Shampoo, ice cream, margarine, potato chips, lipstick – all contain palm oil.
Demand is still growing, as are oil palm plantations… but at what price to tropical forests and the biodiversity found there?
Global production of palm oil has doubled over the last decade. By 2000, palm oil was the most produced and traded vegetable oil accounting for 40% of all vegetable oils traded internationally. By 2006, the percentage had risen to 65%
Worldwide demand for palm oil is expected to double again by 2030. New plantations are being developed and existing ones are being expanded in Indonesia, Malaysia and other Asian countries, as well as in Africa and Latin America.
But this expansion comes at the expense of tropical forest – which forms critical habitat for a large number of endangered species- especially Orangutans.
In school after school the questions of sustainability and the preservation of the rainforest is one the most popular contemporary science topics being discussed today.
This book in progress explores this controversial conservation issue.
Demand is still growing, as are oil palm plantations… but at what price to tropical forests and the biodiversity found there?
Global production of palm oil has doubled over the last decade. By 2000, palm oil was the most produced and traded vegetable oil accounting for 40% of all vegetable oils traded internationally. By 2006, the percentage had risen to 65%
Worldwide demand for palm oil is expected to double again by 2030. New plantations are being developed and existing ones are being expanded in Indonesia, Malaysia and other Asian countries, as well as in Africa and Latin America.
But this expansion comes at the expense of tropical forest – which forms critical habitat for a large number of endangered species- especially Orangutans.
In school after school the questions of sustainability and the preservation of the rainforest is one the most popular contemporary science topics being discussed today.
This book in progress explores this controversial conservation issue.