The destruction of forests didn’t go unnoticed. Jefta Images/Future Publishing via Getty Images A rare successful campaign to make a product more sustainable A forest cleared to plant oil palm trees in Aceh, Indonesia, on June 15, 2017. Wet forests known as peatlands - many of which have been drained and replaced by plantations - also store massive amounts of carbon, which can escape into the atmosphere when they’re destroyed. The jungles of Indonesia and Malaysia are home to a stunning array of plants and animals including orangutans, tigers, and the world’s largest flower, the stinking corpse lily. When the forests fall, so do hugely important ecosystems that influence the entire planet. That’s almost five times the size of Delaware. In Borneo, an island split among Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the palm oil industry caused roughly 40 percent of deforestation between 20, or roughly 6 million acres of forest loss. Roughly a third of that deforestation was caused by palm oil, according to a 2022 study. In the last two decades, Indonesia lost nearly 25 million acres of forest, an area larger than the entire country of Ireland. These staggering numbers came at a huge cost. Palm oil and its derivatives are now in as many as half of the packaged products in supermarkets and 70 percent of cosmetics. For comparison, we produced roughly 3 million metric tons of olive oil in 2020. The world now produces more than 75 million metric tons of palm oil a year. (The oil palm tree is native to West Africa).īetween 19, global palm oil production doubled. Nearly all of the growth was in Indonesia and Malaysia, partly because the climate is suitable and the government backed industrial-scale plantations. With help from governments and international banks, which saw palm oil as a way to alleviate poverty in parts of Asia, production skyrocketed. Workers inspect a pile of oil palm fruit near a processing facility in Preah Sihanouk province, Cambodia, on September 16, 2016. This industry, too, saw promise in palm oil. Around the same time, cosmetic companies wanted plant-based alternatives to synthetic and animal-based chemicals. In the ’90s, big food companies were looking to replace trans fats in their products like margarine palm oil offered a solution, Tullis wrote. These characteristics helped palm oil rise to dominance, wrote journalist Paul Tullis, who called it “the world’s most versatile vegetable oil.” It contains virtually no unhealthy trans fats. Palm oil, which comes from the fruit of oil palm trees, is something of a super ingredient. But more importantly, the story of palm oil may hold lessons for other industries that still stock our grocery stores with forest-flattening foods. It’s also a reason to feel less guilty when indulging in doughnuts or creamy peanut butter. This, of course, is good news for the wildlife of Southeast Asia, and for our climate. The industry has a horrific legacy, no doubt, and it’s still wrecking some forests in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Young orangutans play at a rehabilitation center in North Sumatra, Indonesia. “I don’t want to sit here and say that the palm oil industry has suddenly become shiny green and sustainable, but it’s mostly stopped deforestation,” said Glenn Hurowitz, the founder and CEO of Mighty Earth, an environmental advocacy group. Malaysia has seen a similarly positive trend, experts say, indicating that companies are now cutting down fewer trees. Over the last decade, the amount of deforestation caused by the industry has actually declined nearly every year in Indonesia, the world’s largest producer. The demand for this ingredient, now the world’s most common edible oil, undoubtedly has fueled two of the most urgent crises of our time: climate change and the loss of biodiversity.īut the story of palm oil is changing - seemingly for the better. Over the last 30 years, palm oil companies leveled acre upon acre of trees in Southeast Asia, which were full of life and carbon. The oil, found in everything from baby shampoo to ice cream, earned its bad reputation. In the last two decades, palm oil has become an environmental boogeyman, an ingredient that conscious consumers should try to avoid.
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