One topic that shakes the core of my being is deforestation (I won’t even get into the ridiculousness of what it means to destroy an entire ecosystem that took centuries, if not millennia, to establish itself).
At current rates, by the year 2100 tropical forest clearing could release 320 to 477 Gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, and the thing that is fueling this destruction: Palm oil.
Palm oil is a cheap, cheap, cheap feedstock for biodiesel, foods, soaps and so many other products. Unfortunately, what most of us do not realize is that palm oil has become such a huge cash crop and it is literally clearing the way for deforestation in many parts of the world, mainly Indonesia and Malaysia.
These two countries are home to large rainforests and peatlands that not only house some of the rarest species on the planet great and small (orangutans and microorganisms), but the forests also hold vast amounts of carbon that create massive quantities of green house gases when they are cleared.
Peatlands are some of our planet’s greatest natural resources for fuel due to their high carbon content when dried. But it is also with this high carbon content wherein the danger and destruction lies. It is estimated that the peatlands in Indonesia contain upwards of 50 billion tons of carbon and their burning is contributing highly to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Peatlands and rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia are cleared on massive scales, about 50 football fields a minute, to allow for the planting of palm trees which produce, what else, palm oil. The governments of these poor nations aren’t keenly aware of the importance that their natural forests have for the world’s ecology and have sanctioned the clearing as an economic resource for their developing nation.
But, luckily it looks like things may be turning around!
The
United Nation’s Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, or
REDD, program has come up with a possible solution that will make conserving the rainforests and peatlands more profitable than clearing them.
According to
BBC News, under
REDD, palm oil companies would be called on to protect the forested areas they already own and sell “carbon credits” for the amount of carbon contained in the still living forest.
Basically what would happen is that the palm oil company would sell the land they already purchased to be cleared to plant palm trees to the government or another conservation body at a rate higher than what they would earn through the selling of palm oil produced on that land.
At a break even price of $10 per ton of carbon, anything over that would be a profit for the palm oil company. Current trends tend to be upwards of $30 per ton of carbon.
Dr. Oscar Venter from the
University of Queensland states that
“ REDD is probably our best chance to invest billions of dollars in forest conservation and to help developing nations make a reasonable profit from their forests.”
Let’s hope that this program is viable because it will certainly promote conservation since these countries will see the already existing forest as worth more than a cleared one, left useless after only a few rotations of palm plantations.
One way that we can all help to reduce the demand for palm oil and thus reduce the amount of deforestation, is to
not use any products containing palm oil. If there is no demand there will be no supply!
Simple as that.
On an ending note, if you are wondering what is the problem if they are clearing the rainforests to plant palm trees, which is essentially replacing the trees, the answer is that the palm trees themselves are not a sustainable tree for the animals that depend on the diversity of the rainforests which leads to extinction of some of our planet's rarest and yet-undiscovered species.
An adventurer who plans to sail the Pacific in a boat made of plastic and a team of innovators trying to figure out how to take plastic out of the ocean are among “Climate Heroes” named today by the UN Environment Programme (
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