Palm oil - a controversial daily product and why it is still important
What is palm oil?
Palm oil is the world's most commonly used vegetable oil. Palm oil, better known as palm oil, is obtained from the pulp of oil palm. The fruit of the oil palm resembles an olive: it has a hard stone and a fleshy-creamy pulp.
From the age of three, the oil palm produces fruits that grow in large and dense tufts. The yield stabilizes after about four to six years. From the 21st year the productivity of the oil palms is slowly declining. They are then replaced by new oil palm trees.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, around 65 million tons of palm oil were produced worldwide in 2015. The main cultivation areas are Indonesia and Malaysia, which produce approximately 85% of the world's palm oil produced with around 53.5 million tons of palm oil. In Indonesia alone, oil palm trees grow to 13 million hectares - an area three times the size of Switzerland.
What is palm oil used for?
Non-neutral, heat-stable and extremely durable: palm oil combines many positive properties. Therefore, the oil is used for food as well as for the production of candles, cosmetics or detergents. Palm oil can hardly be replaced by other raw materials. The so-called palm kernel oil is used mainly in the confectionery industry but is also strongly demanded by the cosmetics and detergent industry. Wash-active substances obtained from palm kernel oil are found in the form of surfactants in shampoos, in detergents or cleaning agents. Around the world, about 6.5 million tons of palm kernel oil was produced in 2014. Approximately eight percent of global palm kernel oil land in Germany.
House demands and problems:
Due to the high demand, the worldwide cultivation area for oil palm trees has increased by more than ten times since 1985. In the meantime oil palm trees are cultivated on an area of 17 million hectares - a cultivation area, the size of which corresponds to about half of the Federal Republic of Germany. An end to this development is not in sight: alone Indonesia plans to expand its cultivation areas to 20 million hectares by 2025 - half of it on Borneo. Since oil palm trees grow exclusively in the tropical climate, rainforests are cut down for their cultivation and greenhouse gas emissions are released through the fire.
This resulted in devastating forest fires in 2015, which covered large parts of Southeast Asia in smoke. Biodiversity also suffers as a result of the deforestation of the rainforest, aside from numerous other animal species, orangutans, Sumatra tigers or the Java rhinoceros have already been pushed to the brink of extinction. In addition, the cultivation of oil palm often causes conflicts over land and use rights between large companies and the local population. The working conditions on the plantations are often questionable by human rights and the workers are underpaid. Frequently working on the palm oil plants of Malaysia and Indonesia are poverty migrants from the poorest countries in the region, such as Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal.
Oil palm trees grow exclusively in the tropical climate. This makes them in direct competition with rainforest areas. Indonesia and Malaysia are particularly affected by deforestation. Here about 85 percent of the world's palm oil is produced. The production of palm oil is thus a large part of the species.
Why is palm oil still important?
Nevertheless, a waiving of palm oil is not a permanent solution. The oil palm takes up the smallest part of the entire cultivation area for worldwide oil and fat production. At the same time, it represents the largest share of total production, accounting for about 32%. Sunflower, coconut or soya - their yield is three times lower than palm oil. Replacing with other vegetable oils would therefore not lead to the desired objectives, but merely shift the problem and sometimes even worsen the problem. Soy and coconut grow, for example, in the same or ecologically similar sensitive regions. For their cultivation, more land would be needed, there would be more greenhouse gas emissions and more species would be threatened. Even the most important European vegetable oil, rapeseed oil, could not meet the growing global demand for vegetable oils.
Solutions and goals:
Oil palm trees are also cultivated in small plantations as well as in small family farms. The difficulty of sustainable cultivation is to achieve the highest possible yield and to affect nature as little as possible. In view of the increasing global demand for palm oil, more and more palm oil cultivation areas are being demonstrated. This is to see that this cultivation is sustainable - with respect for people and the environment in the countries. The deforestation of the rainforests is a serious problem that gets to grips with the gilding. In addition to the world's first and most widely used certification system, the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the Rainforest Alliance, the Roundtable Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) and the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification (ISCC).
Certification
Certification systems alone cannot solve the problems in the palm oil sector. The existing standards are sufficient to define these minimum requirements for sustainable palm oil production.
This includes:
No clearing of particularly protected forests for new plantations
Environmentally friendly production
Respect the rights of the local population
Respect of workers' rights
The Forum for Sustainable Palm Oil (Nachhaltiges Palmöl e.V.) and its members therefore call for further improvements. This includes, among other things:
Stop cultivation on peat soils and other high carbon surfaces
Stop the use of highly hazardous pesticides and paraquat
Application of strict reduction targets for greenhouse gases
Ensure that certified palm oil mills refer to raw material exclusively from legal cultivation
More transparency in appeal proceedings
What I think E V E R Y B O D Y can and should do:
Tell others about how many palm oil problems are involved. The more people know about it, the more you can achieve it.
Try to avoid products containing a lot of palm oil, for example with the "white list": www.umweltblick.de/produkte-ohne-palmoel
Write to the manufacturers of products that you are dispensing with because of the palm oil, why you do not buy your product anymore and ask them to write the word palm oil in the future
Sources:
http://www.forumpalmoel.org/
http://www.geo.de/natur/oekologie/5810-rtkl-umweltkatastrophe-palmoel
https://www.greenpeace.ch/2010/09/24/palmoel/
Sources for the pictures:
http://www.bothends.org/en/story/18/Fighting-for-more-sustainable-palm-oil
http://palmoilproblems.weebly.com/why-is-palm-oil-bad.html
http://www.geo.de/natur/oekologie/5810-rtkl-umweltkatastrophe-palmoel
http://palmoilproblems.weebly.com/why-is-palm-oil-bad.html
