Palm Oil

That change has impacted negatively great apes more than almost any group of creatures. One has to look to wheat, rice and potatoes to find domesticated plants that can rival the growing global influence of oil palm and its resulting palm oil products.

Palm oil is the by-product of crushing and processing the fresh fruit nuts produced by the oil palm tree. Unfortunately, palm oil is responsible for large-scale forest conversion in the tropics and extensive carbon emissions, contributing to global warming.

Oil palm — (Elaeis guineensis) is a species of palm commonly called African oil palm or macaw-fat. It is the principal source of palm oil. It is native to west and southwest Africa, specifically the area between Angola and the Gambia; the species name guineensis refers to the name for the area, Guinea, and not the modern country which now bears that name. The species is also now naturalised in Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Sumatra, Central America, the West Indies and several islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The closely related American oil palm (Elaeis oleifera) and a more distantly related palm, Attalea maripa, are also used to produce palm oil.

Human use of oil palms may date as far back as 5,000 years in West Africa; in the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered palm oil in a tomb at Abydos dating back to 3,000 BCE. It is thought that Arab traders brought the oil palm to Egypt.

Why I work in Cameroon. Cameroon is a reflection of what faces great apes across Central and Western Africa, particularly as the promise of palm oil — ubiquitous in food, cosmetics, and cleaning products around the world — is felt across the region.

Palm oil originates from Africa and has long been a staple crop for many smallholders. Its profitability means it could play a critical role in alleviating poverty. But with the global appetite for palm oil ever-increasing, space running out in Asia for more plantations, and African markets hungry for international investment, the spectre of the ecological devastation wrought in Asia in pursuit of palm oil looms large for this “new frontier” of industrial oil palm production. Or as is commonly said, “Palm oil is coming home.”

“Current great ape distribution in Africa substantially overlaps with current oil palm concessions (by 58.7 percent) and areas suitable for oil palm production (by 42.3 percent),” reported a 2014 study led by Serge Wich, a professor in primate biology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. “More importantly, 39.9 percent of the distribution of great ape species on unprotected lands overlaps with suitable oil palm areas.”