The Supply Chain of Deforestation

Palm oil production is a major contributor to deforestation, particularly in Southeast Asia. To meet the growing demand for palm oil, every year vast areas of rainforests and other ecosystems are cleared and converted into large-scale oil palm plantations. 

Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil globally and it is found in around half of the products in your local supermarket, including a huge number of processed food products, cosmetics, cleaning products and biofuels. This means that most of your favorite supermarket brands directly contribute to deforestation and global heating.

Personally, both for health and for ethical reasons, I try to avoid buying processed foods. Avoiding processed foods is probably one of the most effective ways you can help reduce your consumption of palm oil. As an ethical shopper you may also want to learn a little more about which major brands are involved in the production, processing and consumption of palm oil.

The new PalmWatch interactive map allows you to explore where the production of palm oil is leading to deforestation and the role that some of the world's leading brands play in that deforestation. The map itself visualizes deforestation caused by individual palm oil mills around the world but PalmWatch can also be used to explore the involvement of individual major brands to this deforestation.

Using PalmWatch you can explore the impact of 15 major consumer brands, including Mars, Proctor and Gamble, Nestlé, and Unilever, to the production and distribution of palm oil. You can select 'brand impact' to learn more about the levels of deforestation a brand is historically responsible for. You can also use PalmWatch to explore the supply chains of palm oil production to learn more about the link between major brands, the main palm oil mill company groups, and their impact on deforestation.

85% of the world's palm oil comes from Southeast Asia. This palm oil is produced by destroying the rainforests and the habitats of endangered species like the orangutan, the Sumatran rhino and the pygmy elephant. You can learn more about how palm oil production is effecting just one Southeast Asian island in CNN's Borneo is Burning.  

In this special report CNN uses a story map format to explain how the consumption of palm oil is causing the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests. In order to clear land to grow oil palms farmers light illegal fires. And it isn't just the rainforests which are burning. This is a double whammy of an environmental crisis, because these fires are also destroying the peatlands that lie beneath the forests. Peatlands which are the world’s largest natural terrestrial carbon sink.

The illegal fires started by palm oil farmers produces smoke which spreads across Southeast Asia affecting the health of people living in Indonesia, Java, Singapore and Malaysia. In 2019, in Indonesia alone, 920,000 people were treated for acute respiratory problems caused by the smoke from the burning of rainforests.

The negative impacts of palm oil production don't stop there. By destroying the rainforests palm oil farmers are also destroying the natural habitats of orangutans and many other animal and plant species. In fact the scale of deforestation in Borneo means that the orangutan is now one of the most endangered species on the planet.