Conversations about sustainable agriculture are becoming more prevalent due to climate change. Many factors contribute to the planet's rising temperatures but farming often has the biggest hand in it. Raising livestock, operating farms and harvesting crops requires a lot of energy and uses extensive resources.
Livestock and their methane emissions are often to blame for climate change, but specific crops play a significant role too. Oil palms are one of these major players. The detrimental effects of harvesting these plants don't always reach the public eye, which may be due to palm oil's sheer prevalence. It can be hard to recognize the unsavory reality of something so commonplace, but this awareness is essential for stopping climate change.
What Is Palm Oil?
Palm oil is a vegetable oil found in many of the products people use today. Ice cream, soap and even your favorite bag of chips — it's there. Some manufacturers also use it to create animal feed and biofuel. After its introduction to Southeast Asia, it quickly became widespread throughout various countries because of its versatility and inexpensiveness. If there's one oil that can do it all, it's this one — but it comes at a high environmental price.
This natural substance hails from Indonesia and Malaysia, though it's spread through numerous industries across the U.S. and Europe. Global businesses were eager to welcome a new vegetable oil that embodied all the best properties of other fats. However, this adoption of new resources spelled trouble for the plants, humans and animals living near this rich oil source.
The Effects of Harvesting
Establishing palm oil plantations requires farmers to burn down acres of rainforest to clear space for fields. Palm nuts grow best in these hot, humid conditions, and rainforests pay the cost to make room for oil palms. Burning down trees devastates the ecosystems living in those forests, further diminishing the numbers of endangered animals.
Bornean and Sumatran orangutans are gradually edging toward extinct due to losing their habitats. Sumatran tigers and elephants struggle for survival on shrinking stretches of land. Many of these species also must combat human disturbance and poaching. If their homes keep vanishing, their chances of beating all these odds will keep diminishing.
Much of Indonesia exists on top of peatland, which farmers drain and burn during the forest clearing. When this soil ignites, it releases tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Up to 1.3 million gigatons of carbon emissions enter the air each year from destroyed peatland. The fire itself releases emissions but lighting up these wetlands makes the process even more unsustainable.
All hope isn't lost, though. Establishing a sustainable growing system and measuring environmental performance can help farmers reduce ecosystem destruction. Many small farms rely on oil palm plantations for their livelihood, and halting production would be financially devastating. Farmers can keep their crops and preserve the surrounding land with cleaner ways to create palm oil.
Sustainable Solutions
Sustainable ways to harvest palm oil exist — people only have to begin using them. Researchers have found that green set-asides can be beneficial to restoring depleted rainforests. These set-asides are stretches of land between palm plantations that offer places for threatened animals to live. These areas provide food and cover away from the farms and preserve biodiversity through habitat connectivity.
Scientists have also found that using abandoned pastures to host plantations can reduce carbon emissions. Pasture to oil palm conversion keeps the land carbon-neutral because there's no need to burn down existing trees or peatland. Empty fields and savannas have low biodiversity rates, meaning few organisms would sustain harm from the land conversion.
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is a nonprofit organization that's created stringent criteria for eco-friendly palm oil production. Some of their guidelines include no use of pesticides or fires, no burning down forests with high biodiversity rates and no creating plantations in culturally significant areas.
Obtaining RSPO certification proves that a manufacturer only produces sustainable palm oil — no adverse environmental effects.
Protecting the Environment Through Improved Palm Oil Production
By rethinking current methods of palm oil production, harvesters can develop better ways to collect the crop without harming the environment. The oil has undeniable importance among worldwide industries and communities, and the industrial landscape would be incredibly different without it.
The Earth would also be altered without its much-needed ecosystems, however. That's why improving palm oil production is a crucial move for all.
Article By Jenna Tsui