JAKARTA — Pledges by major brands to stop buying palm oil from companies known to destroy rainforests have failed to stop the clearance of a total area of forest the…
MEDELLIN, Colombia — Keeping an eye on what is going on out in the vast countryside of Colombia’s palm oil plantations is a challenge. But that may be about to…
One of Indonesia’s biggest family-owned firms is facing fresh criticism over its alleged failure to comply with its sustainability commitments as part of its palm oil operations in Liberia. Golden…
Oil palm plantations are the biggest source of agriculture-related deforestation in Southeast Asia. Researchers estimate that at least 95,000 square kilometers of land have been converted to oil palm plantations…
Indonesia, the world’s top producer of palm oil, wants the U.S. and France to use it to fuel their airplanes — and may be willing to play hardball in order…
More than 90 institutional investors managing more than $6.7 trillion in assets have called on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to strengthen its standards, including by banning deforestation. The…
Ecuador’s oil palm industry has taken what many see as another step forward by committing to a jurisdictional RSPO system as a way to transform the entire sector by making it…
WIMBI, Ecuador — When Yessenia Padilla heard that her community crops were being destroyed, she and about 70 of her neighbors rushed out to intervene. They grabbed large boards, rocks,…
LA CONCORDIA, Ecuador — Jorge Jurado has been farming oil palm on Ecuador’s coast for almost 20 years, and has seen the industry go through many changes. But over the…
Last month, food giant Nestlé was suspended from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the world’s largest association for ethical production of the commodity. It didn’t last long. This week,…
An Indonesian-owned plantation company operating in Liberia has come under renewed scrutiny for allegedly clearing hundreds of hectares of protected forestland, including chimpanzee habitat, wetlands and river buffer zones. Between…
Food and drinks giant Nestlé was suspended from the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production late last month and can no longer use the group’s stamp of approval…
Major agribusiness firms are using opaque corporate structures to gain access to palm oil sourced from plantations operating in violation of their sustainability commitments, according to an investigation into the…
OSLO, Norway — Banning palm oil in favor of other vegetable oils deemed less destructive to the environment could lead to greater biodiversity losses, a new report says. The report by…
The large-scale expansion of oil palm has been a major driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss in many areas of the tropics. In Malaysia and Indonesia, where 85 percent of…
According to a study published in the journal PloS One late last year, the Brazilian Amazon has about 2.3 million square kilometers (nearly 900,000 square miles) of land suitable for…
PUERTO CONCORDIA, Colombia — Councilman Ricardo Vargas* sits at the bus depot in the riverside hamlet of Puerto Concordia where narco-inspired corridos play on the radio and a sea of oil palm expands…
The uproar over Iceland Foods’ decision to ban palm oil from its own-label products has been loud and swift. While many applaud the move as a bold stance against deforestation…
Selective logging has long been considered the lesser evil compared to clear-cutting when it comes to habitat preservation. But a new study adds to a growing chorus of concern that…
The owner of Indonesia’s largest conglomerate has been accused of participating in the illegal deforestation of Borneo’s Ketungau peat swamp to make way for oil palm plantations. The Salim Group,…
Frogs can survive in oil palm plantations, but at the cost of diversity of species — and the impact can radiate out deep into neighboring forest ecosystems, according to a…
Bearded pigs in Malaysian Borneo appear to have adapted to oil palm plantations, a key driver of deforestation in the region, but still depend heavily on adjacent forests as their…
JAKARTA — Environmental activists have called for the issue of palm oil to be excluded from discussions taking place this week between the Indonesian government and a European Union trade…
JAKARTA — Global demand for biofuels containing palm oil looks set to grow sixfold by 2030, potentially driving the destruction of Southeast Asian rainforests the size of the Netherlands, a…
JAKARTA — Officials in Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s biggest producers of palm oil, have lambasted the European Parliament’s decision to phase out the commodity from motor fuels over the…
Over the past 10 years many areas of once-forested land degraded by cattle in the Amazon have been converted to oil palm. To measure how the oil palm plantations may…
Palm oil, a leading driver of tropical deforestation, may be also wreaking enormous damage on forests well outside established plantation areas, a new study has found. The study, published Dec.…
Colombian community leader Hernan Bedoya, who defended collective land rights for Afro-Colombian farmers as well as local biodiversity in the face of palm oil and industrial agriculture expansion, was allegedly…
As nations race to keep forests standing and the world from warming, scientists are trying to figure out what human activities are causing deforestation and how best to stop them.…
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has the strongest set of requirements among certification schemes for edible oils and biofuels, even if its members often get away with flouting its…