Musim Mas handles about 18 percent of the world’s palm oil. It was the last of the big palm oil companies that hadn’t agreed to fight against land clearing and human rights abuses. The announcement comes one year after Wilmar International, the biggest player in the palm-oil game, agreed to take a stand on the issue. Since then, all the other major corporations have followed suit. Now 96 percent of palm oil production is covered by a no-deforestation policy.
It has been — in short — a remarkable year for reform in the palm oil industry.
The development of oil palm plantations has caused the loss of critical orangutan habitat and led to massive underground fires — where thousands of years of accumulated carbon, in the form of jungle peat, is released into the atmosphere. It’s been a pretty grim situation. Now, this rolling catastrophe looks like it could soon grind to a halt. The NGOs campaigning for change will be monitoring the companies closely to see if they actually follow through on their commitments.
But this doesn’t mean that all of you who have been abstaining should go out and shotgun a gallon of palm oil. There’s no specific date when we’ll be able to say the problem is solved. “It’s a continuous improvement,” said Glenn Hurowitz, chair of Forest Heroes, which played a major part in securing these commitments. It takes a lot of hard work to push the policy all the way down to the field, to make sure it is implemented by every farmer whose oil ends up going to these companies.
Read more at The Last Holdout Among Big Palm Oil Producers Joins No-Deforestation Pledge
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