Margarine, mince pies, mini-rolls, shampoo, ready meals, Haribo sweets, lipstick, shaving cream, Oreos, chocolate, Pot Noodle, soap, Nutella and Jaffa Cakes. What do all of these products have in common?  Palm oil.

Often hidden behind the name ‘vegetable oil’ or ‘palmitic acid’, palm oil is a ubiquitous presence in our lives; I found proof of palm oil in the above products after only five minutes in Sainsburys and this isn’t even mentioning the 1.4 million litres of palm oil used in U.K. fuels last year. In a way, palm oil’s pervasiveness is hardly surprising, when you realise you’re dealing with the world’s most traded vegetable oil. In 2010, the amount used yearly was around 50 million tonnes – or 70% of the global vegetable oil market – with worldwide demand predicted to double by 2020.  By some estimates, up to 50% of packaged goods contain this substance. We are all consumers of palm oil, even though we may not know it. 

Palm oil itself is actually an incredibly useful and versatile substance.  The two species of oil palm, native to the tropics, grow to around 15m tall and regularly produce 50kg festoons of small orange fruit.  Crush these palm nuts to release their oil and you suddenly have a smooth, edible product, stable at room temperature with a long shelf life, a product for which society currently has an apparently insatiable demand.  And that’s approximately where any pretence at good news ends.

Most new oil palm plantations are grown where rainforest once stood:  within a couple of years, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet becomes transformed into a green ocean of oil palm.  In this new environment, a few generalist species may thrive, but the rare animals and plants – species that lived only in this small corner of the world – will be the ones to suffer.  The situation is analogous to burning the contents of your college library and instead filling every shelf with identical copies of a few cookery books.  Certain users of the library will thrive, since their section is massively expanded but the rich variety, the potential and the mysteries that existed before have been almost entirely destroyed.  

The reason that oil palm plantations continue to spring up is simply money.  Current well-meaning but misinformed E.U. policy includes the Renewable Energy Directive, demanding that E.U. members supply 20% of the total energy supply through renewable sources by 2020.  The problem with this policy is that the E.U. failed to limit the extent to which biofuels from crops were allowed to count towards a country’s renewable energy total.  As a result, governments have seized upon inappropriate biofuels to a disproportionate extent in order to meet these targets, including palm oil and land-demanding maize.  Additionally, many governments are still offering heavy subsidies for the use of biofuel, in a clear instance of policy lagging severely behind science.

Another suggestion is that palm oil for biofuels or food could be grown on existing or underused farmland instead of cleared rainforest.  Unfortunately, land that appears to be empty and available on an official map often turns out to be a vital resource for local people, or to be completely unusable due to droughts or similar.  Conversion of existing farmland from food to fuel production, on the other hand, simply triggers a slippery chain of changing land use, as vital food cultivation is displaced elsewhere.  These changes are very hard to pin down, but as Ben Phalan, a Junior Research Fellow in Global Food Security at King’s College, says: “If we’re demanding millions of hectares worth of land for biofuels, we can be sure that indirect land use change is happening. The difficulty comes in quantifying exactly where and how much is happening, and in disentangling the complex chains of displacement and market effects that lead from biofuel demand to deforestation”.  Shunting responsibilities and food production elsewhere in attempts to assuage our green consciences serves only to increase food prices and consume yet more energy in transporting that same food back to the consumers. 

It should also be noted that any green credentials palm oil might claim as a biofuel are seriously flawed.  Biofuels are ostensibly used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since they are ‘carbon neutral’, but if peatland rainforest is cleared to plant an oil palm plantation, it can take more than 400 years worth of biofuel from this plantation just to compensate for the CO₂ released when the original habitat was destroyed.  As a result, it is vital to distinguish clearly between different biofuels, especially since the use of certain biofuels on a limited scale – such as used cooking oil – can successfully create energy and money from industry waste.  The reason that campaigns to reduce the use of palm oil are currently focusing their efforts usage on biofuels is also down to their relative novelty: biofuel use has rocketed and, in this booming industry which is not yet entrenched in a system of established policies, we still have a chance to make a positive difference for the future.  

Finally, a report published this week in The Guardian showed a grim picture of the current situation regarding oil palm plantations.  International monitoring groups for human rights went round South East Asia, checking on plantations from companies that had signed up to the industry sustainability standard, the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO. Organisations that have signed up to the RSPO commit to converting to using sustainable palm oil within a time period, and around 15% of the world’s palm oil is currently RSPO-certified.  Yet even in these plantations, the companies stand accused of land grabs, ignoring human rights and exploiting people for labour.  Yet as the RSPO well knows as it meets now for its annual conference, it relies on voluntary compliance with its principles and although it can remove members, the group has no legal power to intervene.

And the solution?  Write to your MEPs asking them to support a cap on the crop-based biofuel component of the E.U. Renewable Energy Directive when the vote is raised in the European Parliament next May. Write to your MP. Few people raise issues with those in power, giving the voices of those who do a disproportionate weight.  Check the internet for companies that are part of the RSPO, and try to favour their products – some degree of commitment to the environment is better than the alternative of denial and silence.  Scorn policies attempting to artificially prop up biofuels for the sake of investors.  Reduce demand for palm oil by reducing your reliance on the fuel and products that contain it.  Demand clear labelling.  Hope that we have not destroyed too much already to repair.  And be aware. Your actions are more powerful than you think.