6.6.1 Biodiversity (An example of a palm-oil production)

(a) The summary of a palm-oil production

About biomass utilization, the palm oil production gives an urgent serious to biodiversity in Malaysia and Indonesia, now.

Malaysia and Indonesia account for about 85% of the palm oil production in the world. In Malaysia, a large scale plantation began to be suddenly developed in 1960’s. An Indonesian government put out the policy said becoming the world’s largest production country of palm oil, and production including the construction of a large scale plantation was begun in 1980’s. From 1990 to 2002, the oil palm plantation areas increase about twice in Malaysia and more than 3 times in Indonesia.

As the development of the oil palm plantation, very large land need for the operation of oil mill (the scale of Southeastern Asian typical plantations is 10,000-25,000 ha), and there are a lot of things that the forest is destroyed in creation. About 87% of the deforestation in Malaysia from 1985 to 2000 is considered to be the oil palm plantation development, and it is said by Indonesia that at least 70% of the plantation cleared a forest. Furthermore, the oil palm plantations are developed more and more around the buffer zone such as the national parks, and the biological important area.

(b) Palm oil production and biodiversity

The palm oil plantations are overlapped the low land in tropical rain forests where hold the highest biodiversity on the earth, as it were, located the “Hot Spot” where is "the area that is on the verge of the destruction though to hold the high biodiversity on the earth scale". This area is a little habitation area of the orangutan, Sumatra tiger, Borneo elephant, rhinoceros,

Malaysian tapir and so on. Development of the oil palm plantations is the biggest menace for the rare tropical rain forests in Southeast Asia.

It’s said 80-100% of mammal, reptiles and birds disappear as developing the plantations in the tropical forest. According to the investigation of Miura et al., more than 400 kinds of wild animals were found out in a natural forest or second growth, but the plantations after cut down all forest and cultivating only palm oil, less than 10 kinds were found.(see below)

Nature forest Second growth fringe of forest

oil palm plantation

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900

Fig. 6.6.1. Comparison of the appearance frequency of the wild animal used an automatic imager (in Malaysia)

(c) Other impacts due to the palm oil production

In Indonesia, though the control to the illegal felling is strengthened, the authorities permit easer to fell to develop the oil palm plantation. Some are considered to fake the authorities to get permissions of illegal felling. Furthermore, at the time of development, field firing is frequently illegal and as the result peat layer is fired. Then the very large area is disappeared and there is bad influence for the ecosystem. And CO2 is produced at two billions tons per year that exceeds Japan’s emission. This is a big cause of the climate change.

In addition described above, development of the oil palm plantations bring the injustice of local people impacts on economy, culture and social instability such as indigenous people depending on the forest as well as biological diversity disappearance. After the operation of the plantations started, there are problems of the pollutions of soil and river by pesticide and chemical fertilizer, soil erosion, such as the labor problems low wages, pesticide damage, child labor, illegal workers, water pollution by waste fluid and residual substance or methane outbreak and so on.