Interdependencies and telecoupling of oil palm expansion at the expense of Indonesian rainforest

Maria Cristina Rulli, Stefano Casirati, Dell’Angelo, Jampel, Kyle Frankel Davis, Corrado Passera and D’Odorico, Paolo

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2019, vol. 105, issue C, 499-512

Abstract: Global palm oil production has greatly increased in recent years with the adoption of renewable energy policies by the E.U. and U.S.A. and growing demand for its use in food, biodiesel, and other commodities. Indonesia, the world's largest oil palm producer, has leased large tracts of forested and tribal lands as new concessions, thereby expanding oil palm plantations. While previous studies have focused on some of the important social and environmental consequences of this process, the full suite of potential environmental impacts from land conversion and cultivation remains poorly understood. Here we quantify these impacts in terms of forest loss and fragmentation, CO2 emissions from land use change, and freshwater pollution from fertilizer application. Within all concession types, forest cover decreased by 20% and forest fragmentation increased by 44%, both of which are significantly higher than in comparable non-concession areas. We also assess to what extent CO2 emissions and freshwater pollution are attributable to increasing palm oil demand abroad. We find that four-fifths of Indonesia's palm oil production is for export markets and that 66% of this is destined for just eight countries – India, China, Pakistan, Malaysia, Italy, Egypt, Bangladesh, and the United Kingdom. Examining these multiple impacts highlights the importance of remote policies and consumption patterns in dictating local production decisions in a telecoupled world. This work demonstrates that - in order to be truly sustainable - bioenergy initiatives must ensure that adverse environmental impacts (and the demands that drive them) are reduced globally and not simply displaced elsewhere.

Keywords: Oil palm; Indonesia; Telecoupling; Rainforest; Deforestation; Fragmentation; Water scarcity, CO2 emissions; Globalization; Biofuel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032118308529
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:rensus:v:105:y:2019:i:c:p:499-512

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2018.12.050

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().