Palm Oil Essay

Issue- Palm oil is one of the world’s most popular edible vegetable oil. Used in most consumer goods, this particular oil may be cheap but it comes at a tremendous cost to our environment. Palm oil has been connected to many environmental, animal, and human rights violations yet organsisations and companies all over the world continue to use this particular oil in just about everything, in fact this popular oil is in about half of all products on store shelves. Including products like laundry detergent, snacks, lipstick, cosmetics, ice-cream and even soap.

Scientific explanation- Palm oil is extracted from the fruit of the oil palm tree, Elaeis guineensis, which thrives in fairly humid tropical climates. The large majority of palm oil production

Palm oil plantations have sadly cleared some of the world’s most precious, carbon capturing forests. Since rain forests are the largest carbon sinks, when destroyed they release massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Leveling forests not only impacts the climate, but releasing carbon into the atmosphere drives global warming, and tragically deforestation is the second largest manmade, human source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, after fossil fuel burning. Interrupting forests too poses a very immediate threat to some species that live in these tropical areas. The habitats are shrinking for a multitude of these species, (some of which are endangered), and sadly there are over 300,000 different animals which have been found throughout the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra, many of which are injured, killed and displaced during the process of deforestation. Scientists estimate that the fragile orangutan population too could become extinct and non-existent within our lifetime if we continue to destroy their home and natural habitats for palm oil plantations. They have also found that only about 400 tigers are left on the island of Sumatra, these figures are confronting! In 1978, there were estimated to be 1000. Soil erosion and soil and water pollution are also issues that have become apparent as a result of creating unsustainable palm

In Indonesia and Malaysia, a total of 4.5 million people earn their living from palm oil production. Stopping the production of palm oil altogether would create significant problems for these people. Palm oil smallholders are some of the poorest farmers in the world. The money they earn from growing oil palm trees is crucial to feed and care for their families. From these facts we can see how palm oil supports economies too. Farming and producing palm oil forms the financial structure for many communities and, indeed, countries. Palm oil accounts for 11% of Indonesia's export earnings, with one third of this production attributed to smallholder farmers.

Many people worldwide wonder why we cant simply replace palm oil, for another type that might be more sustainable or environmentally friendly, but replacing palm oil with other types of vegetable oil (such as sunflower, soybean or rapeseed oil) would mean that much larger amounts of land would need to be used, as palm trees produce 4-10 times more oil than other crops per unit of cultivated land. Although using other vegetable oils seems like a a somewhat reasonable solution, it would actually create similar, if not larger, environmental and social