14 Jun 2011: Analysis In Brazil, Palm Oil Plantations Could Help
Preserve Amazon In recent years, palm oil development in
Malaysia and Indonesia has devastated tropical forests there.
With Brazil on the verge of its own palm oil boom, can
sustainable cultivation of the crop actually help save the
rainforest, rather than hastening its destruction? The rapid
expansion of palm oil plantations across Malaysia and Indonesia
has left a wide swath of destruction through some of the
planet’s most extensive and important rainforests. Now, with
Brazil announcing plans to dramatically scale-up palm oil
production in the Amazon, could the same fate befall Earth’s
largest tropical forest? The stakes are enormous, as the
Brazilian Amazon contains an estimated 850,000 square miles
suitable for palm oil plantations — an area four times the size
of France. By comparison, Indonesia and Malaysia, which account
for nearly 90 percent of global palm oil production, have less
than 50,000 square miles of oil palm under cultivation.