CORE BORNEO

There are few things which characterizes the holiday season more than baking and cooking. Specialty holiday cookies, cakes, and other treats stock grocery store shelves, kitchen cabinets, and emerge from toasty ovens everywhere.

Palm oil production is increasingly recognized as the main driver behind tropical deforestation and orangutan habitat loss. Because 80% of global palm oil is used for food and cooking purposes, every individual can impact orangutan conservation and tropical deforestation by making palm-oil conscious choices in the kitchen this holiday.

There is a very EASY way to do this, which involves downloading a free app. But first, it’s important to understand palm-oil and its role in habitat loss…

Palm oil IS NOT BAD: 

High Yield – Palm oil yields more oil per unit area than any other crop-based oil (10 times more oil-per-hectare than soybeans)

Economic Importance – The palm oil sector employs 4 million people in Indonesia and Malaysia (which produce 85% of global palm oil)

The problem with palm oil is THE WAY IT’S BEING PRODUCED:

Tropical Regions – Because palm oil is only grown in humid tropical zones, the expansion of palm oil plantations has been almost exclusively at the expense of tropical forests which harbor some of the highest rates of biodiversity in the world.

Land Use – Worldwide, an area about the size of Cambodia has been converted to palm oil plantation (18 million hectares total; 10 million hectares in Indonesia). 60% of this total area has been converted directly from primary forest in recent years.

To convert peatland forests like that at Tuanan, the land must first be drained. This practice is an even larger driver of climate change than deforestation alone. This is because peatland forests act as a ‘carbon sink’ and store more carbon per unit area than any other ecosystem in the world!

So what is being done and WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP?

The palm oil industry needs to change its land-use strategies; instead of clearing new plantation land from forested areas, already degraded land should be used

• Borneo alone has around 14 million hectares of degraded land that would be suitable for palm oil production

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is an organization which certifies palm oil companies that meet its environmental criteria.

• One certification requirement is that primary forests or areas of high environmental/cultural conservation value have not been cleared

The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Palm Oil Tracking App – Sustainable Palm Oil App– can be downloaded for free and used at the grocery store to scan item bar-codes. It will identify if that product/company uses Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO).

It is unrealistic to entirely boycott palm oil and doing so would only shift demand towards a less economic vegetable oil. Being aware of where the palm oil you consume comes from is the best thing you can do for orangutans and their environments! Do not doubt the power of individual action; simply downloading and using this app can catalyze immense change within the palm oil industry.