The Palm Oil Predicament

Trigger warning: This article contains a reference to sexual violence in the “Human Rights Abuses” section.

Refined palm oil in bottle with fresh oil palm fruits.

Palm oil, made from the fruit of the oil palm tree (Elaeis guineensis), is not only one of the most widely produced edible fats in the world—found in everything from cookies and crackers to margarines and shortenings—but it’s an ingredient in such products as cosmetics, biodiesel, tobacco, and soaps.[1] This ubiquity can be traced to a variety of factors, including food companies looking to replace trans fats in their products, cosmetic companies that wanted plant-based alternatives to animal-based and synthetic chemicals, and governments and international banks, which considered the production of palm oil a way to alleviate poverty in parts of Asia.[2]

Oil palm trees are indigenous to West Africa, where their oil was long used for cooking, but were exported to tropical regions of Latin America and southeast Asia in the late 19th century.[3] These trees can thrive just about anywhere with heat and regular rainfall, so the palm oil industry has flourished across the tropic zone.

Extracted both from the flesh of the tree’s fruit and from the fruit’s seeds, palm oil is very cheap to produce.[4]Unfortunately, it is also terrible for animals and the environment—oil palms are grown on vast plantations after rainforests have been burned and flattened.[5] This deforestation occurs in some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, destroying the habitats of already endangered species.[6]

Species in Decline

Orangutan,Tanjung Puting National Park, Borneo

Perhaps the animal most associated with the destructive impacts of palm oil production is the orangutan. These great apes are arboreal, meaning they primarily live in trees, and their habitats are constantly being cleared for oil palms. The only remaining areas where orangutans live are in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together produce more than 85 percent of the world’s palm oil.[7] Every year, as many as 5,000 orangutans are killed because of palm oil development.[8] Due in large part to palm oil, only about 120,000 of these critically endangered animals are left in the wild.[9]

Two other critically endangered species affected by the palm oil industry are the Sumatran rhinoceros and the Sumatran elephant. Sumatran rhinos are in rapid decline, with only about 40 of them surviving in small populations that have become fragmented due to habitat loss, making it difficult for them to find one another and reproduce.[10] The population of Sumatran elephants, meanwhile, has declined by more than half since 2007 and now stands at an estimated 924 to 1,359 individuals.[11] Palm plantations engulfing rainforests not only chips away at Sumatran elephants’ available living space but increases the conflicts that humans experience with these animals, further compromising them.

Other animals endangered by the leveling of rainforests for oil palm trees in Asia, Africa, and the Americas include tigers, gibbons, chimpanzees, and sun bears. Indeed, the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that oil palm cultivation threatens at least 193 species listed as critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable.[12] Only about 15 percent of animal species found amid oil palm plantations are compatible with this foreign environment.[13]One explanation for this is the physical composition of oil palms. They are a monoculture crop offering only one canopy layer rather than the diversity of layers provided by forests, they do not contribute to a rich forest floor, and they offer almost no wood debris or leaf litter, all of which are required to support species naturally found in tropical forests.[14]

When we consider species being harmed for palm oil production, most of us think of animals, but plant species are impacted as well. In 2024, it is estimated that palm oil producers cleared some 122,000 hectares of land in Indonesia[15] and about 6,000 hectares of land in Malaysia.[16] Although cutting down and burning vegetation—a practice known as “slash and burn”—has been banned in Indonesia and Malaysia since the 1990s, it is still commonplace.[17]

And while much attention is given to how species are destroyed for palm oil production, a little-known connection with the industry is animal agriculture. On animal farms in the United States, Canada,[18] and Europe,[19] palm oil has been used as an additive to animal feed. According to a 2024 report by the Rainforest Action Network, nearly 2 million tons, or 36 percent, of all palm oil imported into the U.S. is made up of palm oil-based animal feed, making it the country’s single largest imported palm oil product by weight.[20] It’s being used primarily for cows exploited for dairy in the U.S., while in Europe it’s a popular additive to feed given to chickens raised for “meat.”[21]

Human Rights Abuses

Palm oil plantations are also known to exploit workers, including children. According to a report published by the United Nations Children’s Fund, “Child labor has long been a recognized concern in the industry. However, the impact of the sector on children extends beyond child labor. For instance, limited maternity protections, low breastfeeding rates, lack of childcare opportunities, poor maternal health and nutrition, and difficult access to education for worker’s children may have significant impacts on the health and development of children in palm oil communities.”[22]

Meanwhile, investigators in both Indonesia and Malaysia—the first- and second-largest producers of palm oil, respectively—have interviewed workers who reported a variety of abuses, including being raped by their employers, subjected to hazardous working conditions, and exposed to dangerous pesticides.[23] [24] Workers also described being cheated, threatened, held against their will, or forced to work off overwhelming debts. Others said they were frequently harassed by authorities, swept up in raids, and detained in government facilities.[25]

In Brazil, where palm oil production is small but growing,[26] the industry has been linked to the violations of Indigenous and traditional peoples’ rights. In 2022, the watch group Global Witness found that two companies, Brasil Biofuels (BBF) and Agropalma, used violence and illegal land grabbing and forcibly evicted Indigenous Quilombola, Riverine, and Campesino communities in the Amazon. “BBF are accused of waging violent campaigns to silence Indigenous and traditional communities defending their ancestral lands with little or no accountability or State intervention, while Agropalma are linked to fraudulent land grabs and stranding or evicting communities,” the group said.[27] Agropalma even planted oil palm trees on the top of Quilombola graves.[28]

Human rights violations have occurred elsewhere as well. Communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for instance, were first displaced in 1911 by Belgian colonial authorities to establish oil palm plantations.[29] An investigation in 2021 revealed an escalation of violence against community members, including soldiers and security guards from Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC)—the largest industrial palm oil production company in the DRC—who reportedly looted and destroyed dozens of homes and tortured and kidnapped villagers from communities surrounding the plantations.[30] Then, in 2022, after a group of workers at one plantation went on strike to protest poor wages, PHC called in the police and military who opened fire on the protestors, seriously wounding two workers.[31]

Environmental Impact

Close-up look at palm bunch after harvested at the plantation area.

The environmental destruction caused by oil palm plantations begins with the clearing of forests and the draining and clearing peatlands, which emit a significant amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.[32] Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas contributing to the climate crisis.[33] “But,” as the Union of Concerned Scientists points out, “precisely because tropical forests store large amounts of carbon—both in primary (old-growth) forests and secondary (disturbed and regenerating) forests—it is important to protect these lands from oil palm development.”[34]

These plantations are also sources of two other potent greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide and methane, that further contribute to the climate crisis.[35] By one estimate, palm oil plantations on former peatland, for example, contribute between 16.6 and 27.9 percent of all the greenhouse gas emissions from Indonesia and Malaysia.[36]

Moreover, the production of palm oil uses fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides, all of which can run off into water systems and affect downstream biodiversity.[37] Adding to this water pollution are the 2.5 metric tons of palm oil mill effluent (POME)—wastewater containing enormous concentrations of contaminants—that mills create with every ton of palm oil they produce.[38] When POME is discharged into waterways, it kills fishes and other aquatic animals and deprives members of the community of a local water source.[39]

Carbon pools such as forests are an essential component of the Earth’s climate system, as they accumulate and store carbon. Researchers have found that, compared to carbon pools in old-growth forests, carbon pools in oil palm plantations are reduced by 167 tons per hectare—from 195 tons per hectare in forests to 28 tons per hectare in oil palm plantations.[40]

What’s Being Done

Group of freshly harvested oil palm fruits on palm leaf

Regardless of such mistreatment and environmental destruction, worldwide production of palm oil has been gradually rising, increasing from approximately 56 million metric tons in the marketing year 2012/13 to an estimated 80 million metric tons in 2023/24.[41] The industry is expected to reach 240 million metric tons by 2050.[42]

But with concerns about its role in the loss of animal and plant species, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses, the palm oil industry has tried to prioritize ethical business practices—or at least appear to be doing so. In 2004, they launched the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a worldwide body made up of oil palm plantation owners, palm oil traders, companies that use palm oil in their products, and nonprofits, including the World Wildlife Fund. The goal of the RSPO is to promote the production of sustainable palm oil and establish voluntary protections; however, member companies continue to destroy land to plant oil palm trees and at least one company, Socfin, continues to hold RSPO certification even though human rights abuses have been documented on its plantations.[43] Meanwhile, another RSPO-certified company, NaturAceites, cultivates palm oil on land that was stolen from the indigenous population, says the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, which adds: “he RSPO seal remains an inadequate means of effectively preventing human rights violations and environmental destruction in the palm oil supply chain.”[44]

Two other standards, Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) and Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO)—created by their respective governments—are equally problematic. They allow palm oil processors and growers to claim “sustainability” rather than being based on comprehensive sets of standards and systems of quality assurance.[45]

The industry has also been faced with a traceability gap, so it’s been difficult to say with certainty that it is truly sustainable. To help close the gap, Indonesia has been exploring a “jurisdictional approach” framework to palm oil production, which focuses on the development and enforcement of sustainable palm oil production at the provincial or district level, rather than at the plantation or company level. The results have been mixed, however. According to the authors of a 2025 study, “The results show that traceability varies depending on the category of value chain, the type of certification scheme, and the type of plantation management model.” In the Pelalawan district, for instance, the researchers found that only 56 percent of oil palm plantation locations and names could be identified.[46] Efforts are underway to create farm-to-fork traceability, such as new open-access online tool called PalmWatch that may make it easier to identify links between plantations, mills, and brands that are producing or using unsustainable palm oil, but the tool is in its early stages and has yet to include data on human rights abuses or land grabs.[47]

After reaching a peak in 2023, deforestation seems to have slowed down.[48] Scientist and activist David Gaveau, who monitors deforestation and was once kicked out of Indonesia because of his work studying forest fires, told The New York Times in 2024: “Palm oil driven deforestation has gone down in the last 10 years. But it’s not going down to zero. More needs to be done.”[49]

A technology that is being touted as a possible solution is lab-grown palm oil. The London-based startup Clean Food Group has partnered with a British cosmetics manufacturer to create palm oil from non-GMO yeast.[50] Their product, called Palmless, is used in beauty and personal care products that would otherwise use palm oil.[51] Meanwhile, another company, U.S.-based Xylome, has developed a product called Yoil, which they market for both foods and cosmetics.[52] What remains to be seen, however, is if the environmental impact of lab-grown palm oil offsets that of palm oil produced from oil palm trees—and if technology companies can create synthetic palm oil at a scale large enough to be financially attractive to product manufacturers.

Recommendations

Considering the impact that palm oil production has on animals, humans, and the planet, we encourage consumers to reduce as much as possible their purchases and use of products that contain palm oil. This often requires careful reading of labels, as many products contain palm-based ingredients that may not be labeled “palm oil,” although they frequently use the word “palm.” These include Palmitate, Palmate, Elaeis guineensis (the species of palm used for palm oil), PKO (palm kernel oil), and PHPKO (partially hydrogenated palm oil). Other ingredients can come from palm, soy, or coconut, such as Sodium laureth sulfate, Sodium lauryl sulfate, and Stearic acid. To be sure your purchase does not contain palm-based ingredients, either look for the words “palm free” on the label or contact the manufacturer and ask.

Unfortunately, palm oil is so ubiquitous in products that it is virtually impossible to completely avoid it; however, we can make an effort.