What do pizza, toothpaste, and tropical forests have in common?
What is palm oil? An invisible ingredient
Have you ever eaten or used palm oil in your daily life? Chances are you have because it is the most widely consumed vegetable oil in the world. Palm oil is found in about half of the packaged products in supermarkets, ranging from pizza, chocolate, and ice cream to toothpaste, shampoo, and lipstick.
Originally from West Africa with a charming scientific name, Elaeis guineensis, which literally means oil of guinea, oil palm is now grown across the tropics for its high yield. Two Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia and Malaysia, account for more than 80% of global palm oil production.
Not only is Southeast Asia the largest producer of palm oil, the region is also a major consumer of the commodity, representing about a third of the world’s consumption. The amount of palm oil consumed in Southeast Asia has been increasing steadily in recent years.
Why palm oil?
It is not without reason that palm oil has become so popular in our lives. There are several properties that make it an extremely versatile oil that can be used in many products, from food to personal care and cosmetics.
- It is semi-solid at room temperature, while stable at high temperatures. This makes palm oil a crucial ingredient in products such as margarine and baked goods.
- Palm oil is odorless and colorless and hence doesn’t affect the look or smell of products.
- Using palm oil leads to a longer shelf-life thanks to its resistance to oxidation.
- Oil palm is also a very efficient crop, which produces more oil per land area than any other equivalent crop. For example, between 4 and 10 times more land is required to produce the same amount of alternative oils such as soybean or coconut oil.
- Palm oil plays an essential role in rural development and poverty alleviation in many places, with millions of farmers depending on palm oil for their livelihood. In fact, smallholders account for about 40% of total palm oil production globally.
However, is palm oil sustainable?
The burning of forests and peatlands releases large amounts of carbon dioxide and smoke into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change and air pollution, even in places far away from the source. It was estimated that palm oil plantations on peatland represent between 17% and 28% of total greenhouse gas emissions from Malaysia and Indonesia.
Further, in various producing regions, farmers continue to practice the slash-and-burn method to clear land for cultivation, resulting in transboundary haze and air pollution. For example, in 2015, the smoke and haze caused by burning forests in Indonesia spread across several Southeast Asian countries, causing respiratory issues for over a hundred thousand people, while flights were canceled and schools were closed due to high levels of air pollution.
Not only a contributor to climate change, large-scale destruction of tropical forests, driven by palm oil production, has also destroyed critical habitat for many endangered species, including rhinos, elephants, tigers, and orangutans.
It’s damaging to the environment, why don’t we just stop consuming palm oil altogether?
The issues associated with palm oil are complex and cannot be resolved simply by moving away from palm oil and putting an end to palm oil production.
First, replacing palm oil with other types of vegetable oil is not always feasible due to its unique properties as a food ingredient. More importantly, switching to other types of oil may do more harm than good to the environment. This means that more land would be required to produce alternative oils and more forests would need to be converted into agricultural land.
In addition, people who work in the palm oil sector would be put on the verge of losing their income. In the two largest palm oil producing countries — Indonesia and Malaysia, this could affect about 4.5 million farmers and their families.
Joni Jupesta, an Indonesian researcher who used to work for a major producer of palm oil and is now exploring ways to make the Indonesian economy greener, summarizes it clearly: “The problem is deforestation, not palm oil itself.”
How can we make palm oil more sustainable?
Using certified palm oil
In 2004, the Roundtable for sustainable palm oil (RSPO) was formed to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil.
Through a set of environmental and social criteria which companies must comply with in order to get certified, the RSPO creates a market-based tool that encourages the production, trade, and consumption of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO). Producers can earn premiums for their efforts in making the palm oil industry more sustainable while companies use certified palm oil as a way to demonstrate their sustainability commitment to their customers, partners, and investors.
There are different types of certified sustainable palm oil products, each with different premium values and traceability requirements. For example, the ‘segregated’ and ‘identity preserved’ certified palm oil offers the highest level of traceability where “100% of fresh fruit bunches come from certified sources”, as detailed by Dr. Jupesta.
Monitoring deforestation using technologies
Constant monitoring is necessary to ensure that palm oil is produced without causing environmental harm. With the adoption of new technologies, the process of mapping oil palm plantations and monitoring their expansion has been made more cost-effective and accessible. For instance, applications like Global Forest Watch can automate the process of satellite imagery analysis to create deforestation alerts in areas where the land cover has changed from forests to bare land.
Palm oil buyers like Unilever have also started to actively monitor deforestation using technologies to avoid destroying carbon-rich peatland and forests. Unilever used Global Forest Watch and geolocation data to identify individual farms and plantations that were likely to sell to mills in their palm oil supply chain. The traffic patterns identified between a mill and a land area with the GPS data can highlight possible issues of deforestation in the supply chain at the level of individual fields.
What’s next?
While there have been many initiatives aimed at making the palm oil industry more sustainable, more efforts are required to move the needle. Currently, only 19% of global palm oil production is certified by the RSPO. The use of certified palm oil is not yet mainstreamed among businesses. Many cited the lack of consumer awareness and demand for certified sustainable palm oil as a reason for the limited progress in changing their practices.
Consumers can play a part in improving the sustainability of the palm oil industry by raising awareness of palm oil issues and approaches to address them. You can also influence companies and brands to take action and monitor their progress. One of the useful resources is the Palm Oil Buyers Scorecard developed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which assesses major retailers, consumer goods manufacturers, and food service companies on their performances, actions, and commitments toward responsible sourcing of palm oil.
Wonder how your favorite chocolate or ice-cream brands performed? Have a look here.
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This article was written in collaboration with Thuận Sarzynski, and also featured in the On the Boil newsletter.
Disclaimer: All information presented in this article is based on personal research and opinions and does not represent the view of any organization.
