How a New Map of Palm Oil Plantations Could Help Save Rainforests

An oil palm plantation. Greenpeace

You probably ate some palm oil today. Or drank some. Or rubbed some on your skin. If you cleaned the house, then you probably scrubbed your floors, washed your windows, and then freshened the air with products containing palm oil. The stuff is in almost half of all products on U.S. supermarket shelves, so you’d have to be a pro at ingredient label hopscotch avoid it.

But you might want to try. Demand for palm oil (which comes from, you guessed it, the oil palm) has caused mass deforestation in Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests. These are some of the most biologically diverse areas in the world, and home to endangered Sumatran tigers, orangutans, and thousands of lesser-known species. On top of the environmental concerns, some farmers use fire to clear these forests, which has caused civil strife and public health concerns in cities like Singapore, which have been choked by haze and smoke.

The pink areas are palm oil concession areas, and the dots are active forest fires (as of 6/24/14). WRI/ESRI

Recently, a palm oil industry group called Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO for short, see sidebar below), teamed up with conservationists to create a map intended to make the palm oil supply chain more transparent. The map shows land concessions granted by governments, deforestation (and reforestation), active fires, and plantations that have been certified as sustainable. Some parts of the map are only accessible to RSPO member companies, which can use it to get their products certified as sustainable. But the public also has access to some of the data, which means consumers, conservationists, and government officials can now monitor the industry more actively.

“This goes towards something we have been pushing for for a long time, which is traceability,” said Joao Talocchi, a palm oil campaigner for Greenpeace. “For the first time, this is letting the public and companies monitor the RSPO policies.”

Even environmental stalwarts like Greenpeace believe the crop can be reformed. “We’re not against palm oil, but against palm oil not created in a sustainable way,” Talocchi said.

A View From Above

To make the new map, RSPO gave their data to the non-profit World Resources Institute (WRI), which added it to their mapping platform, Global Forest Watch. Built with geographic analysis software, Global Forest Watch lets you view areas where palm oil is being harvested (both sustainably and otherwise) on top of other data, such as active forest fires, land cover type, cumulative forest loss since 2001, and more.

RSPO has mandated that palm oil only be grown on secondary forest cleared without using fires, but there’s evidence that doesn’t always happen. “The main issue that we’re looking at is the link between palm oil concessions and deforestation,” said Elizabeth Baer, a spokesperson for WRI.

The Global Forest Watch resource mapping tool. WRI/ESRI

So, let’s say you’re an investigator for an environmental NGO looking to see if there are any fires or deforestation on any RSPO certified concessions. Go to the map’s landing page and click the leftmost circle (the “Beta users” referred to in the other two circles are select RSPO members).

The map loads over Southeast Asia, with the active layer showing cumulative deforestation since 2002. Mess around with the sliders and radio buttons a bit if you want to get acquainted, then click on the far-left menu titled “Select Contextual Maps.” This will open a sub-menu that lets you add land cover layers. Stay away from this for now (the extra colors can camouflage the layers you’re really interested in) and click on another sub-menu below, titled “Land Use”.

Industry reform?

Pizzaboy/Wikipedia

In response to a growing outcry that palm oil was wrecking the rainforest, in 2004 nearly 50 palm oil companies and organizations signed the charter for the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil . The group includes representatives from every link in the palm oil supply chain: growers, processors, manufacturers, retailers, banks, as well as environmental and human-focused NGOs. Its stated mission is to make sustainability the norm throughout the the entire palm oil supply chain.The RSPO developed a number of criteria for sustainable growth, which include things like not cutting down old growth forest, not burning peat, not treating employees like animals, and being transparent about all these things so the RSPO can make sure they’re following the rules. Members can apply for RSPO certification and have their business audited to make sure they’re running a clean shop.

But, the process doesn’t always work. Only RSPO members can get certified, but simply being a member does not ensure good behavior. In 2009, consumer goods giant Unilever cut all ties with RSPO member PT Smart—a subsidiary of the largest palm oil producer in Indonesia—after confirming reports from Greenpeace that PT Smart was burning down forests and draining peat bogs. This and other incidents  have led companies like Unilever and Nestle to work outside the RSPO to deliver sustainable products.

Clicking the the second box will show you all the RSPO certified palm oil concessions. Now you can pan and zoom to see where palm oil has caused deforestation. Try clicking on the land cover layer (turning up the transparency helps), and you can whether that deforested land was primary—old growth—or otherwise. Or go back to the original main menu (titled “Select Forest Change Maps”) and you can see if any of those concession areas are on fire.

Navigating between menus can be a pain, there are some missing layers (like the locations of palm oil processing plants), and the color scheme can be overwhelming. But, WRI is still making improvements.

Among the most exciting will be a layer that shows the ground-truthed location of every palm oil plantation. Fred Stolle is a geographer for WRI, and one of the architects of Global Forest Watch. He says farmers don’t always break ground where they’ve been granted their concessions, so WRI hired a group of analysts to locate plantations by poring over satellite imagery. (Even though oil palm plantations have a distinct pattern, automatic recognition programs have a hard time telling them from the surrounding forest in satellite imagery, says Stolle.)

Only about 12 percent of the world’s palm oil is grown according to RSPO’s certification standards. But, because oil palms are productive and easy to grow, they have the potential to be the poster crop for sustainability in the globalized economy.

“Palm oil is not a bad versus good story,” said Stolle. For example, he says, the crop has helped drive economic growth in Malaysia’s economy. ”It can be great for the tropics. If the companies would plan it right, it could be a complete success story,” said Stolle.

The map could play an important role by allowing the final link in the supply chain—consumers—to trigger accountability that reaches all the way back to the source.

“You can see that what you eat and consume… is linked to an environmental impact a 1,000 miles away,” said Talocchi. A tool like this, he says, allows anyone to make choices that affect the way that business is done.

How a New Map of Palm Oil Plantations Could Help Save Rainforests