The False Choice Between Palm Oil And Indonesian Forests

by Nigel Sizer (WRI Insights/The Jakarta Post) ...The world’s top scientists are also raising concerns. According to a recent study in Nature Climate Change, from 1990 to 2010, 90 percent of lands converted to oil palm plantations in Kalimantan were forested.
There need not, however, be a trade-off between palm oil, forests, and communities. It is possible to grow more crops–including oil palm–while keeping forests and cutting rural poverty.
...In order to do so, companies and investors must lead by supporting sustainable production on land that has already been cleared, while also ensuring that local people benefit and consent to new plantations. Global markets and the governments of major producer countries should give stronger support to such efforts.
It was therefore encouraging to see that last week in Singapore, at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) 10th annual meeting, the UK government and 14 major industry associations pledged to buy only certified sustainable palm oil by 2015. Big buyers like the British Retail Consortium, Food and Drink Federation, and Seed Crushers and Oil Processors Association have all signed on.
And the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has indicated that emissions associated with deforestation could keep Indonesian palm oil from meeting U.S. renewable biofuel standards.
... New research by the global environment and development think tank, the World Resources Institute (WRI), highlights the opportunity that is being missed to expand production onto already-deforested land in order to spare forests.
WRI has published a method enabling rapid identification of already-deforested land that could be suitable for sustainable oil palm cultivation.
...But in order for Indonesian palm oil to maintain global market access, community consent and land-use planning to reduce forest clearing will need to become the norm. The resulting expansion in sustainable palm oil production would be a huge boost to the Indonesian economy and would set an example for the rest of the world of how to grow a nation’s economy while also conserving its forest and reducing poverty. READ MORE