Coconut oil, conservation and the conscientious consumer

Erik Meijaard, Jesse Frank Abrams, Diego Juffe-Bignoli, Maria Voigt and Douglas Sheil
Additional contact information
Jesse Frank Abrams: University of Exeter

No du5tp, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Consumption has consequences, and conscientious consumers increasingly seek sound guidance to reduce their impact. Objective guidance is, however, rarely available. A case in point is coconut production which is generally considered to have low environmental impact. We demonstrate that for one impact measure of all major oil crops —threatened species per volume produced —coconut, together with maize, affect far more species than all other major oil crops, including palm oil. Our analysis indicates that the public discourse about crop impact is distorted. What ethical consumers need is unbiased information based on transparent and objective measures that address multiple concerns, costs and impacts, and allow fair comparisons between products.

Date: 2020-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/5e32a4384b2010005a2131a2/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:du5tp

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/du5tp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().