The Problem with Palm Oil

Palm Oil, an ingredient found in many everyday food and cosmetic products, is contributing to the rapid destruction of rainforests. Orangutan habitat in Sumatra and Borneo is being clear-felled at an alarming rate for conversion to oil palm plantations. On Sumatra there is now more than 4 times as much land cultivated with oil palms as there is orangutan habitat remaining.

Over the past few decades, oil palm plantations have rapidly spread across South-east Asia and are a source of important economic benefits in terms of foreign exchange and employment in Indonesia. However, this development has become a source of serious concern, because much of the plantation expansion has happened at the expense of Indonesia's tropical forest cover, where forests are disappearing at a rate of more than 2.8 million hectares per year.

There is a huge amount of degraded land available for planting oil palms in Sumatra and Borneo, but palm oil companies can make a quick profit when they cut down rainforests and sell the timber, so the relentless deforestation continues. We do NOT support a boycott of products containing palm oil, or companies using palm oil in their products. However, the international community must demand that oil-palm concessions are not granted in forested areas, and that our local retailers and consumer goods manufacturers only source their palm oil from non-destructive plantations.

Download a report below in 'File Sharing' linking the expansion of oil palm plantations to the destruction of orangutan habitat: Oil for Ape Scandal

Click here to read the report Losing Ground - the human rights impacts of oil palm plantation expansion in Indonesia from Friends of the Earth, Life Mosiac and Sawit Watch. Visit the Life Mosaic website here to view 'Palmed Off', a film based on the voices of indigenous people in 20 Indonesian communities. All have directly experienced the impacts of oil palm plantations taking over the land that they have lived on and worked on for generations.

A report released in October 2008 by Friends of the Earth,  Malaysian Palm Oil - Green Gold or Green Wash, states that Malaysian palm oil exported for use in food, biofuels and cosmetics is far from 'green' - contrary to claims by Malaysian palm oil producer.The report claims that oil palm plantations are being expanded at the expense of tropical forests in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

Biofuels: The Answer to Climate Change?

The growth in palm oil, sugar cane and soya production has led to the destruction of some of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems, home to many endangered species and vulnerable communities. The demand for biofuels is a significant driver behind the unsustainable growth of these industries.

Biofuels generated from food crops such as palm oil could actually be causing more damage to the climate than the traditional fossil fuels they were designed to replace. Currently more carbon emissions result from deforestation and peat fires than are produced by the entire global transport sector. Slowing the rate of forest destruction is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to fight climate change.

When a hectare of primary rainforest is cleared and replaced with oil palms, this releases around 65 times as much carbon into the atmosphere as can be saved annually by using the palm oil as a biofuel.

Palm oil production is linked to the destruction of South-east Asia's remaining rainforests, human rights abuses, and to peat and forest fires which cause around three times as much greenhouse gas emissions as the Kyoto Protocol is meant to save. The palm oil industry in Indonesia and Malaysia intends to capitalise on the growing demand for biofuels by expanding oil palm plantations at the expense of remaining lowland forests on Sumatra and Borneo, completely undermining the environmental benefits of using biofuels.

Up to 15% of all global CO2 emissions come from Indonesia's peat fires. Satellite images have shown that 75% of the fire hotspots are on plantation land, which largely grow palm oil.

How to Help

On 23rd January 2008 the European Commission published its proposal that all road fuels in the EU will contain 10% biofuels by 2020, despite mounting evidence that biofuel expansion will bring severe environmental problems. Click here to read Ruth Kelly's (Secretary of State, Department of Transport) statement to the House of Commons on biofuels (7th July 2008).

Supports in Europe can click here to sign a petition calling for it to be made compulsory for palm oil to be properly labelled on food packaging.

Supporters in the US should visit the Rainforest Action Network's site for advice about how to get involved.

Supporters in Australia and New Zealand should visit the Palm Oil Action Group.

This is not only a problem in Indonesia - high conservation value habitats are under threat in Africa and South America as well. Click here to sign a petition to protect the Tanoe Swamp Forest in Cote d'Ivoire, Africa from oil palm expansion.

More Ways to help