A Sustainable Solution to the Palm Oil Problem?
Whether you used soap when you washed your hands, ate bread or ice cream, fed your dog, or did your laundry, it is safe to say that a good portion of the things you used or ate today contained palm oil.
According to the World Wildlife Foundation, palm oil is an edible vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees. The oil is versatile and has properties including a long shelf-life and stability at high temperatures which make it applicable for a variety of uses. Because of these factors, the palm oil industry is worth $70 billion and continues to grow. With 50% of the products on supermarket shelves containing palm oil, it is nearly in everything: from chocolate and pizza, to deodorant, soaps, lipsticks, to animal feed and biofuel. As the human population grows, so too will the demand for palm oil, given it’s core role in the diets and lifestyle of consumers.
Palm trees suitable for large-scale cultivation for oil extraction only grow in a narrow band close to the equator, in tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia. In order to make room for palm tree plantations, the tropical rainforests are slashed and burned, leading to a handful of serious conservation issues and social dilemmas. The deforestation linked to palm oil alone drives around a billion tons of CO2 emissions each year. Additionally, the carbon-rich peat soil of the denuded rainforest is burned to make room for the palm tree plantations, and the burning of this soil releases more carbon into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, there are human health issues associated with the burning of peatlands, which decreases air quality and increases risk of respiratory diseases. The resulting habitat loss has massive impacts for the ecosystems that rely on the rainforests. The orangutan has become the face of the palm oil problem because the species has become critically endangered as a result of habitat loss. The issue becomes even more complicated when one looks into the labor practices and exploitation that occurs in the palm oil factories. Given that the palm oil industry is a global issue, solutions to the problem are difficult to find.
As the palm oil industry has a significant and growing impact on the environment, we urgently need to find an alternative. Luckily, a company called c16bio is providing the possibility for hope as suggested in their mission statement: “C16 was founded with the objective of creating a sustainable, environmentally friendly alternative to conflict palm oil… Our aim is to reduce the environmental footprint of palm oil production and protect precious natural land, wildlife and resources in the process.” By brewing palm oil through a process of fermentation, this company hopes to create a sustainable alternative to palm oil so that we can stop cutting down rainforests. With recent investments from Bill Gates, this company provides an exciting opportunity for a conflict-free palm oil production. However, young companies face many challenges, and c16bio is no different. Currently they are determining the best method to introduce the new product into the market, for instance starting small with cosmetics before making their way to other products containing more significant amounts of palm oil, such as the food industry.
As with everything in this rapidly globalizing world we live in, there are other potential issues and questions that a more sustainable replacement brings to light. Given that Indonesia and Malaysia alone make up over 85% of the global supply of palm oil, what will happen to the economic livelihood of these countries if eventually the world switches to a sustainably-produced palm oil? Will there ever be restoration for the millions of acres of rainforest that have been lost due to the plantations? Given the strength and power of the extremely rich palm oil industry, it is hard to envision the industry completely dissipating.
Furthermore, the use of technological solutions to help solve our current environmental crisis is controversial. An Indian environmentalist, scientist, philosopher and eco-feminist, Vandana Shiva says, "it is the idea of being able to engineer our lives on this very fragile and complex and interrelated and interconnected planet that’s created the mess we are in. It’s an engineering paradigm that created the fossil fuel age, that gave us climate change. And Einstein warned us and said you can’t solve problems with the same mindset that created them.” The unknown, unintended, and possibly negative consequences of new technology must be considered. Are we better off listening to the knowledge of indigenous peoples as we try to solve issues like global warming? At the same time, using new technologies might buy us time--which is perhaps but a temporary fix as we gain more knowledge and technology for a potential future larger fix. Furthermore, technologies can be implemented gradually, such that we can calculate (some) of the risks. For the palm oil industry, even if we do find a solution, perhaps we still need to look back at the heart of the problem, and the need for restoration as well.
