48 Hours that Changed the Future of Rainforests

This is a story about how change happens.  It happens for big reasons:  economic shifts, political winds, technological revolutions.  But it also happens for small reasons: individual people making very personal choices.

In the last 10 years, palm oil has found its way into just about every processed food and cosmetics product you can imagine.  Food makers found it was a good replacement for transfats, and they could use it as a non-GMO alternative to soybean oil.  It’s also burned as fuel.  The world’s hunger for palm oil has driven farmers to clear an area the size of Taiwan.  All this cutting has pushed Sumatran tigers and orangutans to the edge of extinction, along with hundreds of less charismatic species.  Sometimes human inhabitants of the forest have been exploited by corrupt plantation owners.  A significant portion of the jungle covers bogs, where centuries worth of fallen leaves and branches have built up to form a sodden mat of peat.  With the trees gone and the water drained, this peat dries out and frequently catches fire, releasing megatons of greenhouse gases.  We’re turning these giant soggy carbon sinks into a parched landscape where smoke seeps out of the earth from deep underground fires.

Palm oil itself isn’t inherently evil:  it can be grown in a sustainable fashion.  The most responsible players in the industry have helped lift communities of farmers out of poverty.  And the crop produces seven times as much oil per acre as soy — so, as demand for food grows, palm oil might actually help reduce the amount of land taken up by agriculture.  But only if it’s grown where there aren’t old-growth forests and peat swamps.

At the end of 2013, Wilmar promised to stop buying from anyone who cleared forest, drained peat land, or exploited locals.  It promised to do this in a transparent fashion, so that anyone can check up on it.  And, so far, the company has gone above and beyond the expectations of activists.

It sometimes feels as if the wheels of environmental reform are spinning in the mud, so when real change happens, it’s remarkable.  I’ve been hearing horror stories about the loss of rainforest since I was in grade school.  Nothing ever seems to change.  Companies and governments have floundered, or made piecemeal adjustments, or flatly resisted change.  And then, all of a sudden, every major player begins to commit to transformative change, one after another.  What the heck happened?  In this story, something changed in those 48 hours between the time Kuok told Hurowitz he would not make the commitment, and the moment that he did.

Read more at 48 Hours that Changed the Future of Rainforests