Malaysia- Palm oil and pulp wood companies are responsible for more than half of the rapid deforestation in the Malaysian part of Borneo island, an environmental scientist said.
David Gaveau, of the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research, used satellite images and data on concessions from more than four decades to determine how fast deforested land was converted into industrial plantations on Borneo. “The faster the conversion, the more likely that the lands were cleared by plantation companies,” Gaveau said this week.
Just half of Borneo - which is shared by Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia - is now covered by forests compared with 76percent in 1973, Gaveau said.
The findings by Gaveau and his group are likely to compound criticism of the palm oil industry in particular, which has faced condemnation for its land-clearing by burning and resulting smoke across Southeast Asia every year.
Read also: Business not doing enough to stop commodities destroying forests
Malaysia and neighbouring Indonesia are the world’s top two producers of palm oil, a widely used edible oil found in everything from cookies to soaps. Both countries are also major producers of timber and timber products.
Plantations operating on both the Malaysian and Indonesian parts of Borneo have come under scrutiny over the clearing of forest, which has also resulted in a dramatic loss of habitat for wildlife, including orangutans.
“By and large, we can say that the oil palm industry has always been the major driver of deforestation,” Gaveau said.
But the link between plantations and deforestation was much more stark in Malaysian Borneo, he said.
Malaysia has lost a total of 4.2 million hectares, or 28 percent, of its original forest cover on Borneo between 1973 and 2015, and up to 60 percent of the cleared land had rapidly been converted to plantations, Gaveau said in an interview.