By Jason Reed
The European Parliament, based out of Brussels and Strasbourg, has voted through a new law called the European Union Deforestation Due Diligence Proposal, which intends to shift the burden of tackling deforestation away from government and onto businesses and consumers. It follows a pledge to phase out the use of palm oil as a biofuel by 2030, and various other policies and statements vilifying palm oil and attempting to curb palm oil imports into Europe, all supposedly in order to reduce deforestation.
This latest proposal is part of the EU’s long-running war on palm oil. Unfortunately, it seems the EU would rather pick an industry it doesn’t like and hammer it repeatedly, at the expense of farmers around the world as well as consumers and businesses across the West, rather than hunting for a true solution to the problem of deforestation.
There are several reasons why attacking palm oil is the wrong approach. Firstly, to blame the global deforestation problem on palm oil is an overly simplistic and flawed view. Palm oil is much better for the environment than the alternative products, and innovation within the industry in recent years has allowed for great strides forward to make the deforestation problem even smaller.
For instance, deforestation from palm oil has fallen to a four-year low according to research by Global Canopy, a non-profit organisation. Among all the commodities that are linked to deforestation, commitments are more common in palm oil supply chains than other comparable industries like cattle, paper, and soy. These steps forward are unsurprising, since there is such a strong incentive for palm oil producers to minimise their impact on the natural world, but the palm oil industry has excelled itself in this field.
We need vegetable oils. Assuming we still want our supermarket shelves to be stocked with groceries and toiletries, there is no way around it. Palm oil is currently one of the world’s favourite vegetable oils. In fact, it caters to a whopping 40% of all vegetable oil demand across the globe. Amazingly, it is only responsible for 6% of the land used for that purpose.
Production of palm oil is between four and ten times more land-efficient than other vegetable oils, which means that if you insist on avoiding palm oil, you force farmers and producers to chop down far more trees in order to make other oils and meet your vegetable oil demand.
Fundamentally, the European Union is trying to solve a problem that does not exist. Already, 90% of all the palm oil imported into Europe is certified as sustainable, and that number is growing rapidly as industry innovation continues apace. In other words, there are no choices European consumers or politicians can take to have a sizeable impact on deforestation by cutting down on palm oil. It simply will not make any difference.
In fact, it is likely to make the problem worse, as manufacturers switch from palm oil to other oils like sunflower, rapeseed and olive, which use more land and therefore require more trees to be chopped down to make the same amount of product. Banning palm oil fuels deforestation. Nonetheless, the EU is sticking to its guns, and it does not look likely to abate in its relentless campaign against palm oil.
If we continue down this path, the deforestation problem will not be solved any time soon. Moreover, food price increases are likely to accelerate because palm oil is cheaper to produce than those alternative vegetable oils (unsurprisingly, since it requires so much less land).
There is a real risk that other governments around the world may soon panic about having missed their anti-deforestation targets set at COP26 and, in search of a quick fix, copy the European Union’s policy. That would be a grave mistake. The EU is setting a very bad example.
Jason Reed is a writer and broadcaster on politics and policy for a wide range of outlets. Follow him on Twitter @JasonReed624
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