Research, part of a Special Feature on Local, Social, and Environmental Impacts of Biofuels Environmental and Social Impacts of Oil Palm Plantations and their Implications for Biofuel Production in…

By K. Obidzinski, R. Andriani, H. Komarudin, A. Andrianto. 2012

591 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper reviews the development of oil palm with linkages to biofuel in Indonesia and analyzes the associated environmental and socioeconomic impacts. We selected three plantation study sites in West Papua (Manokwari), West Kalimantan (Kubu Raya), and Papua (Boven Digoel) to assess the impacts. Research findings indicate that the development of oil palm in all three sites has caused deforestation, resulting in significant secondary external impacts such as water pollution, soil erosion, and air pollution. In terms of social impacts, many stakeholder groups, i.e., employees, out-growers, and investing households, report significant gains. However, we found these benefits were not evenly distributed. Other stakeholders, particularly traditional landowners, experienced restrictions on traditional land use rights and land losses. We observed increasing land scarcity, rising land prices, and conflicts over land in all sites. Three major trade-offs are associated with the development of oil palm plantations, including those related to biofuels: unevenly distributed economic benefits are generated at the cost of significant environmental losses; there are some winners but also many losers; and economic gains accrue at the expense of weak rule of law. To reduce the negative impacts and trade-offs of oil palm plantations and maximize their economic potential, government decision makers need to restrict the use of forested land for plantation development, enforce existing regulations on concession allocation and environmental management, improve monitoring of labor practices, recognize traditional land use rights, and make land transfer agreements involving customary land more transparent and legally binding.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1bad2d0636f1fdb8c9af0135230be264352526be

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Citations in the corpus

• Environmental, Economic, and Social Consequences of the Oil Palm Boom (2020, background): “In Indonesia, oil palm on large company plantations and smallholder farms created rural employment and economic benefits for many landless laborers (Obidzinski et al. 2012, Santika et al. 2019b).”
• Gender and generation in engagements with oil palm in East Kalimantan, Indonesia: insights from feminist political ecology (2017, background): “…oil palm investment is associated with accelerated forms of land acquisition and far-reaching implications for well-being and equity for smallholders and forest peoples in rural communities (White and Dasgupta 2010; Obidzinski et al. 2012; Potter 2011; Jiwan 2013; Cramb and McCarthy 2016).”
• A 40-year review of food–energy–water nexus literature and its application to the urban scale (2019, background): “Palm biodiesel is also a popular, cost-effective substitute for carbon emitting fossil fuels (Obidzinski et al 2012).”
• Towards sustainable palm oil production: The positive and negative impacts on ecosystem services and human wellbeing (2021, background): “Oil palm plantations have been associated with multiple negative impacts, including deforestation, habitat and biodiversity loss (Teoh, 2010), forest fragmentation, disruption of food chains, air and water pollution, soil erosion (Szulczyk and Khan, 2018), and hydrological changes due to alteration ”
• Sustainable intensification in agricultural systems. (2014, background): “In south-east Asia, palm oil production has displaced both food production and natural forest systems (Wicke, 2011; Obidzinski et al., 2012; Lee, 2014).”
• Certification, good agricultural practice and smallholder heterogeneity: Differentiated pathways for resolving compliance gaps in the Indonesian oil palm sector (2019, background): “The world’s largest producer, Indonesia, where oil palm cultivation has long been associated with human rights abuses, peatland fires, deforestation and biodiversity loss (Obidzinski et al., 2012; Gaveau et al., 2016; Purnomo et al., 2017), is often the leading target.”
• Renewable energy and biodiversity: Implications for transitioning to a Green Economy (2017, background): “Similar air quality deterioration has been reported in areas adjacent to oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia [174,280].”
• Oil palm expansion transforms tropical landscapes and livelihoods (2012, background): “Oil palm provides much needed revenue to rapidly developing countries, and is an economic boon to thousands of people in tropical rural regions, although economic benefits are not distributed evenly (Rist et al., 2010; Obidzinski et al., 2012).”