Indonesia Is Killing the planet for Palm Oil
Indonesia Is Killing the Planet for Palm Oil
Indonesia is being deforested faster than any other country in the world, and it has everything to do with one product: palm oil.
According to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change, deforestation in the Southeast Asian archipelago is nearly double the rate in the Amazon. Indonesia is said to have lost 840,000 hectares (3,250 square miles) of forest in 2012 while Brazil — which has four times Indonesia’s rainforest — lost a still-massive 460,000 hectares.
The report’s authors found that government figures underestimated the true toll of forest clearing by as much as half. In the last 12 years, it’s possible that the destruction of one million hectares of “primary forest” went unreported.
The tree-killing spree is largely due to slashing and burning vegetation for the expansion of palm oil plantations to feed growing demand in countries like China and India. Americans and Europeans are still far and away the top consumers per capita — it’s estimated that palm oil can be found in roughly half the manufactured goods in any supermarket or drug store. Everything from peanut butter to soap to cosmetics contains the oil in its various forms.
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