The Impacts of Oil Palm on Recent Deforestation and Biodiversity Loss

By Varsha Vijay, Stuart L Pimm, Clinton N Jenkins, S. Smith. PLoS ONE, 2016

717 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Palm oil is the most widely traded vegetable oil globally, with demand projected to increase substantially in the future. Almost all oil palm grows in areas that were once tropical moist forests, some of them quite recently. The conversion to date, and future expansion, threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Today, consumer pressure is pushing companies toward deforestation-free sources of palm oil. To guide interventions aimed at reducing tropical deforestation due to oil palm, we analysed recent expansions and modelled likely future ones. We assessed sample areas to find where oil palm plantations have recently replaced forests in 20 countries, using a combination of high-resolution imagery from Google Earth and Landsat. We then compared these trends to countrywide trends in FAO data for oil palm planted area. Finally, we assessed which forests have high agricultural suitability for future oil palm development, which we refer to as vulnerable forests, and identified critical areas for biodiversity that oil palm expansion threatens. Our analysis reveals regional trends in deforestation associated with oil palm agriculture. In Southeast Asia, 45% of sampled oil palm plantations came from areas that were forests in 1989. For South America, the percentage was 31%. By contrast, in Mesoamerica and Africa, we observed only 2% and 7% of oil palm plantations coming from areas that were forest in 1989. The largest areas of vulnerable forest are in Africa and South America. Vulnerable forests in all four regions of production contain globally high concentrations of mammal and bird species at risk of extinction. However, priority areas for biodiversity conservation differ based on taxa and criteria used. Government regulation and voluntary market interventions can help incentivize the expansion of oil palm plantations in ways that protect biodiversity-rich ecosystems.

Subfields: Demography, Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7484c267aa1e345c7897d748d89e2063b8f6a10b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Towards sustainable palm oil production: The positive and negative impacts on ecosystem services and human wellbeing (2021, background): “Palm oil demand is projected to increase substantially in the future (Vijay et al., 2016) with no shortage of markets.”
Considering Plant-Based Meat Substitutes and Cell-Based Meats: A Public Health and Food Systems Perspective (2020, background): “Oil palm plantations have been a significant driver of deforestation and the associated biodiversity loss in Southeast Asia and South America (Vijay et al., 2016).”
The interaction of human population, food production, and biodiversity protection (2017, neutral): “Another trend has been the expansion of oil palm plantations replacing tropical forests (43).”
Evaluating the effectiveness of palm oil certification in delivering multiple sustainability objectives (2018, background): “The rapid expansion of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) crops over the last five decades, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia, has contributed to significant declines in biodiversity and has become a major concern for conservation (Koh and Wilcove 2007, Gaveau et al 2014a and Vijay et al 2016).”
Economic Growth and Sustainable Development in Indonesia: An Assessment (2018, background): “The significant sustainability concerns related to this commodity include the expansion of oil palm plantations and their contribution to deforestation; 45% of the oil palm plantations sampled by Vijay et al. (2016) are in areas that used to be forests.”
Impending extinction crisis of the world’s primates: Why primates matter (2017, background): “Moreover, future oil palm development is likely to threaten forested areas in South America and Africa (10), which is projected to result in severe negative consequences for primate populations in those regions (fig.”
Food self-sufficiency: Making sense of it, and when it makes sense (2017, neutral): “Others, such as palm oil and soybeans, are often associated with deforestation (Vijay et al., 2016).”