a production scale, but is showing a lot of promise.

To date, however, movement toward the production of palm oil biodiesel in Malaysia has been very slow. Fifty-six licenses for biodiesel plants were issued under the Malaysia Biofuel Industry Act of 2007 ( Chin, 2011 ), but so far only 25 biodiesel plants have been built. The major reason for this, Hisham Hashim said, is that petroleum diesel is receiving a significant subsidy from the government, and palm biodiesel cannot compete.

Furthermore, diesel vehicle use in Malaysia is very small, accounting for only 5 percent of the total number of private vehicles. The initial government plan for encouraging palm biodiesel was to require government diesel vehicles to use a fuel blend with 5 percent palm diesel, referred to as B5. However, the total amount of palm oil diesel used by government vehicles running on B5 in 2009 was only 40 tonnes per month—an amount far too small to make it profitable for petroleum companies to set up B5 blending facilities. Even a nationwide B5 mandate in Malaysia would translate into a biodiesel consumption of only 500,000 tonnes. “So the potential for local consumption of biodiesel is not significant,” Hisham Hashim said. “The only way that we can do this is if we can export biodiesel to other countries, such as the European Union.”

• ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF PALM OIL

Hisham Hashim next discussed the environmental impacts of palm oil. Deforestation is a major issue because 15 percent of the country’s total land area has been transformed into palm oil plantations. That will not be as much a problem in the future, however, because the country now has strict regulations that require environment impact assessments to be carried out before opening more large tracts of land for palm oil plantations.

Loss of tropical biodiversity is also an issue, he said, but Malaysia is now emphasizing sustainable palm oil production, with 48 percent of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil 1 –certified palm oil coming from Malaysia.

The mass clearing of forest areas to create palm oil plantations has resulted in significant soil erosion, and palm oil mills have produced liquid effluents that end up in the water. In the past, Hisham Hashim said, the government would issue contravening licenses to palm oil mills even when they did not meet regulatory standards for liquid effluents, but that no longer happens. Palm oil mills also produce a certain amount of air pollution. Indeed, most of the air and water pollution due to palm oil now comes from the refining of the oil, although occasionally there was air pollution caused by the burning of trees in order to clear land for plantations, or the burning of old palm oil trees for replanting. One of the worst instances came in 1997, an El Niño year, when the fires used to clear land spread into the surrounding forest and caused extensive forest fires and a heavy load of air pollution. “Some of this is still happening,” Hisham Hashim said, “but the government is clamping down on the palm oil plantation owners.”

• OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH HAZARDS IN THE PALM OIL INDUSTRY

One of the main occupational health hazards in the palm oil industry is the risk of back problems caused by the harvesting. “We’re manually harvesting the fruit,” Hisham Hashim explained, “so we’re causing ergonomic problems like lower back pain and injury.” Eye injuries are another risk of fruit harvesting, because workers use sickles to harvest the fruit, which can lead to debris flying into workers’ eyes if they do not have eye protection. And the palm fronds have thorns that can scratch or puncture skin.

Palms attract rats, which feed on the fruits, and the rats in turn attract snakes, so historically snake bites have been occupational hazards for workers on palm oil plantations. Today, some of the plantations use barn owls as a way of controlling the rat population and, consequently, the number of snakes.

As with many forms of agriculture, the use of pesticides poses a hazard for workers on palm oil plantations. Before its ban, many plantations used paraquat for weed control because the ground has to be free of weeds in order for the palm oil to be productive. Paraquat is highly effective in controlling weeds, but it is also toxic to humans and animals. Thus, many palm oil plantations have begun grazing cattle on the land among the palms. The cattle eat the weeds, which minimizes the need for pesticides.

In summary, Hisham Hashim said that because of the high demand for palm oil, the palm oil industry will likely remain an important economic driver for the Malaysian and Indonesian economies. Furthermore, palm oil has great potential as a source of biofuel. However, he said, at the current prices for crude palm oil, palm biofuel is not viable. Thus, the palm oil that is produced today is sold for uses other than biofuel.

Introducing palm oil trees with a higher yield and developing value-added downstream products will help cushion the environmental damage from palm oil production. That is, instead of increasing the acreage devoted to palm oils, Malaysia is concentrating on improving yields and diversifying the products that can be generated from palm oil.

Furthermore, the Malaysian government is focusing on responsible plantation management as a way of minimizing environmental damage and occupational health hazards associated with palm oil production. “Many of these plantations are huge companies, so they should be responsible for putting together better and a more sustainable management of palm oil plantations. But it is not easy to control them because some are located in remote areas accessible only by helicopters and four-wheel-drive vehicles, so they are out of sight of the regulator,” Hisham Hashim explained. Still, he said, it can be done. “It is a matter of commitment from the plantation managers and owners.”

Jack Spengler, roundtable member, opened the discussion session with a comment. Ramon Sanchez, one of his graduate students, looked at the use of biodiesel in Mexico City and found that it resulted in a reduction of particulates, which led to health benefits in the population. This has important implications for the health equation regarding biofuels, he said.

Then Spengler asked a question: “If palm oil has been used for so many years, why does it have to be done on big plantations? Can it actually be distributed to smaller-scale operations, a village for instance?” Hisham Hashim responded that the palm oil industry started out as a poverty-eradication project. “We cut down the trees and opened up land for resettlement of the poor rural families into this cooperative plantation operated by Felda,” he said. “And the economic benefit was quite significant in trying to bridge the gap between the poor and the more affluent segment of the society. So that was quite successful.” But with the rising price of palm oil, the Malaysian government saw an opportunity to make the palm oil industry a significant contributor to the Malaysian economy, and “that’s when they started big concessions to companies to open up huge tracts of land.” The yield on a large palm oil plantation is about double the yield achieved by the small holders. Thus, it seemed that moving to large plantations would be the best way to manage the industry, he said, but there does seem to be a need “to balance between large plantations and small holders.”

Hisham Hashim added some details about the prospects of exporting biodiesel, given that local consumption is limited. One approach would be to export biodiesel to the European Union, but the European Union has strict regulations on the types of biodiesel that can be used. For example, any biofuel used in diesel mixtures in Europe must offer a 35 percent carbon reduction according to life-cycle analysis, and palm biodiesel offers only 19 percent. “Because of that, we cannot penetrate the European market at the moment,” he said. Another problem is that the European Union requires that the palms not be planted in highly biodiversed land or land with high carbon content, and “some of the palm oil plantations have been planted over peat soil, which has a lot of carbon storage.” The problem, he explained, is that planting the palms requires that the land be drained, and the dried-out peat soil sometimes catches fire, releasing carbon.

However, he said, not all palm oil plantations are on peat land. So Malaysia is now negotiating with the European Union as well as other markets in hopes of getting palm biodiesel accepted as a fuel for use in these countries.

Another workshop participant asked Hisham Hashim about the water pollution resulting from the smaller-scale palm oil operations. “I’m wondering if that happens because of a lack of available technology. Is it that those villagers chose to not use technology which would have prevented the contamination of that valued waterway, or is it that the type of technology for wastewater treatment isn’t available remotely?”

Hisham Hashim answered that it is not a problem with the technology because the waste is mainly organic components and the water can be easily treated in a not particularly sophisticated water treatment plant. And, indeed, the small holders tend to be more environmentally conscious than the bigger plantation management, he said. These huge plantations are generally located in remote areas, far away from the regulatory agencies, which gives them the opportunity to violate the laws.

• Chin M. Biofuels in Malaysia: An analysis of the legal and institutional framework. Center for International Forestry Research; Bagor, Indonesia: 2011. (Working Paper 64).
• May CY. September 2012: Malaysia: Economic transformation advances palm oil industry. 2012. [July 29, 2013]. Available at http://www ​.aocs.org/Membership ​/FreeCover ​.cfm?itemnumber=18340 .
• RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil). Malaysia sets record as world’s largest producer of certified sustainable palm oil. 2011. [July 29, 2013]. Available at http://www ​.rspo.org/news_details ​.php?nid=27 .

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil was established in 2004 to promote the production and use of sustainable palm oil. Available at http://www ​.rspo.org/en/who_is_rspo (accessed July 29, 2013).

• Cite this Page Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Institute of Medicine. The Nexus of Biofuels, Climate Change, and Human Health: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2014 Apr 2. 2, Case Study: The Palm Oil Example.
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Explore palm oil production across the world and its impacts on the environment.

In a large-scale consumer survey across the UK population on the perceptions of vegetable oils, palm oil was deemed to be the least environmentally friendly. 1

It wasn’t even close. 41% of people thought palm oil was ‘environmentally unfriendly,’ compared to 15% for soybean oil, 9% for rapeseed, 5% for sunflower, and 2% for olive oil. 43% also answered ‘Don’t know,’ meaning that almost no one thought it was environmentally friendly.

Retailers know that this is becoming an important driver of consumer choices. From shampoos to detergents and from chocolate to cookies, companies are trying to eliminate palm oil from their products. There are now long lists of companies that have done so [Google ‘palm oil free’ and you will find an endless supply] . Many online grocery stores now offer the option to apply a ‘palm-oil free’ filter when browsing their products. 2

Why are consumers turning their back on palm oil? And is this reputation justified?

In this article, I address some key questions about palm oil production: how has it changed, where is it grown, and how has this affected deforestation and biodiversity? The story of palm oil is more complex than it is often portrayed.

Global demand for vegetable oils has increased rapidly over the last 50 years. As palm oil is the most productive oil crop, it has taken up a lot of this production. This has had a negative impact on the environment, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. But it’s not clear that the alternatives would have fared any better. In fact, because we can produce up to 20 times as much oil per hectare from palm versus the alternatives, it has probably spared a lot of environmental impacts from elsewhere.

Palm oil production has grown to meet rising demands for vegetable oils

Palm oil production has increased rapidly since the 1960s. Between 1970 and 2020, the world’s production of palm oil increased by about 40 times. Global production went from only 2 million tonnes to around 80 million tonnes. The change in global production is shown in the chart. 3

The story of palm oil is less about it as an isolated commodity and more about the rising demand for vegetable oils. Palm oil is a very productive crop; as we will see later, it produces over a third of the world’s oil but uses less than a tenth of croplands devoted to oil production. It has, therefore, been a natural choice to meet this demand.

Who uses palm oil, and what is it used for?

Why has the market for palm and vegetable oils more broadly increased so rapidly? What is it used for?

Palm oil is very versatile and is used in a range of products across the world:

• Foods : over two-thirds (68%) is used in foods ranging from margarine to chocolate, pizzas, bread, cooking oils, and food for farmed animals;
• Industrial applications : 27% is used in industrial applications and consumer products such as soaps, detergents, cosmetics and cleaning agents;
• Bioenergy : 5% is used as biofuels for transport, electricity, or heat.

While food products dominate globally, this breakdown varies from country to country. Some countries use much more palm oil for biofuels than others. In Germany, for example, bioenergy is the largest use , accounting for 41% (more than food at 40%). A push towards increased biofuel consumption in the transport sector has been driving this, despite it being worse for the environment than normal diesel (more on this later).

In the next section, we will look at what countries produce palm oil, but here, we see a map of palm oil imports. Although production is focused in only a few countries across the tropical belt, we see that palm oil is an important product across the world.

Where is palm oil grown?

Oil palm is a tropical plant species. It thrives on high rainfall, adequate sunlight, and humid conditions – this means the best growing areas are around the equator. 4 Palm oil is therefore grown in many countries across Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. In the map, we see the distribution of production across the world.

Small amounts of palm oil are grown in many countries, but the global market is dominated by only two: Indonesia and Malaysia.

In the chart, we see the production of the palm oil plant across a number of countries. Other producers include Thailand, Colombia, and Nigeria. As we’d expect, all of these countries lie along the zone of ‘optimal conditions’ around the equator.

How has land use for palm oil changed over time?

How has the world achieved such a rapid expansion of palm oil production? There are only two ways in which we can produce more of a given crop: increase yields (growing more on a given amount of land) or expand the amount of land we use to grow it.

Global palm oil yields have increased over time but are far short of the increase in demand. This means that over the last 50 years, the amount of land devoted to growing palm oil has greatly increased. In the chart here, we see the change in land use. Between 1970 and 2020, the land the world uses to grow palm has increased by almost ten times, from 3 million to almost 30 million hectares. Indonesia and Malaysia account for around 70% of global land use for palm oil. This is relatively little, considering that these countries account for more than 80% of production . This is because both countries achieve high yields .

Shown in the chart is the amount of land that the world devotes to vegetable oil crop production. Palm oil accounts for a small slice of this land use, which is notable when we consider that it produces the largest share of the oil.

Is palm oil responsible for deforestation?

Land use to grow palm has increased significantly since 1970. But has this expansion come at the expense of tropical forests?

This seems like a simple question, but it is not as straightforward as we might expect. The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Oil Palm Task Force conducted an in-depth review of the literature to understand the impact of palm oil on deforestation. 5 There was a lot of variability in the results, depending on how a forest was defined, the geographic focus of the analysis, and the timeframe that was considered.

Having done my own review of the literature, I conclude that palm oil has been a significant driver of tropical deforestation, especially in Southeast Asia.

Some studies suggest that palm oil has played a very small role in global forest loss. One study suggests that palm oil is responsible for around 2% of global tree loss. 6 Another suggests it is responsible for only 0.2% of intact forest loss. 7 This seems very low. But there are a couple of caveats to these figures. Firstly, they measure forest loss , which combines both permanent deforestation (where trees do not regrow) and forest degradation (which is a temporary thinning of forests with subsequent regrowth). As we discuss in our related article on this, deforestation accounts for just one-quarter of global tree loss. Palm oil’s contribution to deforestation – which has greater environmental impacts than degradation – would be higher.

Secondly, the 0.2% figure is based on intact forest loss. Intact forests are a specific subset of primary forests, which are very rich sites of biodiversity and are largely undisturbed by human activity. Only 6% of global intact forest is in Southeast Asia, the hotspot of palm oil expansion. Only 2.8% was in Indonesia, and 0.2% in Malaysia. So, even if all of these countries’ forests were wiped out by palm oil plantations, it would still make very little difference to this metric of global intact forest loss. The authors of the original study make it clear that intact forest loss should not be confused with primary forest loss.

So, how much of palm oil’s expansion has really come at the expense of forests? Let’s focus on the two key countries driving production: Indonesia and Malaysia. In the chart here, we see the drivers of deforestation in Indonesia from 2001 to 2016. 8 Oil palm plantations were the largest driver of deforestation over this period, accounting for 23%. However, we also see that its role has declined over the last decade: there was a peak in 2008–2009 when it reached almost 40% of Indonesia's deforestation, but it has since declined to less than 15%.

Part of what makes this question so challenging to answer is that it depends on whether you only consider palm plantations, which immediately and directly replaced existing forests, or whether you include plantations that very quickly replaced forests that had been logged for wood, paper, and pulp. In a paper published in Nature , David Gaveau and colleagues (2016) used satellite imagery to assess what types of land industrial plantations replaced in the Borneo region. 9 Industrial plantations include palm oil and pulpwood tree plantations but are dominated by the former.

This is shown for the Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo in the chart.

75% of these plantations were grown on land that was previously forested in 1973. Not all of these plantations were the direct drivers of this replacement. In fact, only one-quarter of post-1973 plantations in Borneo were driven by the rapid conversion of this land to plantations (20–21% oil palm; 4.3–4.8% pulpwood). This is shown in green in the chart. Direct deforestation for palm oil played a larger role in Malaysia; 60% was driven by plantations, whilst in Indonesia, it was only 16%.

This study only looks at the Borneo region. However, this is reasonably consistent with studies that have looked at the expansion of palm plantations more broadly. A global study of palm-driven deforestation found that in Southeast Asia, 45% of oil palm plantations came from areas that were forests in 1989. 10 In Indonesia, this was 54%, and in Malaysia, 40%.

These distinctions in how quickly palm oil plantations replaced forests make it difficult to give a clear, single number on how much deforestation it has caused. But, most of the research concludes that, particularly in tropical forests in Southeast Asia, palm oil expansion has played a significant role.

Palm oil versus the alternatives

Palm oil has been an important driver of deforestation. But would the alternatives have fared any better?

There are a couple of reasons why palm oil has been the favored crop to meet the growing demand for vegetable oils. Firstly, it has the lowest production costs. 11 Secondly, its composition means it’s versatile and can be used for food and non-food purposes alike: some oils are not suited for cosmetic uses such as shampoos and detergents. Third, it gets incredibly high yields.

If we weren’t meeting global oil demand through palm oil, another oil crop would have to take its place. Would the alternatives be any better for the environment?

We can compare crops in terms of their yields – how much oil we can produce from one hectare of land. This comparison is shown in the chart. 12 Palm oil stands out immediately. It achieves a much higher yield than the alternatives. From each hectare of land, you can produce about 2.9 tonnes of palm oil. That’s around four times higher than alternatives such as sunflower or rapeseed oil (where you get about 0.7 tonnes per hectare) and 10 to 15 times higher than popular alternatives such as coconut or groundnut oil. 13

Let’s take a look at how this comparison affects the global landscape of oil crops in terms of production and land use. In the chart, we see the breakdown of global vegetable oil production in 2018. On the left, we have each crop’s share of global land use for vegetable oils; on the right, we have its share of production.

We know from our yield comparison that palm oil achieves a much higher yield. What this means is that it accounts for a very high share of oil production without taking up much land. In 2017, it produced 36% of our vegetable oil but took up only 8.6% of the land.

Sunflower oil was almost exactly proportional in terms of how much oil it produced relative to how much land it took up: it produced 9% of oil and required 8.3% of land. Rape and mustard seed oil were also in proportion. The rest – soybean, olive, coconut, groundnut, and sesame seed – used more land than they gave back in oil production. Coconut oil, for example, provided only 1.4% of global oil but required 3.6% of the land.

It’s true, of course, that some crops provide co-products in the process. The non-oil fraction of soybeans, for example, can be allocated to other uses , such as high-protein animal feed. Therefore, using this land to grow crops meets other food demands at the same time. But this doesn’t change the fact that if the world requires a given amount of vegetable oil, it is the oil yield per hectare of each crop that we care about – regardless of whether it provides co-products in the process.

What would be the impact of substituting palm oil?

Palm oil achieves very high yields relative to other oil crops. Why does this matter?

If we want to limit our environmental impact, reducing the amount of land we devote to agriculture is key. To make space for more croplands and pastures, we have been displacing forests, grasslands, and peatlands – areas of rich biodiversity. The less land we need for farming, the better.

The high yields from palm oil mean that it, in some sense, ‘spares’ the world additional farmland we would need if we want to meet global oil demand from the alternatives. We can look at this in terms of the amount of land we would need if the total global demand for vegetable oil was met from a single crop alone. In other words, how much land would be needed if the 218 million tonnes of oil were only produced from palm oil or from rapeseed? This comparison is shown in the chart. As we’d expect, we see vast differences.

Let’s give these numbers some context. Currently, the world devotes around 322 million hectares to oilseed crops. That’s an area similar to the size of India. If global oil were supplied solely from palm, we’d need 77 million hectares, around four times less. If we got it from rapeseed, we’d need an area similar to the size we use today; from coconuts, an area the size of Canada; and in the most extreme case, we’d have to devote 2 billion hectares to sesame seeds – a bit more than Canada, the USA, and India combined.

In this sense, palm oil has been a ‘land-sparing’ crop. Switching to alternatives would mean the world would need to use more farmland and face the environmental costs that come with it. A global boycott of palm oil would not fix the problem; it would simply shift it elsewhere and at a greater scale because the world would need more land to meet demand.

This is true for other tropical oil crops such as coconut, groundnut, or soy. However, we might argue that this oversimplifies the comparison to more temperate crops: it assumes the environmental impact of devoting one hectare of land to sunflower seeds in Europe is the same as cutting down tropical rainforests to grow palm or coconut plantations. We know that tropical forests are incredibly rich in biodiversity and store a lot of carbon from the atmosphere. In some cases, especially for European domestic markets, some substitution for rapeseed or sunflower seed oils could have a positive environmental impact, even if it required using a bit more land.

How can we use palm oil without destroying tropical forests?

There are a number of steps we can take to ensure we meet the global demand for oils without destroying our tropical forests.

Substitutes for palm oil do not always exist . As we’ve discussed, substituting palm oil with alternatives can do more harm than good. But it’s also true that alternative oils are not always suitable for the products we need. Palm oil is unique in its versatility, meaning it is suitable for a range of foods, cosmetics, industrial applications, and biofuels. Substitution would be feasible for most food products. Substitution in industrial processes would be more difficult, especially if we want to replace it with oils grown in temperate countries: sunflower or rapeseed oil is not suited to products such as soaps, detergents, or cosmetics. One sector where alternatives do exist is bioenergy, which brings us to our next point.

European countries should stop using palm oil for biofuels . The EU – after China and India – is the third largest importer of palm oil . There are some products where using palm is our best option. This is not the case for biofuels, yet two-thirds of the EU’s imported palm oil goes to bioenergy production. Using palm oil as a biofuel is worse for the environment than petrol. A meta-analysis conducted by the Royal Academy of Engineering on EU biofuels found that when we factored in land-use change, the greenhouse gas emissions from palm oil were higher than those from using a petrol car. 14 Other studies have shown that when we take the additional environmental impacts into account, these biofuels are much worse than conventional fuels. 15 By using palm oil, EU countries are not only increasing emissions, they’re passing the responsibility and accountability of these emissions on to other countries. A ban on using palm oil for biofuels would reduce this impact while allowing global palm oil to be used for purposes where there are few better alternatives – food and cosmetic products.

Increase companies' sourcing from suppliers with sustainability certification . There are now a number of certification schemes that help to verify whether palm oil is being produced in a sustainable way. The most well-known is the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The RSPO was launched in 2004 and provides certification for suppliers who produce their crops in a more sustainable way by conducting impact assessments, managing high-value areas of biodiversity, not clearing primary forests, and avoiding land clearance through fires. 16 For example, suppliers can only be certified if their plantations since 2005 have not replaced primary forests or areas rich in biodiversity. Consumer demand for sustainable palm oil puts pressure on food and cosmetic companies to source from certified suppliers and ultimately rewards the most sustainable growers.

Only 19% of palm oil production is covered by the RSPO. 17 Research into the impact of the RSPO found that it was successful in reducing deforestation. 18 However, it found that this most avoided deforestation from older plantations, which is not where most tropical forests remain. To have a real, permanent impact, certification needs to cover a much larger number of growers.

Increased crop yields. If we want to reduce agricultural expansion, we want to maximize crop yields through effective management practices, improved varieties, and choosing the most productive areas of land.

This combination of interventions involves actors across the full production line, from agricultural scientists improving crop varieties to palm oil growers, governments, food and cosmetic producers, retailers, and consumers. Pressure from consumers can filter through to growers. To do this effectively, understanding consumers has to be clearer. Many believe that boycotting palm oil is how we make a difference. But as we’ve seen, the alternatives are not necessarily better; more sustainable palm oil (used for food, not fuel) rather than no palm oil is what we should be pushing for.

Ostfeld, R., Howarth, D., Reiner, D., & Krasny, P. (2019). Peeling back the label—exploring sustainable palm oil ecolabelling and consumption in the United Kingdom . Environmental Research Letters , 14 (1), 014001.

Ocado, an online UK retailer, is just one example .

This data is sourced from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Wahid, M. B., Abdullah, S. N. A., & IE, H. (2005). Oil palm . Plant Production Science , 8 (3), 288-297.

Meijaard, E., Garcia-Ulloa, J., Sheil, D., Wich, S.A., Carlson, K.M., Juffe-Bignoli, D., and Brooks, T.M. (eds.) (2018). Oil palm and biodiversity. A situation analysis by the IUCN Oil Palm Task Force . IUCN Oil Palm Task Force Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. xiii + 116pp.

Pendrill, F., Persson, U. M., Godar, J., & Kastner, T. (2019). Deforestation displaced: trade in forest-risk commodities and the prospects for a global forest transition . Environmental Research Letters , 14 (5), 055003.

Potapov, P., Hansen, M. C., Laestadius, L., Turubanova, S., Yaroshenko, A., Thies, C., ... & Esipova, E. (2017). The last frontiers of wilderness: Tracking loss of intact forest landscapes from 2000 to 2013 . Science advances , 3 (1), e1600821.

Austin, K. G., Schwantes, A., Gu, Y., & Kasibhatla, P. S. (2019). What causes deforestation in Indonesia? . Environmental Research Letters , 14(2), 024007.

Seymour, F., & Harris, N. L. (2019). Reducing tropical deforestation . Science , 365 (6455), 756-757.

Gaveau, D. L., Sheil, D., Salim, M. A., Arjasakusuma, S., Ancrenaz, M., Pacheco, P., & Meijaard, E. (2016). Rapid conversions and avoided deforestation: examining four decades of industrial plantation expansion in Borneo . Scientific reports , 6 (1), 1-13.

Vijay, V., Pimm, S. L., Jenkins, C. N., & Smith, S. J. (2016). The impacts of oil palm on recent deforestation and biodiversity loss . PloS one , 11 (7), e0159668.

Carter, C., Finley, W., Fry, J., Jackson, D., & Willis, L. (2007). Palm oil markets and future supply . European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology , 109 (4), 307-314.

Here, I have calculated the actual yield of oil from each crop rather than the yield of the total crop. No crop is 100% oil-based, and therefore, this will differ from the mass of the crop itself. Ultimately, this is what matters if our question is how to meet global oil demand.

I have calculated the oil yield for each crop by dividing the actual oil production by the area harvested for each. Both of these metrics are sourced from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

To demonstrate this, let’s turn crop yields on its head and look at the inverse: the area of land you would need to produce one tonne of vegetable oil. We can simply calculate this as 1 / Yield (in tonnes per hectare).

This comparison by crop is shown here . To produce one tonne of oil, we need only 0.3 hectares of land from palm oil, 1.4 hectares from sunflower or rapeseed, 3.7 hectares from coconut, and 7 hectares from groundnut. To produce one tonne of oil, you would need four times the cropland devoted to sunflower or rapeseed or 10 to 15 times the amount of land devoted to coconut production.

Royal Academy of Engineering (2017). Sustainability of liquid biofuels .

R. Zah et al., Ökobilanz Von Energieprodukten: Ökologische Bewertung Von Biotreibstoffen (EMPA, Abteilung Technologie und Gesellschaft, St. Gallen, Switzerland, 2007).

This is based on reported figures as of November 2020.

Carlson, K. M., Heilmayr, R., Gibbs, H. K., Noojipady, P., Burns, D. N., Morton, D. C., ... & Kremen, C. (2018). Effect of oil palm sustainability certification on deforestation and fire in Indonesia . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 115 (1), 121-126.

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Palm oil plantations and deforestation in Guatemala: Certifying products as ‘sustainable’ is no panacea

Image Caption Palm oil plantation in Guatemala. Image credit: iStock

Contact: Jim Erickson

Cheap, versatile and easy to grow, palm oil is the world’s most consumed vegetable oil and is found in roughly half of all packaged supermarket products, from bread and margarine to shampoo and toothpaste.

But producing palm oil has caused deforestation and biodiversity loss across Southeast Asia and elsewhere, including Central America. Efforts to curtail the damage have largely focused on voluntary environmental certification programs that label qualifying palm-oil sources as “sustainable.”

However, those certification programs have been criticized by environmental groups as greenwashing tools that enable multinational corporations to claim fully sustainable palm oil while continuing to sell products that fall far short of the deforestation-free goal.

Findings from a new University of Michigan-led study, published online in the Journal of Environmental Management, support some of the critics’ claims—and go much further.

The U-M case study focuses on Guatemala, which is projected to become the world’s third-largest palm-oil producer by 2030 after Indonesia and Malaysia, and an influential environmental certification system called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO.

“Our results indicate the supply chains of transnational conglomerates drove deforestation and ecological encroachment in Guatemala to support U.S. palm oil consumption,” said study lead author Calli VanderWilde , a doctoral student at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability who did the work for her dissertation.

“In addition, we found no evidence to suggest that RSPO certification effectively protects against deforestation or ecological encroachment. Given that oil palm expansion is predicted to increase significantly in the coming years, this pattern is likely to continue without changes to governance, both institutionally and to supply chains.”

The U-M-led research team tracked palm oil sourced from former forestland, and other ecologically critical areas in Guatemala, by several large transnational conglomerates that sell food products made from the oil in the United States. The corporations are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and have RSPO commitments and sourcing policies in place to ensure the sustainability of their palm oil supplies.

The study used satellite imagery and machine learning to quantify deforestation attributable to palm oil plantation expansion in Guatemala over a decade, 2009-2019. In addition, the researchers used shipment records and other data sources to reconstruct corporate supply chains and to link transnational conglomerates to palm oil-driven deforestation.

The study found that:

• Guatemalan palm oil plantations expanded an estimated 215,785 acres during the study period, with 28% of the new cropland replacing forests.
• As of 2019, more than 60% of the palm oil plantations in the study area were in Key Biodiversity Areas. KBAs are sites that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity in terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.
• RSPO-certified plantations, comprising 63% of the total cultivated area assessed, did not produce a statistically significant reduction in deforestation and appear to be ineffective at reducing encroachment into ecologically sensitive areas in Guatemala.
• Despite their RSPO membership and pledges to source palm oil from certified plantations, several multinational corporations predominantly sourced palm oil from noncertified mills in Guatemala.
• Even RSPO-certified palm oil plantations and mills are contributing to deforestation in Guatemala.

Guatemala is divided into 22 administrative districts called departamentos. The study focused on a 20,850-square-mile region in the three departamentos (Alta Verapaz, Izabal and the lower half of Petén) responsible for 75% of Guatemala’s palm oil production.

The researchers used high-resolution satellite imagery to assess land-use change between 2009 and 2019, and a machine learning algorithm enabled them to distinguish between forests and monoculture plantations.

They found that oil palm expansion is encroaching on, and causing deforestation in, seven Key Biodiversity Areas and 23 protected areas.

Among the areas impacted, the Key Biodiversity Areas with the largest palm extent include the Río La Pasión, Caribe de Guatemala and Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve. The Río La Pasión is an especially rich area for endemic fish species, making it an important area for conservation.

Oil palm encroachment on the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve threatens animals such as the quetzal, Guatemala’s national bird. Known as the jewel of Guatemala, the reserve is an irreplaceable gene bank for tropical reforestation and agroforestry and supports the livelihoods of more than 400,000 people.

The researchers identified 119 RSPO-certified plantations and 82 non-RSPO plantations. During the study period, 9% of the RSPO-certified plantation expansion resulted in, or contributed to, forest loss, compared to 25% of the noncertified plantation expansion.

“Environmental certification does not effectively mitigate deforestation risk, and firms cannot rely on—or be allowed to rely on—certification to achieve deforestation-free supply chains,” said study senior author Joshua Newell , a geographer and a professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability.

By reconstructing the supply chains of the three conglomerates, the researchers revealed connections to palm oil-driven deforestation. Of the 60,810 acres of palm oil-driven deforestation across the study period, more than 99% was traced to plantations supplying palm and palm-kernel oil to mills used by two multinational conglomerates. Seventy-two percent of the palm and palm-kernel oil was linked to the subset of plantations supplying a third corporation’s mills.

“Palm oil has attracted attention for its ties to widespread forest and biodiversity loss across Southeast Asia. However, the literature has paid minimal attention to newer spaces of production and issues of corporate supply-chain traceability,” VanderWilde said.

“As it stands, environmental certification makes unjustified claims of ‘sustainability’ and fails to serve as a reliable tool for fulfilling emerging zero-deforestation requirements.”

The authors recommend reforms to RSPO policies and practices, robust corporate tracking of supply chains, and the strengthening of forest governance in Guatemala.

In addition to VanderWilde and Newell, authors of the study are Dimitrios Gounaridis of the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability and Benjamin Goldstein of McGill University. Funding for the study was provided by U-M’s Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship Program.

This article originally appeared on the Michigan News website .

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Review article, impacts of palm oil trade on ecosystem services: cameroon as a case study.

• Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States

Palm oil (PO) producing countries are expanding oil palm cultivated areas to meet growing demands at the expense of tropical forests and the ecosystem services (ES) they provide. Current responses to the growing call for sustainable PO trade are based on environmental impacts such as deforestation, partly because most social impacts have not been studied. These responses are based on information from Asia and South America since little has been done in Africa. This study fills these gaps by synthesizing the impacts of PO trade on ES from peer-reviewed and gray literature. Our case study is Cameroon, which harbors part of the Congo basin forest and experiences fast deforestation rates. Fifty-three sources of literature were used for this study (53% peer-reviewed and 47% gray literature). We found that oil palm cultivation was reported to negatively affect 15 ecosystem services in 147 instances (85%) and positively affect seven ecosystem services in 25 instances (15%). The majority of negative impacts were on carbon sequestration and climate regulation (20%), habitat quality (13%) and genetic diversity (13%). The most positive impact was on food provision (8%). These results highlight the trade-offs between food provision and other ES. While current policy responses have focused on environmental impacts, many negative social impacts are associated with PO trade that should be addressed within new policy tools.

Introduction

Palm oil (PO) is one of the most widely used and traded vegetable oils, accounting for nearly 40% of global vegetable oil production ( IUCN, 2020 ). This PO is produced by extraction from the fruits of the oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis ) tree. Palm oil’s chemical composition makes it versatile, and so is found in a variety of products like detergents, cosmetics, toothpaste, snacks, and biofuels ( Ruggeri and Samoggia, 2018 ; Mutsaers, 2019 ; Ayompe et al., 2021 ). Over the past few years, the global demand for PO has significantly increased compared to other less accessible and more expensive vegetable oils, such as soy ( Hoyle and Levang, 2012 ). For example, between 2012 and 2021, global crude PO production increased from less than 56 million metric tons to 76 million metric tons, representing an average annual growth rate of about 3.2% ( Statista, 2022 ). The countries contributing the most to global PO production are Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand which produced about 63 million tons in 2018. A significant amount is produced by South American countries such as Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador (3 million tons), while Africa is the least producing continent with the bulk of PO produced mostly by Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon (1.6 million tons) ( CIFOR, 2021 ; Ritchie and Roser, 2021 ). It is speculated that PO might account for 65% of all vegetable oils produced globally by 2050, as the 51 million tons of global production in 2015 is expected to increase to between 120 and 156 million tons by 2050 ( RSPO-EU Roundtable, 2015 ). However, achieving such a growth rate without implementing sustainable palm oil strategies may come at a cost, especially for biodiversity, and ecosystem services (ES), i.e., the varied benefits humans get from the natural environments ( Daily, 1997 ; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Program), 2005 ). ES such as climate regulation and carbon sequestration as well as water purification, habitat, and provision of food and raw materials among many others support human wellbeing. These ES are depleted by rampant land use and land cover changes to accommodate the expansion of oil palm cultivation globally ( Ayompe et al., 2021 ).

The expansion of oil palm cultivation poses a huge threat to ES in one of the most diverse biomes in the world, the tropical rainforests. Oil palm is native to West and Central Africa and has over the years been nursed and grown in other parts of the world ( Murphy et al., 2021 ). It is today cultivated in countries along the equatorial belt. Countries in this region have the favorable hot and humid climate necessary for the growth of the oil palm crop. The tropical rainforests. Harbors about half of the world’s biodiversity, with about 62% of global terrestrial vertebrate species ( Pillay et al., 2022 ). Also, tropical rainforests contain some of the largest depositories of above-ground biomass carbon stores in the world. This carbon stock is amassed by CO 2 removal from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. CO 2 can also be lost back into the atmosphere due to forest disturbances such as deforestation, consequently impacting the global carbon budget ( Goïta et al., 2017 ). The rich biodiversity of the tropical rainforests supports the ecosystem functions that provide ES (e.g., climate regulation and carbon sequestration, provision of timber and medicinal plants) to its communities and the world. Many communities in PO producing countries such as Cameroon, Guatemala, and Indonesia depend on numerous ES for sustenance ( Lhoest et al., 2019 ; Sharma et al., 2019 ; Castellanos-Navarrete et al., 2021 ). Usually, forests are cut down and burned to prepare the land for oil palm cultivation, resulting in habitat destruction which is the largest threat to biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions and services. With oil palm cultivation happening in the tropics, deforestation for oil palm poses a threat to its rich biodiversity and their habitat. When natural forest habitat is destroyed, the carbon that has been sequestered for decades or even centuries is released back into the atmosphere ( Smith et al., 2013 ). The land is exposed, leaving it prone to erosion and leaching. Ayompe et al. (2021) for example highlight that the establishment of oil palm plantations next to water bodies causes eutrophication and siltation, impacting local water purification and supply services. If oil palm expansion and the associated deforestation of primary forests are not effectively managed, the negative impacts on ES would contribute to an array of social problems and negatively impact livelihoods.

A lot of research has been carried out on the impacts of PO on biodiversity and the environment and not much literature is available on the impacts on ES. Also, the more general peer-reviewed literature on PO production has focused on South-East Asian countries ( Dislich et al., 2017 ; Reiss-Woolever et al., 2021 ). This has left a gap in the literature in other PO producing regions of the world like Africa and South America with fast-growing PO sectors. Investors are taking advantage of the fact that the forest that seems available is usually owned by local communities, but the land is easily sold to investors due to weak land tenure systems. Many African governments are seeing the sector as an opportunity to increase GDP and alleviate poverty, therefore putting in place incentives to expand their PO production. The rapid expansion of oil palm plantations in Cameroon, which is a biodiversity hotspot and part of the Congo Basin, poses a threat to the habitat and rich biodiversity present. This includes 7,500 plant species, 968 bird species and 300 species of mammals ( MINEPDED, 2012 ; MINADER, 2015 ). The rapid deforestation for oil palm can be seen in Figure 1 , where a single agro-industrial company allocated an oil palm concession of about 70,000 ha, has deforested about 5,500 ha in 2 years. Although a few studies have researched oil palm cultivation in Africa in general, and Cameroon in particular, there is a lack of knowledge of its impacts, particularly on ES. However, some of these impacts have been documented in various gray literature in the form of news articles, documentaries, NGO reports, and unpublished research theses. This study seeks to improve our understanding of the impact of PO trade on ES using Cameroon as a case study. We intentionally use peer-reviewed literature and the abundant gray literature to extract unpublished knowledge usually hidden in gray literature that documents the impacts of PO trade on ES. We specifically undertake a literature review focused on Cameroon to explore the recorded negative and positive impacts of PO on ES, identify key players in the PO sector, and assess existing research and documentation of these impacts. This study sought to answer three main questions: (1) What are the positive and negative impacts of PO trade on ecosystem services. (2) To what extent are these impacts documented in both peer-reviewed and gray literature. (3) How are these impacts distributed among smallholders and large corporations?

Figure 1 . Deforestation in an oil palm concession in Cameroon over 2 years (5,500 ha cleared) (source: Palmoil.io Newsletter – March 2023 ).

This study used a combination of peer-reviewed and gray literature to assess the impacts of PO trade on ES in Cameroon. The decision to use a combination of sources was based on the limited peer-reviewed articles available on the topic for Cameroon and to make use of unpublished knowledge in gray literature not necessarily captured in peer-reviews. The ES mentioned or described in the review material were recorded, and whether the impacts were positive or negative. Figure 1 summarizes the review process used in the study.

Cameroon is chosen as the case study based on: (1) Its rapid deforestation of primary forests for commodities such as palm oil ( Vijay et al., 2016 ; Ordway et al., 2019 ). For example, the Government of Cameroon has increasingly been expanding PO production to reduce poverty and increase the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2019, Cameroon was ranked the seventh largest global oil palm fruit producer, with an annual production of about 1 million tons ( FAOSTAT, 2019 ) after expanding the cultivation area by 120,000 ha between 2000 and 2017 ( Nkongho et al., 2015 ). (2) It is part of the Congo basin forest area, with few regulations regarding oil palm expansion and PO production, and (3) It is the largest PO producer in the Central Africa sub-region, but extremely limited research has been done on Cameroon’s PO sector.

Cameroon is located 414.6 mi (667.2 km) north of the equator, with a hot and humid tropical climate and rainfall exceeding 3,000 mm, making it favorable for the growth of OP. Some part of the Congo basin forest is found in Cameroon, with a primary forest extent of about 16 million hectares with about 100 thousand hectares lost in 2020 ( Mongabay, 2020 ). It is a biodiversity hotspot, ranking fourth in flora richness and fifth in fauna diversity in Africa ( MINEPDED, 2012 ). Cameroon has a rich fauna of about 300 species of mammals, 285 species of reptiles, 199 species of amphibians, 613 species of fish and 968 species of birds ( MINADER, 2015 ). More than 33 identified important bird areas (IBA) have been designated, harboring rare and threatened bird species ( Ngute et al., 2019 ). The rich volcanic soils account for rich vegetation which harbors flora and fauna and encourages considerable agricultural, forestry, and fishing activities, that draw international interest and also benefit the wellbeing of local people ( GEF, 2018 ).

Cameroonian communities not only depend on the many ES for livelihoods, but also for aesthetics and recreation ( Cuni-Sanchez et al., 2019 ; Lhoest et al., 2019 ). The rich biodiversity also serves as a recreational attraction for people from around the world and has for many years contributed to the Nation’s GDP. Among the many attractions is the rich avian diversity which is a unique attraction for bird watchers from around the world who trek the lowlands and mountain forests visiting the many birding areas in Cameroon. Non-timber forest products such as spices (e.g. , njangsa ), vegetables (e.g., eru), fruits, and seeds ( bush mango and ogbono ) are delicacies and have become vital sources of livelihood with some individuals depending entirely on this ES for sustenance ( Awono et al., 2016 ; Njoh and Wanie, 2018 ; Gallois et al., 2020 ). The available biodiversity and ES that benefit the wellbeing of local communities are now being threatened by the rapid expansion of the PO sector in Cameroon.

In Cameroon, oil palm is cultivated in the North West (Expert Knowledge), South West, Littoral, South, and Center regions. The cultivation and transformation process of oil palm to PO is carried out both on large and small scales by industries and individual smallholder PO producers. This classification was made following Ayompe et al. (2021) , with smallholders being planters with oil palm planted areas of 50 ha or less and not considered agro-industries or explicitly mentioned as smallholders in the documents. Some of the large companies as of 2012 are the French group Bolloré with companies including - Société Camerounaise de Palmeraies (SOCAPALM) (28,027 ha), Société Africaine Forestière et Agricole du Cameroun (SAFACAM) (4,870 ha), and the Swiss Farm (3,793 ha); two State-owned companies: Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) (12,670 ha) and Pamol Plantations (9,500 ha) ( Hoyle and Levang, 2012 ): and privately owned oil palm plantations by companies such as Sithe Global Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SGSOC) (23,000 ha), Camvert (68,000 ha), and Green Valley (134 ha) (Greenvalley Plc).

Peer-reviewed literature

Peer-review literature relevant to this study was gathered from “Google Scholar,” “Proquest,” “Scopus” and “Web of Science” (Google Scholar, Proquest, Scopus & Web of Science) searches. Several searches were conducted on Google Scholar with various combinations of the keywords. First, a search was done in 2021 using the key words (Palm + Oil + Cameroon) to identify studies on PO production in Cameroon. This yielded about 37,200 articles that were too broad on the subject matter based on their titles. The following combination of keywords were further used for more specific results: (Palm + oil + Cameroon + Impact + ES) or (ecosystem + services + oil + palm + Cameroon) or (palm + oil + deforestation + Cameroon) or (palm + oil + impacts + Cameroonian + communities). These searches yielded about 15,000 results. The abstracts of all articles on the first five google pages were read and sorted by relevance. For the following google pages, only abstracts were read for article titles with a focus on PO in Cameroon. Between the 10th and 15th page, no more relevant articles were identified, and therefore the search was stopped. A second search on Google Scholar was done in February 2023 with the search terms (palm + oil + Cameroon) yielding 42,083 results. The same search terms and processes used for the first search was replicated for the second search. It generated 164 hits on “Scopus,” 43 hits (title as filter) and 116 hits (abstract as filter) for “Web of Science.” “Proquest” yielded 2,772 hits for full articles from scholarly Journals. Given that Cameroon is bilingual country, a search was also made using the French terms (huile + de + palme + Cameroun) generating two hits on “Scopus,” 72 hits on “Proquest,” no hits from “Web of Science” and 35 results from “Google Scholar.” Other articles were identified through references cited in read articles. Articles were first sorted based on their titles and abstracts, after which a total of 69 articles were downloaded from all sources after checking for repeated articles ( Figure 2 ). We read the articles, looking for any records of activities in the oil palm cultivation or the PO production process affecting recorded ES. A total of 28 pieces of peer-reviewed literature which identified listed ES impacted by oil palm expansion or PO production in Cameroon were used for the study. The articles found on Google Scholar with relevant information ranged between the years 1984 to 2021.

Figure 2 . Schematic of the selection and exclusion methodology.

Gray literature

To identify gray literature on PO production and ES in Cameroon, we carried out a Google search using the same search terms used in the peer-reviewed literature. The Google “video” and “news” filters were then used to search for video documentaries as well as news reports. Twenty-one news reports were identified with relevant information on the subject being widely discussed. These news articles were excluded from the review material for scientific purposes. Fourteen out of 21 videos that were reviewed were included in the study ( Figure 2 ). A list of PO companies in Cameroon was compiled from peer-reviewed literature and searches made using Google search engine with keywords (Cameroon + palm + oil + Company name). A Google search for individual PO companies in Cameroon including “Herakles farms,” “SOCAPALM,” and “PAMOL” was done to pull out any literature available about their activities.

A list of national and international NGOs doing work related to agriculture and the environment in Cameroon was compiled from recommendations by scientists who had carried out PO related work in Cameroon, Google searches and mentions in other articles. Search terms included (Agricultural + organizations + in + Cameroon), (Environmental + organizations + in + Cameroon), (palm + oil + in + Cameroon). Links that mentioned NGO names were further explored as well as those that yielded information about palm oil, to identify mentions of any NGOs. NGOs that were not on the previously compiled list from recommendations and personal knowledge were explored further to find out if they implemented PO related work. We went through each of the organizations’ websites and searched (palm + oil) or (oil + palm) as keywords to view any reports that had been written concerning oil palm or PO in Cameroon. A Google search was also done with the keywords (oil + palm + Cameroon + “Name of NGO”). Other reports were generated from the “Google Scholar” and “Proquest” searches. Ten NGO reports related to PO in Cameroon were included in this study. Additionally, four theses on PO in Cameroon were retrieved during the search process out of which two were found to be relevant and included in the analysis. A search was also made on the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas | Mapping Environmental Justice) with key search words (oil + palm + Cameroon). The Environmental Justice Atlas is a platform that documents global environmental injustices especially those associated with resource exploitation. Three search results were obtained with the desired information. However, given that the search results focused on PO companies in areas already included in other parts of the review, these three articles were excluded from the analysis to avoid repetition.

Data extraction and analysis

Data was extracted from a total of 28 peer-reviewed and 25 gray literature and recorded in Supplementary Table S1 . Some of the information extracted and recorded were material type, source, publication year, region of the country, type of PO production (smallholder, industrial, or both), and PO company. The ES were classified into four categories based on the Millennium Assessment classifications ( Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Program), 2005 ): Provisioning Services (food, raw material, medicinal resources, fresh water, cropland), Regulating Services (climate regulation and carbon sequestration, water purification, erosion control, disease regulation, flood prevention, pollination), Cultural Services (spiritual and religious experience, sense of place, recreation and ecotourism, mental health, aesthetic appreciation, inspiration, and cultural heritage), and Supporting Services (habitat, genetic diversity, soil formation, and nutrient cycling). This list of ES was used to screen each of the articles and listened for in the videos to have been impacted by oil palm cultivation or PO production. We worked with indicators for other ecosystem services such as assuming the cultural ES “spiritual and religious experience” was negatively impacted whenever articles mentioned land grabbing and destruction of sacred shrines by foreign oil palm companies. This would also impact food provisioning ES for the farmers in terms of losing land that would have been used for cultivation or harvesting Non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Each of these services identified in the studies was recorded with either a positive impact, negative impact or both when reported. The frequency of occurrence in each article and the percentage frequencies were calculated and recorded.

Sixteen ESs were found to be impacted by oil palm cultivation. Both positive and negative impacts are documented in peer-reviewed literature and in gray literature like news reports, NGO reports, video documentaries, and thesis dissertations. Fifty-three records were used for this study, out of which 28 (53%) were peer-reviewed literature and 25 (47%) gray literature. The records used were published between the years 1984 to 2021 ( Figure 3A ). Reports and videos made up most of the records for gray literature. Figure 3B shows the frequency distribution of the sources of literature used in the study.

Figure 3 . (A) Frequency of gray and peer-reviewed literature by year. (B) Sources of literature used in the study.

The ES considered in this study are grouped into Provisioning, Regulating, Cultural Services and Supporting Services. A total 172 entries were made, with an overwhelming 147 (85%) negative impacts and only 25 (15%) positive impacts. Forty-one percent of negative impacts were recorded in peer-reviewed literature while 59% of those impacts were recorded in gray literature. The most negative impacts identified from all sources were on carbon sequestration and climate regulation with 35 entries (24%) followed by habitat quality with 22 entries (15%) and genetic diversity with 20 entries (14%) ( Figure 4 ). The least reported negative impacts were on soil formation with one entry (1%), followed by disease regulation, water purification and aesthetic values with three entries each (2%). Palm oil production was seen to have positive impacts on seven ES. Peer-reviewed literature recorded 18 entries (72%) while gray literature recorded 7 entries (28%). The most positive impacts recorded were on food provisioning services with 13 entries (52%) while the least were on pest regulation and habitat quality with one entry each (4%) ( Figure 4 ). Other ecosystem services recorded to be impacted positively were raw material provision, genetic diversity, medicinal resource provision, and cultural heritage. Ecosystem services with no recorded impacts in gray nor peer-reviewed literature were recreation, air purification, pollination, and flood prevention, although the removal of forests destroys habitat for pollinators especially closer to agricultural land. In addition, the removal of forests reduces water infiltration and may result in flooding. Fifty-seven percent of the negative impacts on ES was recorded by studies with focus on agro-industrial PO production ( Figure 5 ). Studies focused on smallholder PO production recorded 18% percent of the negative impacts on ES. Twenty-five percent of negative impacts were recorded by studies that included both smallholder and agro-industrial PO production. On the other hand, studies that focused on smallholder PO production recorded the most positive impacts on ES with 29%, compared to agro-industrial companies which recorded 17% of the positive impacts. Fifty-four percent was recorded by studies which considered both agro-industrial and smallholder PO production. Generally, agro-industrial companies received most attention from both gray and peer-reviewed literature recording 51% of all impacts and smallholders recording 20%.

Figure 4 . Positive and negative impacts of palm oil on ecosystem services identified in the literature review.

Figure 5 . Impacts of different actors in Cameroon’s palm oil sector as identified in the literature review.

The literature focused on PO producing areas in Cameroon which are South West, North West, Littoral, Centre, and South regions. Some of the literature sources looked at PO at a national level. It was found that most of the records (38%), focused on PO production in the South West region of Cameroon, with 19% gray and 19% peer-reviewed literature. The frequency of studies in the other regions were 10% for Littoral (4% gray, 6% peer-reviewed), 2% for South (all gray literature), 2% for North West (all peer-reviewed literature) and 6% Center (2% gray, 4% peer-reviewed). About 32% of the records were national studies (17% peer-reviewed,15% gray literature). These results are shown in Figure 6 .

Figure 6 . Palm oil producing regions in Cameroon identified in gray and peer-reviewed literature.

In these regions, actors in PO production are both individual smallholder farmers and agro-industrial companies. Some major agro-industrial companies highlighted in the literature sources are SPFS, SOCAPALM, CDC, PAMOL, SGSOC, SAFACAM, and CAMVERT, which were identified in both gray and peer-reviewed literature. The most highlighted PO company in all the records was SGSOC, highlighted 36% of the time in all material. The least highlighted companies were SAFACAM (5%) PAMOL (5%), and SPFS (5%).

Oil palm cultivation is expanding globally, which has caused many negative impacts on biodiversity and human wellbeing. However, most of the impacts reported are generally related to biodiversity and the environment and mostly in Asia and South America. To our knowledge, few studies have looked at the impacts on ES ( Ayompe et al., 2021 ), and even fewer studies focus on African countries. This has left a wide research gap in the PO sector of producing countries in Africa like Cameroon, even though they are hotspots for commercial oil palm plantation establishment in recent years. In this study, we set out to assess the negative impacts of PO trade on ES focusing on Cameroon. Studies have shown that oil palm cultivation can contribute to changes in ecosystem functions due to land use and land cover change, pollution, fires, and the introduction of alien invasive species that drive ecosystem changes ( Moreno-Peñaranda et al., 2018 ). These changes usually cause negative impacts on ES, especially with the deforestation of primary forests ( Meijaard et al., 2020 ).

We found overwhelming negative impacts on ES in the PO producing regions of Cameroon. According to this review, the three most reported ES impacted negatively were climate regulation and carbon sequestration, habitat quality, and genetic diversity. This finding is in line with other studies like Dislich et al. (2017) that reported carbon regulation, and habitat functions as some of the most negatively impacted ES in their global review of ecosystem functions of oil palm plantations. It is a widespread practice for industrial oil palm growers to deforest vast land for oil palm plantations ( Carlson et al., 2018 ; Qaim et al., 2020 ). The deforestation then results in habitat loss for wildlife, loss of plant and animal species, loss of potential for air purification, and loss of terrestrial biomass with stored carbon ( Nobre et al., 2016 ). Some ES are linked to the availability of other ES and livelihoods. For example, habitat quality, which was identified as one of the most negatively impacted ES is linked to provisioning services. The loss of habitat leads to the loss of animal species that inhabit that area. These animals often serve as a source of food and income for local community members through hunting. The Warneckea ngutiensis , a rainforest shrub described as from near Nguti in the South West Region of Cameroon, unique in having only a vestigial staminal oil gland is reported to be Critically Endangered due to an oil palm plantation project ( Stone and Cheek, 2018 ). Other provisioning ES like raw materials, non-timber forest products, and even medicinal plants are also negatively impacted by habitat loss, and so do the livelihoods of community members who depend on the exploitation of these services.

The most reported ES to be impacted was climate regulation and carbon sequestration. Climate regulation and carbon sequestration are provided largely by the availability of trees, therefore cutting down trees impacts their ability to remove and store carbon. Lack of trees will also lead to a loss in air purification potential even if not reported, which leaves communities prone to air pollution-related illnesses. Various sources of air pollution would impact human health in diverse ways such as eye and skin irritation, respiratory inflammation, cardiovascular issues, psychological effects, and even death ( Finlay et al., 2012 ; Nchanji et al., 2016 ; Petrenko et al., 2016 ). These illnesses take away productivity hours and the cost of healthcare places a financial burden on those impacted. It is even more worrisome given that those impacted by air pollution-related illnesses are usually the rural poor with limited access to proper healthcare. If oil palm plantations were established on secondary, selectively logged forests or previous cropland, there might be fewer negative impacts on these ES ( Meijaard et al., 2020 ). The most reported ES to be impacted negatively are linked to disturbances like forest cover loss which makes the impacts more easily identified. The said ES are charismatic, gaining the most attention nowadays, e.g., carbon loss from deforestation contributing to the global carbon budget and causing increasing global temperatures is talked about largely. Habitat loss and loss of genetic diversity are at the forefront of discussions among conservationists. As a result, negative impacts on these ES easily gain attention from researchers and NGOs and are recorded more frequently.

ES that were reported with the least negative impacts (disease regulation, soil formation, erosion control and recreation) do not necessarily mean they are the least important. These ES have been identified by other studies to be impacted negatively by PO production as well; for example, a recent study by Morand and Lajaunie (2021) found trends of increasing vector-borne disease and deforestation attributed to oil palm establishment. When forests are cut down, the ecosystem of that area is modified and might become inhabitable for species that prevent the presence of hosts or vectors and in turn favor the prevalence of vectors that carry and spread diseases. The soil surface is exposed for the first few years before OPs mature as a result of deforestation, accentuating erosion and leaching. Soil texture and its biological characteristics are also modified during oil palm cultivation, which is often partly responsible for the degradation of plant diversity in oil palm plantations ( Mesmin et al., 2021 ). Negative cultural impacts were recorded on cultural heritage and spiritual and religious services. Reviewed materials reported instances where community ancestral burial grounds were destroyed, community ancestral lands were seized pushing them to relocate, disturbing their place identity and sense of belonging. Some communities often have ancestral shrines in the forest where they often go to pour libations among other cultural practices to connect with their ancestors. These are spiritual and religious services that are lost when these areas are seized and converted to oil palm plantations. These impacts were identified especially in situations of land grabbing from communities by large PO corporations. Most negative impacts on cultural ES affect local communities more directly and would be picked up and talked about earlier by local people and non-governmental organizations.

One of the most frequently occurring natural disasters in Cameroon is flooding. Studies elsewhere and in Cameroon have shown that deforestation of natural forests for oil palm plantations increases runoff during rainfall ( Meijaard et al., 2020 ). The runoff often collects in the lowlands leading to flash floods. Some of the flood-prone regions in Cameroon also happen to be major PO producing regions of the country ( Ndille and Belle, 2014 ; Yengoh et al., 2016 ; Zogning et al., 2016 ). Some studies carried out in other PO producing countries identified unsustainable PO cultivation practices specific to the said areas like peatland draining and forest burning, which were also not identified in this review for Cameroon ( Sumarga and Hein, 2014 ; Sharma et al., 2019 ).

The most positive impact was recorded on food provisioning, as the oil palm fruits are usually eaten as a snack, and PO is used as an ingredient in a wide variety of dishes locally. In addition, palm wine is extracted from old oil palm trees and consumed widely by local people while the palm fronds are used as local raw materials for roofing ( Hollier, 1984 ; Cheyns and Rafflegeau, 2005 ; Mesmin et al., 2021 ). Takoumbe et al. (2023) in their recent study found the pseudo trunk of the tenera variety with the potential to be used in the implementation of insulating materials, reinforcement of composite materials, and in furnishing as wood. Smallholder oil palm plantations with agroforestry were observed to improve habitat suitability for the Congo Grey Parrot near the Korup National Park, possibly because of its palm fruits for feeding ( Dueker et al., 2020 ). These findings are in line with the study conducted by Dislich et al. (2017) , who found food and material production to increase with the establishment of oil palm plantations. Ejidike et al. (2004) mentioned noticing abundance in the Giant West African snail ( Archachatina marginata ) which is a delicacy and a source of income for many local communities. The low rate of reporting impacts on some of these ES could be due to a lack of published research that take into consideration inhabitants’ perspectives, more attention on compelling ES, little necessity of some ES to the community/country, or the negative impacts might have just not been experienced.

A reasonable percentage of the recorded impacts were found in gray literature (reports, video documentaries, and thesis dissertations). Including information from gray literature in this review was a conscious decision to complement data availability issues in the data-poor countries in Africa. Since the goal was to understand which ES were impacted and not necessarily the extent of the impacts, gray literature happened to be a rich data pool of information that is otherwise not captured in peer-reviewed literature. Even peer-reviewed literature is limited to major PO producing countries in Southeast Asia. In the literature search, the available literature discussed the general environmental impacts of PO in Cameroon. No peer-reviewed literature was found that quantified the impact of PO production on the availability of ES. However, some peer-reviewed literature such as Mesmin et al. (2021) qualitatively looked at the environmental impact of oil palm in Cameroon. They carried out some soil and water analysis around oil palm plantations and discovered that groundwater was under the influence of a major source of pollution (from oil palm plantations and PO mills), making them unfit for human consumption without prior treatment.

Studies have shown that smallholders deforest primary forests for oil palm cultivation even more than agro-industrial companies in Cameroon ( Ordway et al., 2019 ; CIFOR, 2021 ). In this study, negative impacts on ES such as habitat quality, genetic diversity, climate regulation and carbon sequestration were recorded more from agro-industrial companies than from smallholder farmers. This contradictory result might be the case because agro-industrial companies are more visible. It is easier to isolate large scale deforestation by agro-industrial companies compared to smallholder farmers with individual lands scattered around the regions. Agro-industrial companies deforest vast areas of land over a noticeably short period ( Verité, 2013 ) and so attract media attention that document the resulting impacts. On the other hand, numerous individual smallholder farmers deforest small patches of forest and only expand over a prolonged period of time going barely noticed ( Ravikumar et al., 2017 ; Benami et al., 2018 ). Agro-industrial companies thus happen to be targets for many NGOs. The SGSOC subsidiary, Herakles Farms, was the most mentioned in literature to have negative impacts on ES. This is because this company was taken into court by Greenpeace International for rapid deforestation of high value forests in Cameroon. It was talked about in NGO reports, peer-reviewed articles, and documentary videos. It attracted so much attention because it was the most ambitious PO project yet in Cameroon. It was supposed to cover about 73,000 hectares of land, serving as an environmental corridor for five protected areas (Korup National Park, Bakossi National Park, Banyang-Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary, Nta Ali Forest Reserve, and Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve) and a biodiversity hotspot ( Kupsch et al., 2014 ). This project met quite some resistance from local people, NGOs, and the media ( France 24, 2012 ; Mongabay, 2013 ; Al Jazeera, 2015 ). In 2013, the government of Cameroon reduced the lease term from 99 years to a three-year probationary lease for about 23,000 hectares. Experiences as such among other reasons have contributed to the international pressures for PO producers to be certified.

Palm oil producers worldwide are being pushed to consider adopting sustainable PO strategies with the upsurge of regulatory efforts such as the European Union (EU) due diligence. The most recent is the EU due diligence which requires PO importation to be deforestation-free and should have been produced in accordance with the laws and regulations of the country of production ( The Western Producer, 2020 ; Contexte Environnement, 2021 ). This means producers would need to be innovative to meet the demand in PO production without deforesting new areas. Success in the due diligence would contribute to a balance, as communities would continue to benefit from forest ES and the livelihood sources they provide, while sustainable PO production creates additional jobs and contributes to the country’s GDP. However, traceability may pose a challenge and some conservationists would prefer the money to be used for conservation efforts in PO producing countries. Several other sustainable PO programs have been developed both nationally and internationally. An example is the Roundtable on Sustainable PO (RSPO), an international voluntary PO certification program for PO producers. The RSPO proposes sustainable PO practices such as conserving patches of forests within farmlands which would preserve the biodiversity and ecosystem functions of the area, while continuing to provide opportunities to harvest NTFPs. It also proposes avoiding planting oil palm on steep terrains which are classified as fragile and could exacerbate soil erosion. Proposed actions such as regulation of pesticide use, encourage nutrient cycling by using empty fruit bunches, instituting a water management plan to allow continued availability of water sources and avoid negative impacts on other users in the catchment are essential in maintaining ecosystem functions and resulting services. Some PO producing countries have created guidelines for sustainable PO production such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia ( ISPO, 2013 ; MPOCC, 2015 ; Wulandari and Nasution, 2021 ). African countries are just now developing their sustainable PO programs like the Africa PO Initiative (APOI) (World Economic Forum, 2016). Certification standards like the RSPO are only present in a few African countries. Uptake of certification standards like the RSPO is low in most African countries, with current efforts to improve uptake in countries like Cameroon. Given the rapid expansion in Cameroon’s oil palm cultivated area ( Ayompe et al., 2021 ) and the development of a national PO strategy to boost PO production ( Feintrenie, 2012 ; Hoyle and Levang, 2012 ; OPAL, 2016 ; Kamto et al., 2019 ), there is the need for thorough scientific research to critically assess ES threatened by PO expansion in Cameroon. Such research will inform policy development for sustainable strategies that would best preserve these ES.

The results from this study show that in Cameroon, some effort is being invested to document how PO trade impacts the natural environment as 16 ESs were identified to be impacted. The limited number of total records (53) used in this study shows there is room for in-depth field research. Ecosystem services impacted negatively in order of frequency of occurrence were climate regulation and carbon sequestration, followed by habitat quality, genetic diversity, food provisioning, raw materials, nutrient cycling, fresh water, cultural heritage, spiritual and religious experience, water purification, aesthetic values, medical resources, disease regulation, erosion control and soil formation. We found more records of negative impacts of oil palm on ES from agro-industrial companies than smallholder producers.

Despite the numerous negative impacts of PO on ES, there is no doubt that it contributes enormously to income generation, economic growth and possibly enhances some ES if produced sustainably. Major PO producers have attempted to manage the benefits of PO production and mitigate negative impacts by adopting sustainable PO production practices (RSPO, SPOPP, ISPO, MSPO, APOI). Adopting practices that have been found to improve yield while mitigating environmental and ES impacts could enable sustainable production in African oil palm plantations. Such strategies could include planting improved cultivars, optimizing organic fertilizer application, proper timing for oil palm fruit ripeness to improve yield and proper understory vegetation management, managing riparian reserves and conservation of forest fragments within blocks of oil palm to conserve ES benefits. These efforts are a silver lining in that there is the possibility for PO production to be sustainable if decision-makers and PO producers work together. This could be possible following research identifying areas with high-value ES and policies formed taking research findings into consideration. Sustainable strategies need to include both smallholders and agro-industrial corporations, as both sectors are rapidly expanding and impacting ES. Given that the impact on cultural services is mostly caused by large corporations, smallholders and local communities could be protected by policies that protect rights to land, ease access to credit, and technical support ( Bennett et al., 2019 ). Overall, sustainable PO production will go a long way to safeguard the rich tropical biodiversity and the ES they provide. It will open up opportunities to markets such as the European Union, where the European Parliament recently adopted a resolution calling for regulatory action to tackle EU-driven global deforestation. The proposal would impose due diligence obligations on operators placing PO and its derived products on the EU market or exporting them from the EU.

Author contributions

AA: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. LA: Conceptualization, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. BE: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Supervision.

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. We acknowledged funding from the UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) through the Trade, Development and the Environment Hub project (project number ES/S008160/1). We acknowledged funding from the Swift Foundation.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge funding from the UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) through the Trade, Development, and the Environment Hub project (project number ES/S008160/1). The authors acknowledge funding from the Swabb Foundation. BNH was supported by SLAON and HELLMAN foundations as a has been supported by the Conservation Action Research Network (CARN) – (Aspire 2021) grant, the UCI Earth System Science, School of Physical Sciences Diversity and Inclusion fellowship 2021-2022, the UCI Newkirk Center for Science & Society Research Justice Shop fellowship – 2022-2023, and the UCI CLIMATE justice initiative fellowship 2023-2024.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2023.1289431/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: carbon sequestration, climate regulation, conservation, commodity trade, deforestation, ecosystem services, palm oil, sustainability

Citation: Acobta AN, Ayompe LM and Egoh BN (2023) Impacts of palm oil trade on ecosystem services: Cameroon as a case study. Front. Sustain. Food Syst . 7:1289431. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1289431

Received: 05 September 2023; Accepted: 30 November 2023; Published: 21 December 2023.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2023 Acobta, Ayompe and Egoh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Lacour M. Ayompe, [email protected]

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From Palm to Plate, from Awareness to Action – Toward Sustainable Palm Oil Supply Chains and Consumption

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• Published: 28 November 2022

Implications of zero-deforestation palm oil for tropical grassy and dry forest biodiversity

• Susannah Fleiss   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6298-236X 1 ,
• Catherine L. Parr   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1627-763X 2 , 3 , 4 ,
• Philip J. Platts   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0153-0121 1 , 5 , 6 , 7 ,
• Colin J. McClean   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5457-4355 6 ,
• Robert M. Beyer 8 , 9 ,
• Henry King 10 ,
• Jennifer M. Lucey   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5224-091X 11 &
• Jane K. Hill   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1871-7715 1  

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume  7 ,  pages 250–263 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Biodiversity
• Conservation biology
• Ecological modelling
• Grassland ecology
• Tropical ecology

Many companies have made zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) to reduce carbon emissions and biodiversity losses linked to tropical commodities. However, ZDCs conserve areas primarily based on tree cover and aboveground carbon, potentially leading to the unintended consequence that agricultural expansion could be encouraged in biomes outside tropical rainforest, which also support important biodiversity. We examine locations suitable for zero-deforestation expansion of commercial oil palm, which is increasingly expanding outside the tropical rainforest biome, by generating empirical models of global suitability for rainfed and irrigated oil palm. We find that tropical grassy and dry forest biomes contain >50% of the total area of land climatically suitable for rainfed oil palm expansion in compliance with ZDCs (following the High Carbon Stock Approach; in locations outside urban areas and cropland), and that irrigation could double the area suitable for expansion in these biomes. Within these biomes, ZDCs fail to protect areas of high vertebrate richness from oil palm expansion. To prevent unintended consequences of ZDCs and minimize the environmental impacts of oil palm expansion, policies and governance for sustainable development and conservation must expand focus from rainforests to all tropical biomes.

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Data availability.

Existing datasets analysed in the article are available at references given within the manuscript. The final models of climatic suitability for rainfed and irrigated oil palm cultivation, and summary data of suitability per ecoregion, are available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2RH6N . Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The code used to generate oil palm suitability models and conduct analyses is available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2RH6N .

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Acknowledgements

S.F. was supported by a joint studentship from Unilever and the University of York. We are very grateful to R. van Beek for providing the hydrological data (monthly water demand and supply) at 5 arcmin resolution. We thank C. Wheatley and C. Beale for assistance in running oil palm suitability models and analysing results, and D. Dent, A. Hodge and C. Thomas helpful comments during development of the Article.

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Susannah Fleiss, Philip J. Platts & Jane K. Hill

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Catherine L. Parr

Department of Zoology & Entomology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

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BeZero Carbon Ltd, London, UK

Philip J. Platts

Department of Environment and Geography, University of York, York, UK

Philip J. Platts & Colin J. McClean

Climate Change Specialist Group, Species Survival Commission, International Union for Conservation of Nature, Gland, Switzerland

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Contributions

S.F., J.K.H., C.L.P., J.M.L. and H.K. conceived the study; S.F., C.J.M. and P.J.P. designed the models of oil palm suitability; C.L.P. conducted the biome classification; R.M.B. conducted refinements of species range maps; S.F. ran the suitability models, conducted the analyses and led the writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to drafts of the paper and finalized the text.

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Extended data

Extended data fig. 1 boxplots of aboveground carbon stocks and canopy closure for all non-cultivated land in the tropics (including primary vegetation, secondary vegetation and pasture, and excluding cropland, urban areas and tree plantations), for each biome..

Central bars show the median, lower and upper hinges show the first and third quartiles respectively, whiskers extend to the maximum and minimum values within 1.5*inter-quartile range, and outliers are plotted individually. x-axis labels denote total areas of non-cultivated land of each biome (across the tropics) and sample sizes of individual ~10-km grid-cells. Dashed lines represent the two sets of protection thresholds for zero-deforestation under the High Carbon Stock Approach (see main text Methods). Throughout the Main Article, we report results based on the lower-value thresholds, representing ‘greater habitat protection’ under zero-deforestation commitments.

Source data

Extended data fig. 2 comparison of areas projected as suitable for oil palm cultivation, between an agro-ecological model 26 and the species distribution model presented in this article..

(a) For the species distribution model thresholded at Minimal Predicted Area 95 ; (b) for the species distribution model thresholded at Minimal Predicted Area 99 ; (c) for the species distribution model thresholded at Minimal Predicted Area 100 . We have reported results based on Minimal Predicted Area 99 in the Main Article, and provide sensitivity analyses based on the other suitability thresholds and the agro-ecological model in Supplementary Information 3 – 5 .

Extended Data Fig. 3 Climatically-suitable locations for rainfed and irrigated oil palm expansion under zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs), by biome, assuming that up to 50% of surplus available water could be applied for irrigation.

(a) : Neotropics; (b) : tropical Africa; (c) : tropical Asia and Australasia.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Climatically-suitable locations for rainfed and irrigated oil palm expansion under zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs), by biome, assuming that up to 100% of surplus available water could be applied for irrigation.

Supplementary information, supplementary information.

Supplementary Results, Discussion and Methods, including Supplementary Figures 1–25 and Supplementary Tables 1–9.

Reporting Summary

Peer review file, supplementary data 1.

Raster source data (.tif format) for Fig. 1 and Extended Data Figs. 2–4. All rasters are of extent −180° to 180° longitude, −23.5° to 23.5° latitude; 5 arcmin resolution; Geographic Coordinate System WGS 1984. Fleiss_Fig1_Source_Data.tif—Cells with a value of 0–100 are climatically suitable for oil palm expansion, and those with no value are unsuitable. Value classes suitable for oil palm expansion: 0 existing cropland, tree plantations or urban areas (all biomes); 3 ‘other’ biome; 5 tropical dry forest biome; 7 tropical moist forest biome; 11 tropical grassy biome; 20 locations protected by ZDCs (all biomes); 100 locations in IUCN class I or II protected areas (all biomes). Fleiss_ExDatFig2a_Source_Data.tif, Fleiss_ExDatFig2b_Source_Data.tif, Fleiss_ExDatFig2c_Source_Data.tif—Cell values: 0 unsuitable for oil palm cultivation (according to both the agro-ecological model and the species distribution model); 1 suitable for oil palm cultivation according to the agro-ecological model only; 2 suitable for oil palm cultivation according to the species distribution model only; 3 suitable for oil palm cultivation according to both models. Fleiss_ExDatFig3_Source_Data.tif, Fleiss_ExDatFig4_Source_Data.tif—See Source Data for Fig. 1 for suitable locations for rainfed oil palm expansion. For locations suitable for irrigated expansion: cells with a value of 0–100 are climatically suitable for oil palm expansion under irrigation, and those with no value are unsuitable. Value classes suitable for oil palm expansion: 0 existing cropland, tree plantations or urban areas (all biomes); 3 ‘other’ biome; 5 tropical dry forest biome; 7 tropical moist forest biome; 11 tropical grassy biome; 20 locations protected by ZDCs (all biomes); 100 locations in IUCN class I or II protected areas (all biomes).

Supplementary Data 2

Statistical source data for Supplementary Figures.

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data

Source Data Fig. 3

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Fleiss, S., Parr, C.L., Platts, P.J. et al. Implications of zero-deforestation palm oil for tropical grassy and dry forest biodiversity. Nat Ecol Evol 7 , 250–263 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01941-6

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Endangered Orangutans and the Palm Oil Industry: An Environmental Science Case Study

Nurturing orangutans left orphaned and homeless by blazes.

View Slide Show ›

By Michael Gonchar

• Nov. 9, 2017

You can find it nearly everywhere, from pizza dough to detergents to ice cream , and even in biodiesel and instant noodles. In fact, 50 percent of packaged food items in American supermarkets contain it.

But the steadily increasing demand for palm oil, not just in the United States but also around the world, threatens the future of wild orangutans. In Borneo, where the vast majority of orangutans live, their population has declined by 80 percent over the last 75 years.

In this lesson, we present students with an environmental quandary to discuss and debate — a case study about the best way to protect orangutans given the wave of deforestation shrinking their natural habitat in Southeast Asia.

Then in the Going Further section, we suggest additional ideas for taking action to be responsible consumers, researching other environmental and human costs of palm oil production, and weighing the economic benefits of a multibillion-dollar industry against its costs.

If You Have Only One or Two Class Periods...

For homework the night before, ask students to look in their kitchens and find five or more products that contain palm oil in the list of ingredients.

Then, in class, ask students to share what they found as they looked at ingredient lists. Which products contain palm oil?

Next, explain to students that palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on Earth and that about half of all packaged supermarket products contain it — lipstick, ice cream, even packaged bread. You can also explain that the demand for palm oil is already high, and it’s expected to triple by 2050 . You can then tell students that in class today they are going to learn about some of the consequences of rapidly expanding palm oil production.

Waking Up on an Orangutan Island

A palm oil company known for turning orangutan habitat into plantation land has helped the borneo orangutan survival foundation purchase an island for this critically endangered species..

Thirteen orangutans are tasting freedom on tiny Salat Island in Indonesia. It’s one of the last places in the world where they can be safely released. BEAT Hauling these sedated apes was just one step in a fraught quest to save a critically endangered species. The population has dropped 80 percent over the last 75 years. Orangutans reproduce slowly, since babies spend almost a decade with their moms. That’s the longest of any animal. When young are brought to this sanctuary, they learn life skills from surrogate human parents. BEAT The main threat to the survival of the species is loss of habitat, usually to palm oil companies like the one that helped purchase Salat Island.

Next, watch this 82-second video providing an introduction to the case study about orangutan protection. After watching, students should jot down anything they learned, then share those thoughts with the class.

In small groups, students should read the article “ A Refuge for Orangutans, and a Quandary for Environmentalists ” and look at the photos. Next, they should decide what they would do in this situation if they were environmentalists trying to protect orangutans and address these key questions:

• Should the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation accept funding from a major Indonesian palm oil company to support its orangutan refuge? Does their collaboration let the palm oil company off the hook for its destruction of orangutan habitat? • Are orangutan refuges counterproductive in the end, because the real goal should be to protect the remaining rain forest where orangutans live in the wild? • Or, is working with the palm oil industry the best way forward to save orangutans?

In their groups, students should make a list of all the reasons for or against working with the palm oil company to make this orangutan refuge. Then they should try to come to a consensus as a group, and write an argument defending their position, using evidence from the article.

If you have time, you can have groups present their positions to the whole class, and then debate or discuss the real-life case study.

To help students understand the problem, you may want to give each group a printout of these images: Palm Oil Plantation , Palm Fruit , Borneo Map and Borneo Deforestation .

Going Further

1. Take a stand.

Below, we present a range of choices consumers can make to try to protect the orangutan natural habitat — ranging from boycotting palm oil to pressuring the brands we buy to use only sustainable palm oil.

Yet, even when we try to make a positive difference, the best course of action is not always clear. Have students work in small groups to research possible actions they can take as consumers, and then try to form a consensus on what they should do. The class can then hold a discussion on what decisions each group made, and why.

Students can make a choice to actually follow through in their own lives on what they decided to do in class.

Option 1: Stop buying products that contain palm oil.

Given that so many supermarket items are made with palm oil, completely eliminating palm oil from your diet and household purchases will most likely be a challenge. Even then, there’s an argument to be made against all-out palm oil boycotts. Joe Fassler writes in Smithsonian magazine :

As destructive as the oil palm is to the environment, it may be better than the alternatives. No other crop can yield even a third as much oil per acre planted. And along with using less land, the oil palm gobbles up significantly fewer pesticides and chemical fertilizers than coconut, corn or any other vegetable oil source.

Option 2: Reduce your consumption of palm oil or buy only sustainable palm oil.

The official stance of the organization Say No to Palm Oil is:

We think that consumers should focus on cutting down unnecessary consumption in general, thus removing some palm oil and other vegetable oils from their lifestyle. With products that are unavoidable, individuals can find alternatives that are either palm oil-free and instead use vegetable oil from a sustainable source, or contain genuinely certified sustainable palm oil.

In fact, there is an organization, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil , that certifies palm oil produced in compliance with a set of environmental and social criteria. However, organizations like Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network complain that the organization’s standards are not strong enough and that even certified sustainable palm oil can contribute to deforestation.

Option 3: Voice your concerns to the brands you buy.

Chances are, many of the brands you buy at the supermarket already have a publicized policy about how they use responsibly sourced palm oil.

Here are just a few examples by General Mills (maker of Nature Valley and Häagen-Dazs), Mondelēz International (maker of Oreos and Ritz crackers) and the J. M. Smucker Company (maker of Jif and Pillsbury). But, as this consumer guide produced by Conservation International points out, “Complexity and fragmentation in the palm oil supply chain present challenges to consumer goods manufacturers and retailers seeking to implement sustainable sourcing commitments.”

Contact one of the food brands you buy, either via social media, email or letter, and ask them about their palm oil sourcing policy and how they make sure they are purchasing only sustainable palm oil.

Option 4: Educate your community about the dangers of irresponsibly produced palm oil.

Lindsey Allen, the executive director at the Rainforest Action Network, published this letter to the editor in The Times in 2013 in response to the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to ban trans fats.

Taking inspiration from Ms. Allen’s letter, students can create social media campaigns to spread the word about the dangers of unsustainable palm oil production.

Option 5: Let Malaysia, Indonesia and the other nations where palm oil is produced regulate themselves.

Palm oil plantations and farms support millions of people. This “ miracle crop ” has contributed to rapid economic development and has helped reduce rural poverty. The industry is expanding rapidly to meet worldwide demand, and history has shown that there are often necessary environmental costs to economic development.

2. Research other environmental and human costs of irresponsible palm oil development.

The rapid expansion of palm oil production in Southeast Asia doesn’t only endanger orangutans, but it also causes health problems for thousands of people, destroys virgin rain forests and contributes to climate change.

Have students choose one or more of these articles to read, and then summarize what they learn for the rest of the class. Students can actually use this research with any of the other activities included in this lesson plan.

“ Blazes in Southeast Asia May Have Led to Deaths of Over 100,000, Study Says ” “ Indonesia’s Orangutans Suffer as Fires Rage and Businesses Grow ” “ Southeast Asia, Choking on Haze, Struggles for a Solution ” “ Indonesia’s Palm Oil Industry Rife With Human-Rights Abuses ” (Bloomberg) “ The Violent Costs of the Global Palm-Oil Boom ” (The New Yorker)

3. Weigh the benefits of expanding palm oil production in Indonesia and Malaysia against the environmental and human costs.

Palm oil certainly has a bad reputation among environmentalists. Nature calls it “the world’s most hated crop.”

Yet despite all the environmental and human costs discussed above, the expansion of palm oil has undeniably produced economic benefits for the countries where it is produced. The Zoological Society of London states on its Sustainability Policy Transparency Toolkit website : “Palm oil is one of the most profitable land uses in the tropics. For the main producing countries, palm oil can significantly contribute to national economies, driving rapid economic growth and contributing to the alleviation of rural poverty.”

Have students do research into the economic benefits of palm oil production in Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere, and then decide if the economic benefits outweigh the costs.

deforestation in Peru

Fighting illegal deforestation caused by palm oil in peru.

CCCA’s work in Peru aims at disrupting activities of individuals, corporations, and/or public entities that facilitate deforestation or other environmental destruction through enforcement, litigation, and/or advocacy, primarily outside the situation country.

Peru is the country that has experienced the most primary forest loss related to oil palm expansion in the Amazon region, where extensive areas of land have been deforested along the agricultural frontier. Palm oil production is also an agro-industrial activity that, given the notable growth projected in the coming years, is anticipated to have a particularly acute adverse effect on future illegal deforestation and violations of indigenous rights.

CCCA investigates the role of international actors involved in illegal deforestation in Peru, as part of its broader work in the Amazon area. The focus has been on the palm oil sector, as a global industry and a notorious driver of deforestation in Peru and beyond, as well as its impact on affected indigenous communities.

Since the establishment of palm oil plantations associated with large Peruvian producers, the indigenous peoples have faced several threats due to their tireless struggle to recover their ancestral lands.

CCCA is part of a coalition of indigenous associations and Peruvian and international NGOs tackling the impact of non-sustainable palm oil on the international market. As part of these efforts, the coalition has filed a case about illegal deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon and the palm oil supply chain before the Dutch OECD National Contact Point (NCP) for the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises against Louis Dreyfus Company B.V., a leading Netherlands-based company in agricultural commodities.

WHAT IS THE COMPLAINT ABOUT?

The case refers to the involvement of Louis Dreyfus Company B.V. (LDC)—a company based in The Netherlands and leader in the trading of agricultural commodities—in sourcing palm oil from illegally deforested areas in the Peruvian Amazon. The case was filed before the National Contact Point of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), due to the breach of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprise that establish principles and standards for responsible business conduct.

Despite abundant public information concerning the grave environmental and human rights impacts, since 2020 LDC has purchased crude palm oil to Servicios Agrarios de Pucallpa SAC, the extraction plant of the Ocho Sur Group whose oil palm plantations are involved in the illegal deforestation of over 12,000 ha of Amazon virgin forest, human rights violations of the Indigenous Community of Santa Clara de Uchunya and the Shipibo-Konibo people and corruption schemes for land grabbing.

Following an Initial Assessment, the Dutch NCP concluded that the complaint merits further consideration.

WHAT ARE THE ALLEGATIONS?

Louis Dreyfus Company allegedly failed to undertake appropriate risk-based due diligence to identify, prevent and mitigate adverse impacts caused by its business relationship with the Ocho Sur Group in Peru.

The complaint further alleges that Louis Dreyfus Company is responsible for having contributed to the adverse environmental and human rights impact in Peru by buying palm oil from Servicios Agrarios de Pucallpa, the extraction plant of the Ocho Sur Group, and failed to exercise leverage by continuing this trading partnership.

The complaint also concerns misleading claims by Louis Dreyfus Company, on its website, and in other official publications, related to palm oil sustainability, its “green” credentials and the compatibility of its operations with human rights and environment in breach of the OECD standards in relation to disclosure, communication and consultation with the interested stakeholders such as consumers, shareholders, investors.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Due to the characteristics of the palm oil supply chain, just a small group of very large multinational companies refines, processes and trades palm oil from thousands of mills. Particularly, refining and trading are the most concentrated part of the supply chain, where the palm oil produced sources a conspicuous number of consumer goods companies, reaching a countless number of consumers. LDC is among the biggest of this small group of refiners and traders.

Because of this market concentration, a major trader such as LDC has important leverage on growers and mills, including in respect of the adoption and enforcement of sustainability commitments. For this reason, compliance with the OECD Guidelines and the correct implementation of sound environmental management system by a key player such as LDC, could not only enhance the implementation of No Deforestation policies on the ground, by growers, but also set the example and influence other transnational agri-commodity traders who participate in the supply chain of forest-risk commodities, making the palm oil supply chain really sustainable and deforestation-free.

This case is also important to achieve more transparency in the palm oil supply chain and provide more reliable information to the interested stakeholders—such as consumers, shareholders, investors, etc.—, who are now receiving inaccurate and misleading statements on sustainability.

WHAT IS THE GOAL OF THIS COMPLAINT?

Through this complaint, Indigenous leaders of AIDESEP and FECONAU, and the co-complainants not only request to address the urgent, serious and irreparable impact of corporate harm underway in the Peruvian Amazon and the impunity that surrounds and enables it, but also to acknowledge the predominant role that Louis Dreyfus Company and other major commodity traders play in the market of agricultural commodities around the world in promoting real compliance with sustainability standards, and also influencing other companies who participate in the supply chain of forest-risk commodities to put in place a sound environmental management system and carry out the appropriate due diligence.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE CASE:

• Press Release ENG
• Comunicado de Prensa ESP
• Press Kit Q&A ENG
• Kit de Prensa Q&A ESP
• Initial Assessment

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Tesco TNFD case study: Palm oil traceability and determining priority sourcing locations in Indonesia

Case study / 22 Jan 2024

Tesco case study on piloting the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures recommendations as part of the Global Canopy piloting programme.

Multinational grocery retailer Tesco took part in Global Canopy’s Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) piloting programme prior to the launch of TNFD’s Final Recommendations in September 2023.

The TNFD has developed a set of recommendations and guidance for organisations to identify, assess, manage, and – where appropriate – disclose, their evolving nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities. Its recommendations and guidance help organisations to integrate nature into decision-making, and ultimately support a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes, toward nature-positive outcomes.

Supported by Nature-Based Insights and Global Canopy, Tesco piloted the TNFD’s LEAP approach to identify and assess its nature-related issues. The pilot focused on mapping Tesco’s palm oil supply chain and identifying priority locations in Indonesia for further analysis.

In the context of the incoming EU Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR), understanding supply chain disruption and breakdown is important for Tesco in meeting its deforestation-free requirements, and to put measures in place to prevent exclusion of smallholders in its supply chain. As part of the pilot programme, Tesco used volumetric analysis to estimate its procurement volumes of palm oil and the biodiversity footprint of the districts in Indonesia from which it is likely to be sourcing. Tesco used the data from the assessment to inform its selection of priority locations for further analysis.

“We know palm oil production continues to drive deforestation and biodiversity loss. By working with Global Canopy on this pilot, we have been able to analyse the production landscape with the aim of developing a truly nature-friendly palm oil sourcing strategy that looks beyond certification and compliance towards a future where nature and production work hand in hand.”

Tom hollick, group sustainability manager for forests at tesco.

Trase is among the tools that Tesco used to map its palm oil supply chain. Free to use, Trase is a data-driven transparency initiative that maps the international trade and financing of key commodities associated with tropical deforestation. It is a partnership between Global Canopy and the Stockholm Environment Institute , which works with data developers, researchers, designers, institutes and other partners.

Read the Tesco TNFD case study , ‘Assessing ecologically sensitive locations in a food retailer and distributor’s palm oil supply chain: Reflections from piloting TNFD’s LEAP approach’.

Global Canopy is a founding partner of the TNFD, and was an official piloting organisation for the TNFD prior to the launch of the TNFD final recommendations in September 2023. We continue to provide technical expertise to the TNFD, and to build capacity among businesses and financial institutions, preparing them to get started with adopting the TNFD recommendations.

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Case Study on Reducing Food Loss in Palm Oil in Cameroon

Cameroon is ‘Africa in miniature’ as it is home to 90% of Africa’s ecological systems. A large part of Cameroon is under the Congo basin, which holds over 15% of the world’s remaining tropical forests. In 2019, the crude palm oil (CPO) production in Cameroon was 350,000 MT while the demand is much higher, making Cameroon a net importer of palm oil. To meet the growing demand for palm oil there is a steady increase in the area under oil palm plantations. It is estimated that in Southwest Cameroon, a top producing palm oil region of Africa, 67% of oil palm expansion from 2000-2015 occurred at the expense of forest. In Cameroon, food loss in palm oil is primarily driven by on-farm loss and processing loss i.e. harvest of unripe fresh fruit bunches (equivalent of 1% CPO loss) and extraction related loss (9-15% CPO loss), respectively. On-farm loss is small and is on par with regional palm oil-producing countries like Gabon. Extraction-related loss is the leading cause of food loss and the primary reason for this low production efficiency is the use of manual mills by smallholders which have an oil extraction rate (OER) of only 12% compared to 21% for industrial mills.

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SDM Case Study: PT PAS, Indonesia

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Palm oil is both a major contributor to Indonesia’s economy and driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss. Investment in sustainable smallholder production and conservation is critical.

PT PAS produces, processes, and sells palm oil and derivative products to regional, national and global markets. They control palm oil production from a network of concessions that it owns and operates across Indonesia.

PT PAS aims to sustainably source certified palm oil from smallholders, support nearby villages diversifying into non-timber forest products, and protect, restore and rehabilitate the HCV areas on its concessions.

This SDM Analysis assessed the business case for smallholder-grown palm oil; community driven non-timber forest products (NTFPs); and the conservation efforts by PT PAS.

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Latest palm oil deforester in Indonesia may also be operating illegally

JAKARTA — The largest case of deforestation for industrial palm oil in Indonesia is happening within a concession on a tiny island off the coast of southern Borneo, according to satellite analysis by technology consultancy TheTreeMap. The deforestation appears to be illegal, activists say, citing the irregularities surrounding the permits associated with the concession. Data from TheTreeMap, available at forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas, show that 15,822 hectares (39,097 acres) of new plantations were established in the concession on the island of Laut, part of Kotabaru district in South Kalimantan province, in 2022 and 2023. The concession has been linked to palm oil company PT Multi Sarana Agro Mandiri (MSAM), part of the Jhonlin Group owned by influential tycoon Andi Syamsudin Arsyad, popularly known as Haji Isam. To make way for these new plantations, up to 10,650 hectares (26,317 acres) of forest — one-sixth the size of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta — were cleared during that period. This makes the concession the single biggest site of deforestation for palm oil in Indonesia, according to TheTreeMap. The figure is significant for an island as small as Laut, said Jefri Raharja, campaign manager with the South Kalimantan chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Indonesia’s biggest green NGO. At 202,400 hectares (500,100 acres), Laut is just three times the size of Jakarta and is barely noticeable on maps, dwarfed as it is by the main island of Borneo. Much of Laut is still forested, according to Jefri, with a mountain called Sebatung standing proud…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Read the full article on Mongabay

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What EU Deforestation Regulation compliance readiness looks like

In this webcast, panelists discuss effective compliance and reporting readiness actions for EUDR, case studies and broader strategic considerations.

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With the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), the European Union (EU) aims to ensure certain products and commodities imported, traded within or exported from the EU have not led to deforestation or forest degradation, and have been produced in compliance with the legislation of the country of origin.

As of 30 December 2024, impacted businesses are required to provide due diligence statements verifying the ‘deforestation-free’ and legality status of commodities and products in scope. Products in scope are: cattle, beef and leather, cocoa beans, cocoa shells, cocoa mass, cocoa butter and chocolate; coffee, beans, husks; palm oil, nuts and seeds; rubber and rubber products; soybeans, bean flour and bean oil; wood, furniture, cellulose and paper (full list can be found in Annex I of the regulation).

Topics discussed include:

• EUDR overview, data requirements, reporting obligations and timeline
• Immediate steps for impacted businesses to take considering traceability challenges
• Practical case studies on how businesses are preparing for EUDR
• Strategic and operational considerations in the broader ESG regulatory context

A second webcast covered potential supply chain challenges and opportunities related to EUDR. Watch the replay here.

Michelle T. Davies

EY Global Sustainability Legal Services Leader; Partner, Law, Ernst & Young LLP

Linn Anker-Sørensen

EY Global Sustainable Finance Law and Regulation Leader

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Malaysia’s ‘Orangutan Diplomacy’ draws backlash for alleged hypocrisy

• Malaysia is considering gifting orangutans to foreign countries that buy its palm oil, a strategy dubbed as “ orangutan diplomacy.”
• The plan mirrors China’s world-famous “ panda diplomacy ,” but some view it as disingenuous.
• Conservationists instead urge Malaysia to focus on actually tackling deforestation and sustainable palm oil production.
• The palm oil industry has been blamed for deforestation in Southeast Asia , destroying orangutan habitats.
• Malaysia’s Plantations and Commodities Minister Johari Abdul Ghani announced “orangutan diplomacy” during the 2024 Biodiversity Forum in Pahang on May 7. In an X post , the official said giving orangutans to trading partners such as the EU, China and India would prove that Malaysia is committed to biodiversity conservation.
• Ghani compared the plan to China’s panda diplomacy but offered few details about how it would work. China’s program involves loaning pandas to promote conservation efforts.
• Critics were quick to suggest that orangutan diplomacy seems solely focused on public relations. Conservationist Stuart Pimm from Duke University told CNN that the plan is “obscene, repugnant and extraordinarily hypocritical,” calling for real conservation efforts such as protecting orangutan habitats.
• Environmental groups like World Wide Fund (WWF) Malaysia believe addressing deforestation is key and that orangutans are best protected in their natural habitat. Malaysia has lost millions of hectares of forest cover in recent decades, with palm oil production a major culprit.
• Ghani has yet to respond to the criticisms over the plan.
• Bornean and Sumatran orangutans are both listed as endangered by the WWF. From around 230,000 orangutans a century ago, the Bornean species is now around 104,700 (Endangered), while the Sumatran species is around 7,500 (Critically Endangered). A third and critically endangered species, the Tapanuli orangutan, was discovered in 2017 with only about 800 individuals remaining.

China to send 2 giant pandas to San Diego Zoo this year

Elephants have lost 64% of their suitable habitat in Asia, study finds

Malaysia’s Last Sumatran Rhino Dies

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