Further on Palm Oil

In my last post I introduced the discussion around palm oil production and its negative impacts to the environment. Today I want to continue on the topic of palm oil and look further into how it is impacting our planet. Palm oil production has emerged as a controversial topic and there is literature for both for and against palm oil production. But despite my best efforts, I am seeing the extensive negative impacts of palm oil plantations more clearly than the positive ones. If you are interested, here is an article showing palm oil from a positive light by Lam et al 2009 (arguing that  palm oil is indeed the most economical and sustainable source of food and biofuel in the world market).

Let us go back to how palm oil plantations introduce land clearance and deforestation. Last week I mentioned the impacts of deforestation but this time I will look at peatland destruction. Globally, peatlands take up about 3% of the planet's land area but store up to 528 000 megatons of carbon. This makes up one third of total global soil carbon and is equivalent of 70 times the annual carbon release from fossil fuel burning (Hooijer et al. 2006).  Peatlands act as important carbon sinks and maintain the health of the global carbon cycle. In the past, peatlands were seen as unattractive for agriculture but in recent years, when deeply drained, peatlands have become suitable for palm oil production. Hoojier et al show evidence that Southeast Asia, the area of most intensive palm oil production, makes up 6% of total peatlands in the world. In Indonesia, 25% of its palm oil plantations are on peatlands, which means enormous amounts of carbon dioxide release occurring when these areas are dried and organic material is decomposed with contact to air (Tan et al. 2007). Looking at the paper by Tan et al. it becomes evident that even though some negative impacts like land loss and deforestation are overemphasised (some land for plantations comes from land previously occupied by cocoa or sugar), palm oil production has vast environmental and climatic impacts.

Peat and oil palm

(Source: http://understory.ran.org)

So far this blog has largely focused on the climatic impacts of emissions released by the food sector. Here I feel like it is time for a slight diversion from the main topic. Namely palm oil production has had extreme impacts on biodiversity and I feel like this deserves a mention. Fitzherbert et al. (2008) argue that palm oil plantations support fewer species than the forests that have been taken down in result and habitat much fewer other tree crops essential for providing habitat for local biodiversity. The result is decreased species richness as oil palm consistently hold fewer than half as many vertebrate species as primary forests. Due to changes towards lower plant species diversity and reductions in habitat structural complexity, fewer animal species are living in plantations. This leads to destruction of local ecosystems and possible excitation of species. If you are interested in biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation (not only caused by palm oil), here is a good blog post for you to look at: at-the-edge-of-extinction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/habitat-fragmentation (I encourage you to look beyond than just this post to understand biodiversity loss further).

A specific example of biodiversity loss is the case of orangutans in East Asia. Sumatran orangutans and Borean orangutans are under threat, they depend on natural forests for habitat and food. Natural habitat is being degraded due to plantation expansion and orangutan death rate has skyrocketed while birth rates are shrinking (Tan et al. 2007). Even after the clearing of the forests and introduction of plantations, confused animals tend to wander in their former habitats and end up being killed to protect the crops or for meat.

Sumatran orangutan rescued as the palm oil plantations close in

(Source: http://www.orangutan.com)

Palm oil itself is not necessarily climate damaging but the way it is produced, as presented earlier, can have vast environmental impacts. In efforts to move towards more ecological palm oil production, the roundtable on sustainable palm oil (RSPO) was established in 2004. RSPO operates around eight principles that promote sustainable palm oil production: transparency of management, compliance to local and international laws and regulations, responsibility in conservation of natural resources and many others. Boycotting all palm oil products just seems unrealistic and unreasonable, we just need a environmentally sound production process involving all stakeholders.

So what do you think? Do you see a future in sustainable palm oil production with no biodiversity loss, peatland destruction and deforestation? Do you believe that RSPO can actually achieve sustainable palm oil production or is it all just greenwashing? I leave you with a Greenpeace advert from a few years back raising awareness about KitKat using ecologically unsound palm oil in their products. It is a fairly disturbing and controversial way to raise awareness but it seemed to work, this video went viral in a few days after being posted in 2010. If you haven't already seen it yet, I warn you, it is not very pleasant.

Till next time,
Laura