In April 2022, the government of Indonesia introduced a new regulation to ban the export of palm oil. The regulation (Minister of Trade Regulation Number 22/2022) covered crude palm oil and its derivatives, including refined, bleached, and deodorized palm oil (RBDPO), refined, bleached, and deodorized olein (RBDO), and used cooking oil. The regulation sought to …
Investors are continuing to urge governments and companies to take actions to conserve forests and curb commodity-driven deforestation. A group of NGOs and activist investors are currently putting together a sign-on letter in support of three key pieces of legislation in the United States that aim to decrease deforestation risks and human rights abuses in …
Chain Reaction Research held a webinar on April 14th to share our research on deforestation in Indonesia that is attributed to the development of oil palm plantations. Palm oil-driven deforestation has fallen to its lowest level in four years in 2021. The declining deforestation rates for oil palm in Indonesia are promising. However, recent …
Agropalma SA, the largest exporter of palm oil in Brazil, is facing legal and reputational risks from being ordered to pay a fine due to poor working conditions on two farms in Tailândia, which is in northeast Pará. The Labor Court of Tucuruí (also located in Pará) ordered the company to pay just under 1 …
Although West and Central Africa have been promising regions for large-scale palm oil production, expansion has not gone as planned. Only a handful of companies control industrial palm oil production and will likely drive expansion, but on a smaller scale and at a slower pace than originally anticipated. Nevertheless, these companies have been linked to …
In the past month, there have been two significant developments in Indonesia’s palm oil sector: 1) the increased allocation for the country’s biodiesel program; and 2) multiple plantation companies — including oil palm plantation companies, together with industrial tree plantations and mining companies — have had their licenses revoked as a result of their concessions …
In the light of environmental and social sustainability concerns in relation to palm oil from Southeast Asia, several Latin American countries see an opportunity to open export markets as they present palm oil from the region as a more sustainable option. However, social and environmental sustainability concerns are also prominent in the Latin American sector …
Oil palm growers in Brazil have argued that palm oil production is a “green solution” to safeguard the Amazon as a result of planting on areas already degraded and cleared only before 2008. While palm oil production in the Brazilian Amazon has relatively lower environmental impacts than soy and beef, this paper shows how also …
In the aftermath of the COP26 summit in Glasgow in November, energy markets will become even further focused on substitutes for fossil fuels. There will be growing attention to solar and wind power, batteries, electric vehicles, as well as replacing and/or mixing fossil fuels with biofuels. The use of palm oil as biofuel feedstock in …
Just two weeks after a watershed announcement by more than 100 countries at COP26 on eliminating deforestation, the EU released a draft law on November 17 that would require companies to show that their products are not tied to forest clearing. Essentially, the legislation would ban commodities that are linked to deforestation, whether legal or …
