Palm oil is a cheap vegetable oil used in products such as lipstick, soap, detergents, dry soups, ice cream and increasingly for so-called 'biofuels'. Global demand for palm oil is booming, and to meet this demand, industrial agriculture giants clear vast swaths of Paradise Forests in Southeast Asia to create palm oil plantations. This deforestation results in habitat loss, harm to local people species extinction, and global warming.

Paving Paradise

Forest destruction for the development of the palm oil industry is taking place primarily in the Asia/Pacific Paradise Forests, primarily in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea (PNG). When deforestation is factored in, Indonesia is among the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases. These Asian forests represent a green wall against uncontrollable climate change. Their destruction results in irreplaceable biodiversity loss and increased global warming due to the release of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Twenty percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are the result of deforestation.

Forest destruction is worst where forests grow on peatlands, like in large parts of Southeast Asia. Peatlands store vast amounts of carbon, globally up to 528 billion tons (70 times the current annual global emissions from fossil fuel burning). Emissions from current deforestation on SE Asia's peatlands alone, equals to almost 8 percent of global emissions from fossil fuel burning. Riau province in Sumatra, subject to a massive expansion of palm oil plantations, alone comprises 4 million hectares of peatland (the size of Taiwan), storing 14.6 billion tonnes of carbon. If these peatlands are destroyed, the resulting emissions would equal an entire year of mankind's global greenhouse gas emissions.

Magnificent animals now threatened by this deforestation include the Sumatran tiger, rhino, elephant, birds of paradise, and the critically endangered orang utan. Indonesia contains between 10-15 percent of all known species of plants, mammals and birds that make up the world's biodiversity. Borneo and Sumatra, now host the world's remaining orang utans. They depend on the forest for food and nesting sites. According to the Centre for Orangutan Protection, at least 1,500 orang-utans died in 2006 as a result of deliberate attacks by plantation workers.