Palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet, demand has undergone a phenomenal growth and is expected to more than double by 2030 and triple by 2050. Not surprising when it is thought to be found in about 50% of supermarket products, from food to cleaners to cosmetics.
Between 1990 and 2010, it is estimated that 8.7 million acres of rainforest in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea were cleared for palm plantations, an area nearly twice the size of Wales. In the same time, Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil, has seen a 600% growth in the area covered by plantations with an associated loss of 40% of its lowland rainforests.
Next on the list is Central Africa, with more than a million acres of rainforest under imminent threat.
The effects of this mass destruction are devastating to a range of environmental and cultural aspects…
The plight of orangutans has been a key feature of palm oil protest campaigns. 80% of their habitat has been destroyed in the last 20 years and the serious risk of their extinction is imminent.
The list of other mammals affected includes elephants, rhinos and tigers. However this is just the tip of the iceberg, tropical forests contain a huge diversity of species of both animals and plants, all of them are under threat.
Social impacts are also wide ranging, and economic gains are far from evenly distributed. More than 20 million people, comprising hundreds of distinct language groups, depend on Indonesia’s forests. Many traditional communities have lost their lands to plantations. The Indonesian National Lands Agency registered over 3,000 conflicts between palm oil companies and communities in 2013, and the drafting in of migrant labour for plantations causes further problems.
In 2014 the US Department of Labour listed palm oil as one of 55 goods produced globally by forced labour. It is estimated that there are between 72,000 and 200,000 children working on palm plantations in Malaysia.
Expansion of the industry has been blamed for an intensification of land and wealth concentration. A World Bank analysis found that “only smallholder production – not production by private estates – is positively correlated with poverty reduction”.
The founder of the Indonesian Peasant Union, Henry Saragih, says: “The presence of palm oil plantations has spawned a new poverty and is triggering a crisis of landlessness and hunger”.
In 2004, pushed by the WWF, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was established to develop and implement environmental and social standards for the industry. The 2000-plus members are mostly processors, traders and consumer goods manufacturers, but also include growers, retailers, NGOs and investors.
Currently only 20% of palm oil is certified to RSPO standards, and even then the organisation has been accused of ‘greenwash’. On the one hand it seeks to improve company practices but, on the other, it seeks to legitimise continued expansion”.
The organisation also stands accused of failing to adequately audit companies or penalise them when they break the rules. The credibility or efficacy of the RSPO is entirely reliant on NGOs… to look at what’s actually happening and try and enforce the standard, not an easy job!!
Spotting palm oil in a product is a nightmare, especially when you take a look at the range of names describing this one product – why are there so many?!
These items are definitely palm oil:
These are likely to be palm oil:
As consumers we can avoid the worst offending companies, but we clearly need to push the industry as a whole to be more responsible. Here are a few ideas:
Something has to change!!!!!!
