Essay On Oil Palm Industry

Habitat Oil palm industry has significance effect on natural habitats of flora and fauna in Malaysia. As far as WWF concerned, oil palm plantations had covered over 11 million hectare of land in world. Most of the land cleared to give space for vast monoculture of oil palm plantation are tropical rain forest, the natural habitat for many endangered endemic species such as orangutans.

Indonesia and Malaysia are the world’s largest palm oil producers and global demand for this commodity is increasing every year partly due to the expanding biofuel market. The growth of oil palms required a rainforest climate which is consists of consistently high humidity and temperatures. Primary forests is the priority choices for palm oil companies, rather

In search of food, they easily get lost into the plantations, where they are treated by the companies as pests. The workers in plantations killed orang-utans without mercy to get rid of them in order to protect their crops. Based on to research of the Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) in 2006, palm oil plantation workers had clubbed at least 1,500 orangutans to death in that particular year alone. According to the UN, perhaps there will be no wild orang-utans able to survive outside the protected areas by 2020.

Too add on, oil palm industry which practice monoculture will also depleted the nutrient content in soil. Reforestation will be restricted and maybe not be successful since the soil nutrient in soil is no more sufficient to sustain another rainforest. Reconstruction of habitat for wildlife will hence be less effective and time consuming.

In 2007, The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) research shows that oil palm plantations are the leading cause of rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia. Study by Princeton and a Swiss institution also indicate that between 1990 and 2005, palm oil expansion occurred at the expense of primary tropical rain forest is as high as 60% and