What are the limits to oil palm expansion
By J. Pirker, Aline Mosnier, F. Kraxner, Petr Havlík, Michael Obersteiner. 2016
291 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Palm oil production has boomed over the last decade, resulting in an expansion of the global oil palm planting area from 10 to 17 Million hectares between 2000 and 2012. Previous studies showed that a significant share of this expansion has come at the expense of tropical forests, notably in Indonesia and Malaysia, the current production centers. Governments of developing and emerging countries in all tropical regions increasingly promote oil palm cultivation as a major contributor to poverty alleviation, as well as food and energy independence. However, being under pressure from several non-governmental environmental organizations and consumers, the main palm oil traders have committed to sourcing sustainable palm oil. Against this backdrop we assess the area of suitable land and what are the limits to future oil palm expansion when several constraints are considered. We find that suitability is mainly determined by climatic conditions resulting in 1.37 billion hectares of suitable land for oil palm cultivation concentrated in twelve tropical countries. However, we estimate that half of the biophysically suitable area is already allocated to other uses, including protected areas which cover 30% of oil palm suitable area. Our results also highlight that the non-conversion of high carbon stock forest (>100 t AGB/ha) would be the most constraining factor for future oil palm expansion as it would exclude two-thirds of global oil palm suitable area. Combining eight criteria which might restrict future land availability for oil palm expansion, we find that 234 million hectares or 17% of worldwide suitable area are left. This might seem that the limits for oil palm expansion are far from being reached but one needs to take into account that some of this area might be hardly accessible currently with only 18% of this remaining area being under 2 h transportation to the closest city and that growing demand for other agricultural commodities which might also compete for this land has not been yet taken into account.
Subfields: Demography, Ecology, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cfd9605e51995ae272de5468bd35dbba202e9784
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Citations in the corpus
- Palm oil intensification and expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia: Environmental and socio-political factors influencing policy (2018, background): “According to a study by Pirker (2016) which maps the730 lands suitable for oil palm cultivation, there are 18.2 million hectares of land in Indonesia731 suitable for the plant.”
- The palm oil global value chain: Implications for economic growth and socialand environmental sustainability (2017, background): “According to Pirker and Mosnier (2015) and Pirker et al. (2016), only a small proportion of the total land that is biophysically appropriate for oil palm production can be classified as suitable to perfectly suitable, while significant tracts are marginally or moderately suitable.”
- Evaluating the effectiveness of palm oil certification in delivering multiple sustainability objectives (2018, background): “Industrial oil palm plantations are predicted to expand from 17–26 million hectares by 2050, with South America and Africa the new frontiers for development (Corley 2009, Sayer et al 2012, Pirker et al 2016).”
- Reconciling oil palm economic development and environmental conservation in Indonesia: A value chain dynamic approach (2020, background): “, 2019); GLOBIOM (Global Biosphere Management Model) combines trade with land-use models (Pirker et al., 2016; Mosnier et al., 2017).”