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S5E8: Palm Oil, Rainforests, and Biodiversity (oh my!)

Biodiversity. What is it and why is it important? In the first episode of our Threats to Nature series, we introduce the topic of biodiversity and then take a deep dive into palm oil in the Amazon. You’ve probably heard that palm oil is bad and the Amazon is in danger, so what happens when these issues collide? In this episode, we hear from Dr. Stuart Pimm, a world leader in conservation ecology from Duke University, and Francisco Naranjo, the Latin America lead for the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) as they break down this complex topics of biodiversity and palm oil in the Amazon region. Visit our website to keep up with the OC team and for a full transcript of this episode! https://operationclimatepo.wixsite.com/operationclimate Follow us on Instagram at @operationclimate! Follow us on Twitter at @opclimate! Subscribe to us on Youtube! To contact us, DM us on Instagram or email us at operationclimatepodcast@gmail.com! ____________ Hosts/Reporters: Clare Sparling, Georgie Stammer, Mira Polishook, Renee Urtusastegui Writers/Producers: Clare Sparling, Georgie Stammer, Mira Polishook, Renee Urtusastegui Guests: Dr. Stuart Pimm, Francisco Naranjo Audio Editor: Clare Sparling TRANSCRIPT:

Clare 0:03

The struggle to save the world's largest rainforest the Amazon wildfires moving with blinding speed


Clare 0:09

industrial practices are having a devastating impact and severely depleting fish populations.


Clare 0:15

Our pollution climate presents our threats to nature series.


Mira 0:22

When was the last time you thought about breathing or where oxygen comes from having oxygen to breathe is often something taken for granted. But the very act of breathing connects us to plants and ecosystems all over the world. The Amazon rainforest, for example, produces 6% of the world's oxygen, which is the most of any forest on the planet. But as the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon does far more than produce oxygen. It is a key regulator of the Earth's biogeochemical cycles, known for its colorful and vast array of species ranging from tiny tree frogs and monkeys to manatees and even Jaguars. The Amazon is what scientists like to call a biodiversity hotspot. Its protection is key to planetary health. But what happens when the Amazon isn't protected? Hi, I'm Mira. I'm Georgie. And I'm Renee. And we will be your host for today's episode of our threats to nature series, where we will be exploring palm oil as one of the many threats to the Amazon rainforest biodiversity, as well as discussing solutions and organizations that are attempting to combat those threats. But before we start digging into the threat, let's take a step back and understand the bigger picture. Why exactly do we need to be focusing on protecting and conserving rainforest? Why is biodiversity so important?


Renee 1:43

To answer these questions we are excited to welcome our first guest today Dr. Stuart Pim. Dr. Pim is the Doris Duke Chair of conservation and a professor of conservation ecology at Duke University, as well as the president and founder of saving nature, a nonprofit that raises money to empower local conservation groups in biodiversity hotspots around the world. To start, Dr. Pym explains the importance of biodiversity.


Pimm 2:12

I think there were three reasons why, why we need to protect biodiversity. The first is an ethical one, if you like of religious that I think we have a responsibility to, to the generations of follow to to our children and grandchildren to lead the world in at least as good a shape as we found it. And we're not doing that we're destroying species. And it was that loss of species that I saw in Hawaii, the loss of of their habitats, which I see in the Amazon and other rainforest bombs that struck me as being a deeply ethical issue. It's a deep problem of stewardship, which we're failing. The second reason why I think we should care is an aesthetic one, you know, we're losing fantastic and interesting animals. You know, when Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz talks about lions and tigers and bears, oh, my will the be wild things out there? Wouldn't it be a shame if we had to teach our children? Well, once upon a time, we had lions and we had tigers and we have polar bears, but we don't anymore. So I think most people find beauty in the natural world. And, and so we should look after that in the same way that we look after all kinds of cultural artistic treasures, we will go into a museum and destroy all the paintings there. We shouldn't go into nature and destroy all we've we encountered it. And you know, the third one is just hard nosed economic reality. The nature is worth something for us when we destroy the forests in the Amazon indeed, when we destroy tropical forests around the world that contributes about 10% of the greenhouse gases that go into the atmosphere that are calling causing massive disruption to the global climate.


Georgie 4:26

Wow, the incentives to care about biodiversity are clearly massive.


Renee 4:30

Definitely. What I also find interesting is that Dr. Pym frames protecting biodiversity not only as an environmental problem, but also as a selfish cause. Who would want to live in a world without the color and variety of living things?


Georgie 4:44

That's a really good point. We should care about biodiversity because it not only benefits the health of rainforest and other ecosystems, but it also benefits us and keeps us in awe of the beautiful variety that exists on the planet.


Mira 4:56

Yeah, it definitely makes me wonder about all the threats to bio Diversity.


Renee 5:01

To help us understand why there has been so much biodiversity loss in the last few decades we turn to Dr. Pim.


Pimm 5:12

I think the biggest threat to biodiversity is the fact that we're destroying habitats. You know, in, in the last 50 years or so, we've destroyed about half the world's tropical forests, two thirds of species on land, live in our tropical forests. So you know, this principal driver is is a destruction of forests. And, you know, particularly with the advent of really good remote sensing satellite imagery, you know, you can now go to Google Earth and see, you know, historical images where you can see how the forests have been destroyed. And I think that gives us an immediate sense of just how much impact we're having. In fact, it's, it's even worse than just destroying the forests and other habitats, too. It's we leave those forests in fragments in in isolated patches of habitat. The problem with that is, you know, the patches may be so small that in the patch over there, you have two females on the patch over there, you have two males, just by chance, well, if you don't get them together, you're not getting any babies. So it's, it's fragmentation leads to populations that aren't small enough, or they become inbred. They wink out. And it's that fragmentation that I believe we can, we can address first, because it's, it's the most cost effective thing we can do. We can re establish the connections we can do. We can put nature back together.


Georgie 6:53

Wow, I didn't realize that so much of the world's habitats have been destroyed by humans, half the tropical forests would have tragedy.


Renee 6:59

Yes, but Dr. Pan makes the point that we can in fact put nature back together. There is hope more on specific ways you can have a positive impact coming at the end of the episode.


Mira 7:11

While it's clear that we as humans have an impact on the environment, it's not always obvious exactly how the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon is cattle ranching because of the large swaths of pasture land it requires. However, a lesser known environmental stressor on the Amazon rainforest is palm oil. You might have heard that palm oil isn't 50% of the items at the grocery store, especially widespread among packaged goods. But what exactly is palm oil? Why do we use it so much? And how is it impacting the rain forests?


Renee 7:43

Dr. Pim helps us start answering these questions.


Pimm 7:50

First of all, palm oil is in all sorts of places, it's quite likely that you you shampoo your hair today, with with a product that contain palm oil, it wouldn't say palm oil it we'll call it some other things. The thing about palm oil is first of all, the oil palms grow in rain forests. So you can clear rain forests to grow palm oil. The second thing is it's very productive, you can get a lot of Parmer from a plot of land, and it's scalable. So I've seen farmers carrying three or four clusters of palm oil fruit on the back of their motorbikes, you know, laden down with these enormous, enormous fruits, you know, taking them to some processing center. So you can do it at a small scale. But it's these huge commercial enterprises that cover hundreds of 1000s of square kilometers that are destroying the world's rainforests. And that's not an easy process to to stop. It's, it's it's an economically viable way of using that land. And how we stop that is is tricky.


Mira 9:14

Given the environmental destruction associated with palm oil, you may be wondering why we even use it at all. Why don't we just switch to using other oils? With some quick research, you'll actually find that switching to other oils isn't really that much better. And in fact, in many ways, it can be worse. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Although palm oil production causes significant amounts of deforestation and biodiversity loss, replacing it with other oils could require up to nine times as much land to produce the same amount of oil. So given this reality, what are we supposed to do? Well, luckily,


Georgie 9:51

we have Francisco neuron who from the International Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil or RSPO to talk about their solution to the palm oil issue and their work in Latin America specifically, Francisco has been working in the palm oil industry for over 15 years from the sustainability angle, and he heads RSPs Latin American Regional Office. Here's how he describes his organization.


Francisco 10:16

The Dallas pod Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is a global multi stakeholder Initiative is a member based organization. And our members come from many different backgrounds, including growers, plantation companies, the processors and traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, supply chain members, but also financial institutions, environmental and social NGOs, so a wide variety of stakeholders and come from many countries he at the moment, there's Bill has more than 5500 members across the globe from more than 100 countries. And our mission is to is to transform the market to make Sustainable Palm Oil the norm. I think it's important to to mention how we work our members through open dialogue have created a standard for sustainable palm oil production, which is a is known as the the RSPO principles and criteria. The PMC is the RSPO PMC is it these principles and criteria address all the basics to ensure that palm oil production is environmentally sound and conducted with full respect for human rights of communities respecting workers rights and and in general people's people's right when when a member when a company when you join RSPO it is member if it's a grower member has to undergo a very strict certification process and the certification process is carried out by an independent certification body. So, we rely on on on independent third party verification in verification audits are conducted annually and all the information is published on on our website ensuring complete transparency in in the certification process. So, once the oil palm producer has been certified, it then delivers the certified sustainable palm oil to a refinery then this refinery in turn provides products to consumer good manufacturers. And in this way the the palm oil the certified sustainable palm oil travel, it travels through the supply chain until it reaches the end consumer. So all of these points in the supply chain are also audited against them a what we call the RSPO supply chain the standard before any claim can be made to the market to say that a particular product contains certified sustainable palm oil.


Mira 13:14

Wow, it seems like RSPO his work is quite extensive. So just to make sure we got the big picture. RSPO is an international organization composed of various stakeholders that certifies palm oil as sustainably produced.


Georgie 13:28

Yeah, exactly. And their goal is to make Sustainable Palm Oil the market standard.


Mira 13:33

That's amazing. What is their work like in Latin America and what have been some of their biggest accomplishments.


Georgie 13:40

According to Francisco RSPO only started working in the Amazon relatively recently, but they have made a lot of progress since then. Here's what he had to say.


Franscico 13:52

The first RSPO certified company in Latin America was agro Palma. agro Palma is a Brazilian company that achieved its certification around 2012. At the moment, 30% of the palm oil produced in Brazil has been certified under their SQL standard. I think it's important also to mention that several, the most important palm oil growers in Brazil have joined Darris peel. But there are some important challenges in Brazil. I think all the big companies are now part of our spill. But then our next big challenge is how to bring more holders and medium sized growers to the system that's preceded by the in Peru. Unfortunately, we haven't have we don't have any any certified the grower at the moment in Peru. However, I have good news, the largest company, the biggest company in Peru palm oil company in Peru palmas del Spino is now In its final stage of certification, so I hope that they will finish the process in the next one or two months, we will have the first Certified Grower in in Peru very soon. And that will give us some leverage to start, you know, mobilizing the rest of the other growers in Peru. Concerned in Ecuador, similar as Brasil. 30% of the area cultivated with oil palm in the Amazon is already certified. And it's important because we have a very interesting program in in Ecuador. RSPO has developed recently, what we call a new model of certification called jurisdictional certification. So instead of certifying them a meal, palm oil meal or oil palm producer, we aim to certify them full jurisdiction, political jurisdiction, could be one province, two provinces or even a country. So in the case of Ecuador, we are working very closely with the Ecuadorian government to certify in all the producers all the growers catered in the Amazon, Ecuadorian Amazon. So it's a very ambitious program. And it requires a lot of work. But we have a timeline of five years to finalize these, these project. And as I said, we are working very closely with with the Ecuadorian government we have full support from from the current government. So hopefully, we will have good news in in the short term. And I hope as an Ecuadorian to see the older producers in the Amazon a being sustainable and certified in the in the close future.


Mira 16:50

It's really great to hear all of the success that RSPO has had so far, and all that they have in the works going forward. What does the organization see as their next big steps?


Franscio 17:05

I think we have done a lot, but there are many, many challenges still ahead of us a definitely how to bring in small holders into the system, how to mobilize medium sized growers, if that's a huge, a huge challenge. And because we're talking about 1000s of growers in the Amazon.


Georgie 17:29

Okay, so it sounds like many of the world's largest companies are already RSPO members. So the next challenge is figuring out how to incentivize their small and medium sized growers to join Francisco explains.


Francisco 17:44

As I said that our mission is to transform the market. So to make Sustainable Palm Oil the norm. So we rely on the power of market to make these these changes all day and the main company a global companies that use which use palm oil in their products are part of RSPO just to name a few Nestle, PepsiCo, Ferrero, all the main global users are part of RSPO. And they have very clear various ambitious commitments of using only Sustainable Palm Oil in their products. So this is creating the conditions or or putting pressure over the growers to start implementing the best agricultural and environmental and social practices in their operations. But that's one one side of the story. On the other side, we need to find the right incentives to mobilize for example, smallholders, and then we in that sense, we have a completely different approach, when when it comes to the smallholder certification, and when we need to bring small holders into the system. Our main focus is how to improve the living conditions are these small, small producers, small holders. So we truly believe that they when as small holder as small producer, it starts implementing the best agricultural practices immediately after the day, we'll see. And huge improvement in in the productivity and finally in the income. And in that sense, I think, smallholder start using the best agricultural practices, the best, the sustainable practices, a you will see a huge increase in yields, and also in terms of productivity and and finally the income. So that's our approach. So that's the best incentive to mobilize. Based on my experience, that's the best way to mobilize these huge amount of smallholders. So that's our next big step in the Amazon


Mira 20:03

Listening to Francisco, the sounds like amazing, unnecessary work that RSPO is doing. The sustainability aspect of palm oil is, of course, incredibly important. But there's also a social aspect, especially in the Amazon region, indigenous rights are often ignored. How does the RSPO play a role in this?


Georgie 20:23

Broadly speaking, yes, the palm oil industry has a bad past and present in terms of harming indigenous communities. Whether that be by displacing them from their land or polluting their communities, there's certainly conflict between the two. Now as part of their social standards, the RSPO requires that members must not buy or process palm oil from deforested indigenous lands. But how well this is implemented is up for question. For example, indigenous groups have accused RSPO of ignoring human and land rights violations. We asked Francisco about this conflict, and he'll acknowledge that working with indigenous and local communities in the Amazon can be quite challenging.


Francisco 21:02

A huge task because we are talking about hundreds and 1000s of grassroots actors in the Amazon. Specifically, let me tell you our strategy when it comes to retail to growers, it's very simple. We know who the big growers are, most of the time, we have information about the medium sized growers. And we at least we know where the small producers are. So shout out to growers. It's not easy, but I won't say is is not a major issue. But when it comes to reaching out to other actors, like local NGOs, local communities, indigenous communities is far more complicated. So we have developed an a specific strategy to address this challenge. We rely on what we call intermediate organizations. So we understand that our SPO, as an institution doesn't have, sometimes the knowledge the local knowledge needed to reach out to these actors. So we have developed this strategy based on intermediate organizations. When we call intermediate organizations, I'm referring to local NGOs who know better than then as the region on the local context.


Renee 22:21

Others however, including Dr. Pim don't find the certification meaningful in its current conception, Sustainable Palm Oil is definitely a step in the right direction. But Dr. Pim feels that the system can continue to be improved. As he explains.


Pimm 22:40

Last time, it was 15 or 16% of all palm oil. So it's not a lot of palm oil. But I think what's worse, is when you dig into what that certification means, it basically means that they don't treat their employees like slaves. There's a lot of guidelines in those sustainability initiatives to prevent abuse of people. And that's important. I'm not saying in any in any way that I don't think that's significant. But if you look at what the environmental protections are, in that there are not many of them at all, that they involve not chopping down forests, right to the very edge of a watershed, which sort of makes good sense all sorts of reasons. But in terms of what the companies do, you have to ask, what was palm oil before it became palm oil, and when was it something else? And along with my former student, and now adopted Varsha Vijay, we've looked at where the palm oil frontiers are, and we've looked at how long it was, when those areas were were old growth forest in Africa are those where palm oil comes from. That's they've been growing palm oil there for a long time. But it's very clear that in South America, in Peru, in particularly in Southeast Asia, that these are areas which until very very recently, were or grow forest, they're also incidental forests where people once lived. The idea that nobody lives in the Amazon is nonsense. Lots of lots of indigenous people live in the Amazon living forests in Indonesia. People go into those forests, they clear them, they clear cut them, and then they say Well, look, you know, I've got this area of low forest, planted in palm oil and So it's a it's an evil mixture of forest clearing, often the eviction of indigenous communities, and then the production of a crop.


Mira 25:14

Okay, so you might be feeling pretty confused by the differing opinions. On one hand, we had Francisco talking to us about RSPO his plans and accomplishments. And on the other, we had Dr. Pim telling us that the certification is not meaningful. How do we go about interpreting these Opposing Viewpoints?


Renee 25:34

Yeah, it definitely can be confusing, but this range of opinions about RSPO reflects a lot of what you will even see in the conservation world. On one hand, you have groups like the World Wildlife Federation, who are large proponents of palm oil and RSPO. Pointing out that using any other oil would be far worse for the environment. They argue that Sustainable Palm Oil is the best way to protect biodiversity. On the other hand, critics such as the Greenpeace point to the RSPs failures to effectively protect biodiversity. Unfortunately, the scientific studies on the issue also conflict with some pointing to greater biodiversity on RSPO plantations, while others find no difference between certified and uncertified plantations. Georgie, what does Francisco have to say about this issue?


Georgie 26:23

Well, Francisco is definitely aware of these critics. While he agrees that there's always room for improvement with the RSPO, he believes that they are heading in the right direction.


Francisco 26:34

I would like to start saying that we we acknowledge that we have room for improvement. But at the same time, we think that we are in the right, in the right path. When you see the principles and criteria, our standard, the PNCs, you will see that is a extremely robust standard. So it's difficult to find a loophole to be honest, if you read the entire principles and criteria, but one thing is what you write in a paper, and then how to implement that in the field, that's a completely different story. And I prefer work in the field rather than in my office. So, I know that the challenges meant in the principles and criteria in the field. And now, we are in the process of updating the our standard. That is to say that of course, there are some things that we can improve in in that regard, that in my opinion is the most important thing is how to strengthen our verification system, that is definitely is not a simple task, but we are working always with the inputs from from all the stakeholders. So I think we value a lot all the critics because that gives us the main points that we need to work on. We welcome all the critics a actually a within the working groups, we have a very sometimes harsh discussions on how to improve our system. But we are working on that, and I have no doubt that we are in the right path and and we need input from from everyone. So again, this is something that has to evolve every day. Because the challenges for achieving sustainability today, I will defense that the challenge that we will face tomorrow. So that's why we think that the best way to do it is through an open dialogue. And we are always open to see the comments and critiques and and also suggestions in how to improve our system.


Mira 28:38

Listening to these two opposing viewpoints, it sounds like Dr. Pim is focused on the present status of RSPO. He believes that the certification does not have strong enough environmental protections, and is not widespread enough in the palm oil market to have a large impact. On the other hand, you have Francisco well, he believes that the RSPO, his current certification system is a lot stronger than critics give them credit for. He's more focused on the future of RSPO and palm oil in general, believing that growing RSPO and making Sustainable Palm Oil the norm is the best solution for protecting the environment. It's clear that both sides have a point and that this issue is a lot more nuanced than it might initially seem.


Renee 29:24

I definitely agree. And I think being critical consumers and not blindly trusting that the RSPO certification means that oil is 100% sustainable is an important part of keeping RSPO accountable and pushing them to create more rapid and widespread change in the palm oil market.


Georgie 29:41

And listening to Francisco I think he also agrees that RSPO needs input from a variety of stakeholders in order to improve their system and best protect biodiversity.


Mira 29:55

Wow, these were such interesting conversations and there's definitely a lot to learn when it comes to palm oil. The topic of palm oil and biodiversity in the Amazon is a lot more complex than you might have initially thought.



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