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Growing demand for palm oil by the food industry is causing wide-spread rainforest destruction and enormous carbon dioxide emissions, according to new research.
The study reveals that expanding production of palm oil – a common ingredient in processed foods and confectionery products – is driving the destruction of carbon-rich tropical forests in Borneo, leading to huge releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Writing in Nature Climate Change, US-based researchers from Stanford and Yale universities suggest that the vast deforestation occurring during the development of oil palm plantations in Indonesian Borneo "is becoming a globally significant source of carbon dioxide emissions."
The researchers said the sustainable production of palm oil will require re-evaluation of awarded oil palm plantation leases located on forested lands – around 80% of which are currently unconverted.
Led by Professor Lisa Curran from Stanford, the authors explained that a technique combining field measurements with high-resolution satellite image was used to evaluate carbon emissions for lands targeted for palm oil plantations.
The team used this classification to generate the first comprehensive maps of oil palm plantation expansion in Borneo (also known as Kalimantan) from 1990 to 2010. The team then quantified the types of land that have been cleared for oil palm plantations, and worked out the carbon emissions and sequestration from oil palm agriculture.
"A major breakthrough occurred when we were able to discern not only forests and non-forested lands, but also logged forests, as well as mosaics of rice fields, rubber stands, fruit gardens and mature secondary forests used by smallholder farmers for their livelihoods," said Kimberly Carlson, a Yale doctoral student and lead author of the study.
"With this information, we were able to develop robust carbon bookkeeping accounts to quantify carbon emissions from oil palm development."
Curran and her team said the findings show that allocated oil palm leases “represent a critical yet undocumented source of deforestation and carbon emissions.”
Study details
Curran and her colleagues had initially gathered oil palm land lease records during interviews with local and regional governmental agencies. These records identified locations that have received approval and are allocated to oil palm producers.
They revealed that the total allocated leases spanned about 120,000 square kilometres – an area slightly smaller than Greece. Most leases in the study occupied more than 100 square kilometres – an area slightly larger than Manhattan, the team said.
However the researchers said that around 80% of these leases remained unplanted in 2010.
Using the information from the leases – in combination with land cover maps – the team then estimated the future land-clearing and carbon emissions for already approved but not yet cleared plantations.
The team found that if all of these leases were developed, more than a third of Kalimantan's lowlands would be planted with oil palm by 2020. They said this planned expansion is projected to contribute more than 558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in that time.
"These plantation leases are an unprecedented 'grand-scale experiment' replacing forests with exotic palm monocultures," said Curran.
"We may see tipping points in forest conversion where critical biophysical functions are disrupted, leaving the region increasingly vulnerable to droughts, fires and floods."
Source: Nature Climate Change
Published online ahead of print, doi: 10.1038/nclimate1702
“Carbon emissions from forest conversion by Kalimantan oil palm plantations”
Authors: Kimberly Carlson, Lisa Curran, Gregory Asner, Alice McDonald Pittman, Simon Trigg, J. Marion Adeney
7 comments (Comments are now closed)
Yet it does
Honestity mandates us to recognize that a plantation, designed for maximum resource output, and therefore, intending to have a minimum of non-productive external species consuming resources, cannot compare with tropical forest. So, for example, one country can forbid planting palm oil into wild jungle, but not other crops. Then, palm will displace other crops into the jungle. As for the second point (good to see health was left unadressed), regional collapse will happen and in fact is happening and has happened (Aral sea, first world exportation of pollution, a myriad of examples). You must address the big picture, not ask for bad, partial solutions. We need more efficiency, stop depleting natural capital and stop compounded population-consumption growth.
I salute you.
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Posted by Jordi
11 October 2012 | 17h56
Oil-palm doesn't have to replace tropical forests
Jordi,
Are you seriously thinking that cultivated areas are without biological diversity? There is plenty of wild-live in a corn-field, there is plenty of wild life in a Palm oil plantation, particularly if the palms were planted in an area that was wet grass-land before with some cattle on it, with even less wild-life. We should not categorically condemn a specific oil-manufacturing strategy just because mistakes have been made in some areas in the past. We need more food, more fuel, and more materials in the future. This requires good solutions, and not just a loud shouting minority predicting doom. If you want to offer critique, please offer an alternative solution first...
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Posted by Jurgen Denecke
11 October 2012 | 16h02
Yes, why?
Mr. Denecke:
Oil palm a)razes tropical forest and nullifies its biological diversity b)helps in millions of deaths due to its effects on the circulatory system.
And now back to work. No time to check for soil conservation.
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Posted by Jordi
11 October 2012 | 09h14
Why is it popular to bad-mouth oil-palm and not oilseed?
I find it interesting that the amount of anti-propaganda seems to be directly proportional to how much more competitive a renewable oil-production strategy is. With limiting arable land-surface, we need to make the most of the land we have. In this respect, Oil Palm provides a forest canopy that helps circulating water, it holds a latent stock of fixed carbon, and it produces 5 times more oil than oilseed, soybean or sunflower. If any terrestrial plant-based oil could be used to generate food as well as bio-diesel, then it is Oil-palm, yet the media are full of concerns over this. Indeed Oil-palm is singled out whilst nobody seems to worry about the economical and ecological consequences of oilseed on prime farm-land that generates a miserable 500 litres of bio-diesel (when subsidised to help the costly production lines). Moreover, oilseed neither holds much fixed carbon nor does it provide a forest canopy to stabilise the climate by water evaporation. Either it must be ignorance, or I smell a rat (is it allowed to ask who benefits from bad-mouthing oil-palm?).
Oil palm should be compared to other oil crops, and we should also not forget that much of Europe used to be forest whilst now we have fields of oilseed or corn, unless it is wet wasteland with some sheep or deserts with some goats. The climate in many places of Europe has become more desert-like because all the forests have been sacrificed to make charcoal for ore-smelting, and desert-like means on average colder. At the time of the Romans, it was almost 5 degrees warmer in Europe and Britain could produce local wines (try that now, will you?) despite a distinct lack of increased CO2 levels in those days. Let's do our own homework first before we point the finger at others.
Forests are important for our climate, but not because they fix more carbon than they release. In fact, they don't. A Rainforest is in perfect equilibrium, it releases as much CO2 from rotting plants as it fixes through photosynthesis. The only way to make a carbon sink is to plant new trees, and conserve the bio-mass on purpuse, i.e. by using the wood to make stable building materials. Oil-palm does not only generate oil, it provides bio-mass that can be explored for a variety of funtions in the future, and it provides young growing forests that indeed fix more carbon than they release during their cultivation cycle.
Whenever you read articles about difficult topics like the climate, then think carefully and compare many viewpoints.
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Posted by Jurgen Denecke
10 October 2012 | 13h41
Sustainable Source
Not all oil palm plantations are cultivated in the same manner as published in the Nature Climate Change journal. Companies that use palm oil need to identify the location of the plantation and the source of palm oil that they purchase from.
Oil palm plantations in Peninsula Malaysia follow strict government regulations in cultivating oil palm trees. They are also members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Organization (RSPO) and are committed to the principles and criteria of sustainable plantation.
Plantations in Peninsula Malaysia are not newly deforested area but legally designated agricultural lands / existing croplands that have been planted on for over three to four 25-year cycles.
When sourcing palm oil or palm oil ingredients, manufacturers need to specifically ask for documentary evidence to show that these are not obtained from palm trees grown on new plantations or plantations from cleared rain forest – which are prevalent in locations such as Indonesian Borneo and not in Peninsula Malaysia.
The location of plantation and source of palm oil are two important criteria to ensure the palm oil is sustainably-produced.
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Posted by CM Lai / Carotech Bhd.
09 October 2012 | 12h13
So Money & Profit make a comment
To the previous commentor - how sad it is that the palm oil industry is so driven by money and greed. And so desperate and feisty to prove they do no wrong.
This current research by Prof Curran and her team just adds to the evidence of the destructive nature of palm oil plantations.
The near exhaustive destruction of old growth rainforests in Indonesia / Malaysia is an absolute environmental catastrophe - to the flora and to the once abundant wildlife, many of which are now endangered. Yet the forest continue to fall.
The palm oil industry may wallow in their fortunes made, but they will be solely responsible for the extinction of many plant and animal species, such as the Orangutan.
Industries must find an alternative to palm oil.
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Posted by Samantha Coulson
09 October 2012 | 02h35
What a selectively skewed study!
The study is not worth the paper it is written on as it was cleverly designed to study only high-yield cultivation of oil palm to the exclusion of competing edible oilseed crops and is fatally flawed for 2 reasons:
First, the study uses high resolution satellite imagery to evaluate carbon emission for lands "targeted for palm oil plantations. Indonesia's slash and burn methods of land clearing which would account for the bulk of any visible and verifiable pollutants/carbon emission is largely ignored and not even mentioned in the study!
Secondly, in our view, Prof Curran and her team conveniently used the fact that only 20 per cent of the palm oil land is cultivated to extrapolate and manipulate the results. Any calculation of potential carbon emission resulting from future cultivation of the remaining 80% land remains pure conjecture at least so long as slash and burn pollutants are not factored into the calculation!
In singling out palm oil and only palm oil to measure carbon emission to the exclusion of other edible oilseed crops, the researchers have ensured a selectively skewed report!
For the study to have any legitimacy, it has to be designed to include competing edible oil crops such as soy, rapeseed, corn and sunflower. In the interest of true scientific impartiality and integrity it would have been imperative to consider how these competing crops, including palm oil would compare in the "destruction" of virgin tropical rainforests. The dominant scientific standards for scientific studies of this nature would require that alternatives be included for a truly legitimate and authoritative picture to emerge.
As things stand, we can only postulate as to the reasons for the selective exclusion of other edible oilseeds from the study. Could it be that the researchers know that the other oilseeds would fare even worse than palm oil if they were to be included in the study? Consider this. If a competing edible oilseed like soy was planted instead of palm oil, 10 times more land would have to be cleared as palm oil with its current yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare already exceeds soy by a multiple of ten! In fact, best in class plantations are already producing 8 metric tons and current R&D points to a potential yield of 20 metric tons per hectare!
Logically, this means that palm oil requires far less land to produce the same amount of oil as its competitors. The fact that palm oil is grown on only 0.23% of the world's agricultural land and yet produce 30% of global edible oil output should clue in any objective observer as to the real reasons for the strange assault on probably the most benign edible oilseed crop, environmentally speaking!
Italian civil libertarian group, Libertiamo have blown the cover of the planners and perpetuators of these campaigns! Says Libertiamo, these campaigns are "funded by the Office of the Environment Directorate of the European Commission (EC) ostensibly to improve environmental practices in developing countries". In reality, the millions of Euros poured into these palm oil campaigns, noted Libertiamo, are designed to protect the EU's own indigenous edible oilseed industries like rapeseed and sunflower which are hapless in the face of and unable to compete with the hyper yielding palm oil! To make matters worse, the EC is aware that the anti-palm oil campaigns are based almost entirely on "manufactured and false evidence"!
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Posted by The Palm Oil Truth Foundation
08 October 2012 | 17h49
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