Palm Oil Industry

Orang-utans live in areas which are favourable for establishing palm oil plantations. Global production of palm oil has doubled over the last decade. In 2000, palm oil was the most produced vegetable oil (Food Agricultural Organisation, 2002), making it the world’s most productive oil seed. Palm oil has a longer shelf life than other vegetable oils and this makes it appealing for food production. It is found in many food products such as biscuits, chips and also used in the manufacture of toothpaste, soap, shampoo and cosmetics. Approximately 50% of all packaged food products in the supermarkets contain palm oil. Recently, palm oil based bio diesel has also entered the European market. Even though bio fuel is an effective means of reducing emissions, establishing palm oil plantations increases greenhouse emissions and also at the expense of losing the orang-utan population due to clearance of the forests.

This has led to an increase in palm oil cultivation particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia as seen from the figure on the left.

As Palm oil is only able to grow in tropical areas, it leads to the destruction of the rain forest to make way for the plantations. With Malaysia and Indonesia being the main producers of palm oil, there is added pressure for them to produce enough palm oil to meet the demands globally. Therefore due to the increased demand for palm oil, palm oil is cultivated in unsustainable ways and conversion of forest to oil palm plantations happen on a massive scale. Malaysia and Indonesian are the most affected countries producing close to 90% of the palm oil to meet the world’s demand. Yet at the same time, these forests contain huge amounts of biodiversity including the orang-utans. And these species’ habitats are sacrificed for the creation of palm oil plantations.

Moreover, famers rely on the palm oil industry to bring them out of poverty. Currently, with the demand for palm oil, farmers are more than willing to produce it because the income that they earned from palm oil cultivation is able to improve their standard of living.

Picture credit
Palm oil. Source: Volker Kess, WWF
Palm oil cultivation. Source: Oil world