Oreos, “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” cheese-its, Nutella, lipstick, shampoo, and biodiesel. You may be asking yourself- what do these things all have in common? This one terrible ingredient: Palm Oil, a type of vegetable oil derived from palm fruit grown on the oil palm tree native to Africa. This plant grows anywhere with a hot and humid climate, making the Amazon rainforest its ideal habitat. You may be thinking- but how much palm oil do I really use? In fact, palm oil accounts for over 30% of all vegetable oil used and is found in approximately 40-50% of household products in developed countries.
Unfortunately, palm oil is commonly grown in the rainforest of South America through unsustainable and harmful practices. This results in deforestation, habitat degradation, animal cruelty, and the abuse of indigenous peoples’ rights, among other things. The removal of the native forests results in invaluable timber loss which is often burned. A vicious cycle therefore begins: burning wood creates more carbon dioxide while simultaneously destroying trees to recycle that carbon dioxide.
This industry has grown immensely in the past 20 years. Currently, an area equivalent to 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour so that palm oil trees can be grown. This expansion destroys the biodiversity and ecosystems of the rainforest, causing extinction and extensive endangerment. For example, the orangutan could become extinct in the wild within the next 5-10 years, in large part due to damage caused by demand for palm oil. Over 90% of the orangutan's habitat has been destroyed in the last 20 years, and an estimated 1,000-5,000 orangutans are killed each year for this industry. A total of 50,000 orangutans have died in the last 20 years, impacting not only their species but the entire rainforest, as they are a keystone species and help with seed dispersal for native plants.
The orangutan is not the only species that has been affected: sumatran tigers will go extinct in less than three years and ½ of all mammal species in Indonesia (a major hotspot of the palm oil industry) are critically endangered. 300,000 unique animals are found in these rainforests and are all being displaced because of deforestation. The deforestation of the natural forests also gives ease of access to poachers. Roads that run through the forests also cause many of these animals to be killed, and again increase access for poachers, who previously had to canvas inaccessible parts of the forest on foot.
As well as the animals affected, indigenous peoples also face many issues with this industry. Palm oil companies claimed that they would bring development to the poorer, rural areas of the world. Instead, the government takes land belonging to the indigenous peoples for the production of palm oil. These people then have no other choice but to become plantation workers because their areas have been destroyed. Their conditions are terrible, with poor wages. Especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, children are employed for hours every day to collect fruit from the plantation floor and receive little to no pay for these efforts.
There is a solution, though. Some major palm oil companies have attempted to become more sustainable by partnering with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. RSPO is a non-profit organization that is trying to prevent deforestation within the industry. At the moment, this nonprofit is still trying to put standards into place that ban deforestation and the destruction of peatlands for the development of oil palm plantations. Even with this attempt at sustainability, the palm oil industry is still extremely detrimental to the environment and the native peoples and animals of the rainforest. So next time you go to the grocery store, think about the orangutans, check the label, and avoid buying products with palm oil.
Works Cited
“Palm Oil.” Say No To Palm Oil | What's The Issue, www.saynotopalmoil.com/Whats_the_issue.
“Ubiquitous Palm Oil.” Schuster Institute Investigative Journalism, www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org/products-with-palm-oil. “Which Everyday Products Contain Palm Oil?” WWF, World Wildlife Fund, www.worldwildlife.org/pages/which-everyday-products-contain-palm-oil.