It Is the most widely used vegetable oil in the world and is found in some form or another in more than half of consumer products in South Africa.
But the hunger for palm oil is “eating into swathes of tropical forest” in southeast Asia, decimating iconic, endangered species such as orangutans and tigers.
However, replacing palm oil – an edible vegetable oil derived from the palm fruit – with other oil crops such as soy, rapeseed or corn would require up to nine times as much land to produce than palm, says a new report released this week by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The report, Palm Oil and Biodiversity, is an objective analysis of palm oil impacts on global biodiversity and possible solutions, according to the IUCN.
It warns that outlawing ubiquitous palm oil would most likely increase the production of other oil crops to meet demand for oil, displacing rather than halting the significant global biodiversity losses caused by palm oil.
“Palm oil is a highly controversial issue. Many conservation practitioners, scientists and members of the public consider it one of the greatest threats to tropical biodiversity,” says the report, written by the IUCN oil palm task force.
“Many others, especially palm oil producers, governments and communities that grow the crop, rely upon this palm for its high yields and financial returns. Consequently, there are different viewpoints about the interaction between sustainable land use and oil palm cultivation.”
Ultimately, it says the report, answers about oil palm sustainability require value judgments, “but these need to be underpinned by evidence”. The report has studied the impacts of palm oil on biodiversity but did not consider social or economic impacts. The oil palm task force aims to study these next year.
A common thread that runs through the report is that there is strong evidence that palm oil is here to stay.
“Given a certain global demand for vegetable oils, and the fact that the oil palm produces these oils more effectively than any other crop, there appears to be no straightforward way to phase out palm oil without incurring potentially more significant environmental and social impacts elsewhere from compensatory expansion of alternative oil crops,” says the IUCN.
“When you consider the disastrous impacts of palm oil on biodiversity from a global perspective, there are no simple solutions,” says IUCN director-general Inger Andersen, in a statement.
“Half of the world’s population uses palm oil in food, and if we ban or boycott it, other, more land-hungry oils will likely take its place.
“Palm oil is here to stay, and we urgently need concerted action to make palm oil production more sustainable, ensuring that all parties – governments, producers and the supply chain – honour their sustainability commitments.”
Avoiding further palm oil-related deforestation will deliver the biggest gains for biodiversity by far, the report found.
Palm oil, says the report, is destroying global biodiversity, with 193 species assessed as threatened on the IUCN Red List affected, and orangutans, gibbons and tigers among species suffering severe harm.
Palm oil impacts on biodiversity converge in Malaysia and Indonesia, but “could spill over to tropical Africa and America” as production expands to meet demand. As palm oil is grown in the species-rich tropics, this could have catastrophic effects on global biodiversity, warns the report.
Palm oil is decimating Southeast Asia’s rich diversity of species as it “eats into swathes of tropical forest”. But if it is replaced by much larger areas of rapeseed, soy or sunflower fields, different natural ecosystems and species may suffer.
“To put a stop to the destruction, we must work towards deforestation-free palm oil, and make sure all attempts to limit palm oil use are informed by solid scientific understanding of the consequences.”
The report finds that areas into which palm oil could potentially expand are home to half of the world’s threatened mammals, and almost two-thirds of all threatened birds.
If other oil crops replaced palm oil, the damage could shift to ecosystems such as the South American tropical forests and savannas.
Oil palms produce 35% of the world’s vegetable oil on under 10% of the land allocated to oil crops, with most palm oil consumed in India, China and Indonesia.
The authors used satellite data to estimate the total planted area at 18.7 million hectares for industrial palm oil only, which gives at least 25 million hectares when smallholder plantations are included.
“This is higher than the area reported by producer countries, which adds up to 21 million hectares for all palm oil.”
According to the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute, these are just a few of the items found on supermarket shelves that may contain palm oil: pies, biscuits, rusks, cereals, chocolate
bars, potato crisps, doughnuts, margarine, cooking oil, instant noodles, ice cream, commercially-baked bread and peanut butter.
“Raisins are often coated in palm oil, to give them a nice sheen, and nuts may be roasted in palm oil. Many cosmetics use palm oil, such as soaps, shampoo, lip balm, lipstick, baby oil and face cream.”