17/12/2020 (Sci Dev Net) - [NEW DELHI] While palm oil is associated with deforestation and biodiversity loss, replacing it with other vegetable oil crops could prove worse for the environment, says a new study.

Oil extracted from the oil palm fruit is cheap and versatile and it is now the world’s most common vegetable oil. Global production tripled during 1995—2015, with much of the growth responsible for the clearing of large swathes of biodiversity-rich rainforests in Malaysia and Indonesia where roughly 90 per cent of the crop is grown.

According to the study, published in Nature Plants on 7 December, new palm oil plantations in Malaysian Borneo accounted for 50 per cent of deforestation between 1972 and 2015. Similarly, Indonesia lost 26.8 million hectares of tree cover in 2001—2019, according to a report by the Global Forest Watch.

Such extensive devastation has led to calls by environmental activists to boycott products containing palm oil. But the new study said that growing global demand for vegetable oil, which the researchers projected to increase by 46 per cent by 2050, could result in a shift to alternate crops like soybean and rapeseed that require considerably more land to grow. Expanding palm oil production to keep pace with the demand would require 36 million hectares of additional land whereas soybean, the second most popular oil crop, would need 204 million more hectares, the authors estimated.

Erik Meijaard, lead author of the study and independent researcher affiliated to the University of Queensland, Australia, tells SciDev.Net: “We know a lot about palm oil and its impacts on biodiversity, environmental and social impacts, but we know very little about the other crops. You need to realise that saying no to palm oil means saying yes to something else.”

The enormous environmental damage caused by palm oil plantations justifies the attention it receives, but that may have led to other major oil crops being considered as alternatives, says Meijaard.

“The rhetoric and polarisation are useful because it has put a lot of pressure on the industry to be more transparent and improve practices,” says Mejjard. “At the same time, if it results in decision-making that’s not informed by good knowledge and understanding then I think you’re creating a problem.”

A good starting point for tackling the information gap would be to create up-to-date global maps showing where crops like soybean, rapeseed or sunflower are cultivated, says Mejjard. That will help determine how much land and what kind of natural ecosystems have been impacted by these crops, he adds.

However, more research into the trade-offs between various vegetable oil crops is necessary, warns Varsha Vijay, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tennessee who has studied the environmental impact of palm oil. She says that planners should avoid focusing on narrow comparisons of land use.

While palm oil has higher yield per hectare, it is almost entirely grown in areas known to be important for biodiversity and carbon sequestration, says Vijay. The authors’ own analysis highlights that the number of species threatened by palm oil is 321 compared to 73 for soybean and just one for rapeseed, she adds.

“It’s not just the amount of area, but rather where that land is,” says Vijay. “This crop [palm oil] is produced in the tropics, replacing tropical, moist forests. And this is where biodiversity is concentrated.”

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Asia & Pacific desk.

https://www.scidev.net/global/news/palm-oil-alternatives-worse-for-the-environment/