More than half the deforestation in the Malaysian half of Borneo is due to palm oil plantations and wood-pulp companies, according to four decades of satellite images, says Reuters. Borneo is shared by Malaysia and Indonesia, the world’s top palm oil producers, as well as Brunei.
In 1973, 76 percent of Borneo was forested. Today the number is about half that, says David Gaveau of the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research, who compiled the satellite images.
Up to 60 percent of the cleared land on Borneo’s Malaysian side was turned into palm plantations, he says.
“The findings … are likely to compound criticism of the palm oil industry in particular, which has faced condemnation for its land-clearing by burning and resulting smoke across Southeast Asia every year,” says Reuters. More than half the items on grocery store shelves contain some form of palm oil.
The deforestation rate has been better on the Indonesian side, known as Kalimantan, according to Gaveau. “Most of the plantations in Kalimantan were developed either on lands that were cleared much earlier, or in forest areas that had been degraded by recurring fires brought on by droughts.” But, he added, because of a palm oil boom beginning in 2005, deforestation on Borneo’s Indonesian half is starting to catch up.
To read more about the problems of the palm oil trade, check out FERN’s recent story, written by Jocelyn Zuckerman and published in The New Yorker: “The violent costs of the global palm-oil boom.”