* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
By Rajeet Ghosh Not so long ago palm oil production was seen as the darling of sustainable, environmentally friendly development. Here was a crop that brought much-needed revenue to developing countries, produced a highly efficient bio-fuel while maintaini
By Rajeet Ghosh
Not so long ago palm oil production was seen as the darling of sustainable, environmentally friendly development.
Here was a crop that brought much-needed revenue to developing countries, produced a highly efficient bio-fuel while maintaining forest cover and could play a role in reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Soon plantations of the oil palms were surging, championed as a new weapon to limit global warming.
On the back of such credentials the palm oil market exploded. The production of palm oil increased nine fold from 1980 to 2009, according to World Bank figures.
Today, however, plantation palm oil is quickly losing its green sheen. Loss of biodiversity and habitat as palm plantations replace native forests, threats to indigenous cultures and communities and a recognition that palm oil's contribution to climate change is much more complicated now has many non-governmental organizations calling for a stop to the spread of palm oil production.
Even that is difficult, though. Today palm oil is commercially produced in 43 countries, all in the developing world. It is seen as a key commodity for increasing exports and revenues with an aim of alleviating poverty in some of the most deprived countries on earth.
The majority of palm oil production takes place in Indonesia and Malaysia, where both countries have enjoyed palm oil successes, including key support of their economies during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. Exports of the crop have been so successful that they have quickly outpaced the previous primary commodity, rubber.
PALM OIL AND POVERTY REDUCTION
Palm oil production has been vital in creating employment in Indonesia where over half of the population live on less than $2 a day.
Since 1980, 400,000 workers have been employed in the palm oil industry, enabling Malaysia to bring itself on target to meet its Millennium Development Goal on employment as well as expanding and diversifying its economy, according to the country's Ministry of Plant Industries and Commodities.
In both Malaysia and Indonesia, the World Bank says, the palm oil industry has made vast contributions to reducing poverty, including by providing the rural poor with land, capital and an economically viable crop.
But reports by non-governmental organisations, including, Friends of the Earth, now suggest that in the rush to acquire land to grow palm oil, traditional land owners are being trampled under a commercial system that they do not understand and cannot integrate with.
In Malaysia, the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), a non-profit human rights organisation, identified some 140,000 aboriginal people whose customary rights in land are not recognised by the government, leaving them vulnerable to land takeover.
Recently there has been added concern that palm oil production has been damaging the climate in previously unforeseen ways.
The cheapest way for companies to clear forest land for plantations is by cutting and burning it, a technique known as "slash and burn." This process releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing significantly to global warming.
PEAT TO PALM?
With land pressures increasing in Borneo and other Indonesian islands, plantations are increasingly being built on peat swamps. Peat is an incredibly effective carbon sink that stores carbon absorbed over thousands of years. When peat forests are converted for palm oil, peat lands are drained, releasing those stores of carbon into the atmosphere.
The 14 billion tonnes of carbon stored in Sumatra's peat forests, if released, would be the equivalent of an entire year's worth of the global greenhouse gas emissions entering the atmosphere in one go, according to a 2007 Greenpeace report.
Perhaps the biggest chink in palm oil's green armour, however, is research by the Society for the Conservation of Biology (SCB) that shows that "even when fully mature, oil-palm plantations contain much less carbon than old-growth forest."
Natural forests absorb and store far more carbon so it no longer poses a risk to the atmosphere. It is recycled within the forest even when the trees die and decompose.
Further research by SCB estimates that it would take between 75 to 93 years for the carbon emissions saved through the use of bio-fuel to compensate for the carbon lost through conversion of primary forest to palm oil plantations.
With the World Bank predicting that demand for vegetable oil will increase significantly before 2020, and Indonesia backtracking on its new $1 billlion deal with Norway to protect something under half of its natural forests, it is clear palm oil production will increase and the victim will be the unique rainforests the plantations replace.
Palm oil has fallen spectacularly from grace. Despite this it is proving a hard habit for the world to kick as so many rely on it as a product, or as a source of income and prosperity. It is clear however that continued widespread expansion of palm oil production will cause irreversible damage to our planet and its climate. Our road to salvation could turn into a path to destruction
Rajeet Ghosh is a student at the University of Manchester currently studying geography, including climate change and climate change policy, and undertaking a dissertation investigating the response of companies to the European emissions trading scheme.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
