UK supermarket ad missed the mark
Climate change has pervaded much of the news headlines lately, from concerned debate over the drivers of the California wildfires and the unsettling realities reported in the National Climate Assessment, to the United States’ controversial position in the Paris Agreement. Your stance on climate change as a political issue aside, this problematic ecological, economical, social, and agricultural issue is real and requires change from its drivers: us.
Relevant to this discussion is the recent attention on palm oil, a product derived from the fruit of the oil palm tree. Palm oil has been catapulted back into conversation by a recent British supermarket ad that both palm oil producers and environmentalists called effective, but misleading. Partnering with Greenpeace UK, Iceland Foods Ltd. depicted palm oil production as the single driver of deforestation and orangutan habitat destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia. Iceland Foods pledged to ban all products containing palm oil until a sustainable solution is found.
Although emotionally effective and born from valid evidence of ecological destruction, the ad and the pledge oversimplify the problem. What does a full ban mean for communities who depend on palm oil production for economic survival? Are consumers willing to pay a premium for certified sustainable palm oil? (Market-watchers say not yet.) If the world’s most popular vegetable oil is totally boycotted, what will be produced in its stead? And where? And how? Will the alternative crop be better or worse for the environment? How can you predict that?
Predictions don’t always consider the big picture
This wouldn’t be the first time governments and consumers sought more environmentally-friendly solutions to environmentally-destructive problems. In fact, palm oil production surged when interest in natural alternatives to trans fats rose among the health-conscious, and interest in renewable alternatives to fossil fuels rose among the eco-conscious. For the latter, biofuel production from palm oil was predicted to be less detrimental to the environment because the trees are efficient producers and the product could be renewable as long as there was available arable land.
If arable land is already being utilized to grow another crop, more farmland needs to be created. To create more farmland, existing forests need to be cleared. Oil palms grow well in tropical conditions like Indonesian rainforests and the peatland regions of Borneo, ecosystems that effectively absorb carbon from the atmosphere. When these ecosystems are slashed and burned to grow oil palm trees, massive deforestation occurs and the stored carbon is released into the environment, surpassing the carbon emissions of petroleum fuels.
The effects of supplying an increasing global demand for palm oil products extend beyond the 877,000 acres of Malaysian and Indonesian rainforest bulldozed each year and the enormous contribution to greenhouse gases and air pollution. Deforestation for palm oil production, in combination with hunting, has killed nearly 150,000 Bornea orangutans from 1999 to 2015. Human rights abuses such as child labor and forced evictions from neighboring villages are also overlooked. Governments and producers have traditionally exploited indigenous communities, forcing many into homelessness when villages are destroyed and promises for profit-shares are not met.
What is the solution?
Even if we wanted to boycott palm oil, how would we know what to boycott? Sure, we know we can find this versatile product in confectioneries, soaps, cosmetics, biofuels, and toothpaste, but when goods list palm oil by its processed names, how can we be sure we are boycotting the right products? Super olein, emulsifiers, and stearins aren’t particularly recognizable to the emotionally-activated consumer.
While shifting consumer demand may play some role in initiating change, environmentalists say it is not enough. The most effective factor is government capacity and intervention to initiate and sustain effective policies that conserve fleeting forests, promote human rights, and preserve biodiversity. Gabon’s production model seeks this exact balance between agricultural development and forest preservation through government assessments that identify which parts of the forest have conservation value and which parts could be used to plant oil palms. Sustainability groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, and the Palm Oil and NGO Alliance also work alongside governments to prioritize this balance.
Boycotting might not be the answer and demanding certified sustainable palm oil might not be enough in such an extensive global market, but the public concern for human, wildlife, and environmental impacts of palm oil production is an important start. These concerns must turn into measurable actions: demands for governments to overhaul conservation policies that support improved production strategies.
Want to know more about the uses of palm oil? Take the quiz to see how much you depend on it, and check out the tree infographic that lists the uses of palm oil at various stages of processing.
Questions, comments, feedback about today's Weekly Update? Please email Dr. Lauren Bernstein
Receive the Weekly Update right in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Subscribe now at z.umn.edu/WeeklyUpdateSubscribe
Lauren Bernstein
Lauren received her BS in Animal Science from the University of Tennessee. Following a Rotary International site visit to South Africa as an undergraduate student, she decided to focus her prospective veterinary career on public health, specifically on issues involving diseases at the human-animal-environment interface. She completed her veterinary education at the University College Dublin, School of Veterinary Medicine. When she's not in the office, she enjoys yoga, embracing the outdoor activities in Minneapolis, and finding excuses to talk about her rescue cat.