Research in Indonesia shows that it is possible to meet global demand for palm oil without felling forests, while also reducing the environmental impact of palm oil production.
Palm oil has had a bad name in Europe for many years. It is used in an incredibly large range of products, from cookies to cosmetics and from noodles to biodiesel. For the production of the oil more than 10 million hectares of new oil palm plantations have been created since 2000 in Indonesia alone.
Yet palm oil deserves better than this, claim the Wageningen researchers Maja Slingerland and Wolter Elbersen, who have been working in Indonesia for many years on making the palm oil production more sustainable.
Even without felling trees or using virgin peatland, it is possible to meet the growing global demand for palm oil for use in food, Elbersen and Slingerland believe.
According to these researchers, there is scope for reducing the environmental impact of palm oil production too. For instance by practicing intercropping, or making better use of the numerous byproducts of palm oil.
