IOL (20/11/2018) - Palm oil can be found in food and cosmetics everywhere: in fact, half of the world’s population uses palm oil in food. But public awareness about the loss of wildlife through deforestation caused by palm oil crops is growing, and there’s mounting pressure on retailers to reduce sales of palm oil products, or boycott them altogether.

The debate has become especially heated since a Christmas advert by UK-based supermarket chain Iceland - which dramatises the link between palm oil, deforestation and the death of orang-utans - was barred from being broadcast, on the basis it would have breached political advertising laws, because the animation was originally produced by Greenpeace.

In the first four days of its release, the video was viewed 13million times. A petition to overturn the ban has attracted more than 720000 signatures. While Iceland’s campaign has been a great way to bring more attention to food sustainability issues, an outright boycott could lead to more problems for forests and wildlife.

A recent report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, concluded that boycotting palm oil would shift - not counter - losses to rainforests and wildlife caused by agriculture. Put simply, boycotted palm oil would need to be replaced by other types of vegetable oil to meet demand - which could make matters worse.

This is because, compared with other sources - such as rapeseed and soya beans - palm oil crops yield four to 10 times more oil per unit of land, and require less pesticide and fertiliser. Palm oil makes up 35% of all vegetable oils, grown on just 10% of land allocated to oil crops. If other crops such as soya bean replaced a shortfall in palm oil, this would shift more production to the Amazon (a major soya-producing region), and would require more land, leading to more deforestation. Soya bean farming is responsible for more than double the deforestation of palm oil. In context of other food sources, livestock and beef production has led to more than five times the amount, compared with palm oil.

Sustainable palm oil

Certification - a mechanism by which consumers pay higher prices for more responsibly sourced products - is one way to help safeguard rainforests, and the wildlife which lives in them. Palm oil certification is spearheaded by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which is leading the market toward environmentally and socially responsible palm oil that doesn’t contribute to deforestation.

As the RSPO meets to renew its sustainability commitments, a major challenge facing the sector is that less than 20% of the world’s palm oil is certified as sustainable.

There is little incentive for producers to seek certification - or retailers to promote environmentally and socially responsible products - as long as the debate continues to focus on boycotting palm oil altogether. As a result, only half of sustainable palm oil is sold as certified, because a large proportion of the market is not willing to pay the premium for sustainable products.

Wildlife friendly plantations

To help the palm oil industry to safeguard wildlife, conservation scientists are working with certification bodies and producers to improve how palm oil cultivation affects biodiversity. It can be as simple as growing the crop on non-forested areas. But it can also involve protecting forests along rivers, such that they join up patches of high quality forest within the palm oil landscape, allowing wildlife to move more freely.

If certification of palm oil becomes more popular, it will improve prospects for wildlife, including orang-utans. This is why major conservation organisations - including leading orang-utan charities and Greenpeace - continue to support certified palm oil, rather than a boycott. And now, environmentally conscious consumers can check where they can buy products that contain responsibly sourced palm oil.

Hopefully, interest sparked by Iceland’s advert will bring positive changes for rainforests and their wildlife. But a boycott is not the best answer. The best thing retailers can do is support their suppliers to bring more responsibly sourced products to the supermarket shelves this Christmas. The Conversation

Bicknell is a postdoctoral research associate, University of Kent; Slade is a research fellow at University of Oxford; Struebig is senior lecturer in biological conservation, University of Kent.