What Are The Problems With Palm Oil?

One of the leading causes of tropical rainforest destruction is the expansion of palm oil plantations. RAN’s Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign is working to stop this expansion by pressuring ADM, Bunge and Cargill –the ABC’s of Rainforest Destruction- and the companies put palm oil in their retail products. 90% of palm oil used in the United States today is for food, cosmetics and detergents; that percentage is expected to shift as the global demand for palm oil biofuel increases.

Palm oil causes the destruction of vital ecosystems
Palm oil plantations are expanding into the planet’s most bio-diverse ecosystems, including rainforests, grasslands, and peat swamps in South America, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Africa. These regions are home to millions of plant and animal species, including highly endangered orangutans, clouded leopards, and sun bears.

• Tropical forest destruction is responsible for one-fifth of current global greenhouse emissions. The leading cause of tropical deforestation in Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands is palm oil plantation expansion.

• Orangutan population in Sumatra has dropped by 14 percent since 2004, while orangutan population on the island of Borneo (shared by both Indonesia and Malaysia) has fallen by 10%. This expansion could lead to the orangutans becoming the first great ape to become extinct, as early as 2011. This fall in population is a direct result of forest destruction due to palm oil plantations.

• Malaysia's Land Development Authority FELDA has recently announced plans to establish 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of oil palm plantations for biofuels in the Brazilian Amazon.

Palm oil contributes to global climate change
• Transforming ecosystems into mono-culture oil palm plantations contributes heavily to climate change. Rainforests and peat lands are clear-cut, drained and burned to make way for palm oil plantations. Deforestation accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the primary reason that Indonesia and Brazil are now the world’s third and fourth largest greenhouse gas polluters. Degradation of Indonesia’s peat lands alone is one of the single largest sources of greenhouse gas emission in the world- the 2.8 million hectares of degraded peat land in Indonesia accounts for 1% of global emissions.

Palm oil production displaces Indigenous people and small family farmers
• The spread of massive palm oil plantations often violates traditional and Indigenous land rights by forcing small family farmers to shift from relying on their own land to export-driven commodity farming or pushing them off their land entirely.

• In Malaysia, the state of Sarawak plans to increase the area of oil palm plantations by some 400,000 hectares—40% of which will be land stolen from traditional land owners. These traditional land owners are most commonly forced off their land and denied any compensation.

Palm oil is produced through exploitative labor practices
Many palm oil plantation workers face abuse, harsh working conditions, unfair pay, and exposure to toxic pesticides. In Papua New Guinea, a gendered system of palm oil harvest called the Mama Lus system pays women less and forces them into harder, more dangerous labor than their male counterparts.
Global agribusiness is responsible for the destruction of the world’s rainforests for palm oil plantations.

See how the CORPORATE COMMUNITY contributes!
ADM, Bunge and Cargill –the ABC’s of Rainforest Destruction- and other global agribusiness companies, are complicit in the destruction of rainforests by planting, trading, supplying and buying palm oil. 98% of the palm oil imported into the United States comes from plantations, formerly rainforests, in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Companies that are buying this palm oil and putting it in their products are also complicit in this rainforest destruction.

Some of these companies are:
Nestle, Hersheys, Sees, Dove, Palmer, Wonka, Proctor & Gamble, Walmart, Costco, and Safeway.

Some of the products that contain palm oil and are sold in the U.S. market are:

Mars candy (including M&Ms), Kit Kat, Twix, Hershey’s candy, Safeway, Walmart and Costco(Kirkland)brand detergents, Philadelphia cream cheese and Dreyer’s Ice Cream.

RAN is working to hold U.S. agribusiness giants and retailers accountable for their role in the destruction of the world's remaining tropical rainforests. Join us!

For more information, go to www.TheProblemWithPalmOil.org or www.ran.org