Oil Palm Expansion In South East Asia

"This book is a compilation of papers first presented at the workshop "The palm oil controversy in transnational perspective" that took place in Singapore, 2-4 March 2009. The workshop was jointly organized by the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit'at, Bonn and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. It was funded by Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF)"--Preface.

This study comprises a review of oil palm development and management across landscapes in the tropics. Seven countries have been selected for detailed analysis using surveys of the current literature, mainly spanning the last fifteen years. Indonesia and Malaysia are the obvious leaders in terms of area planted and levels of production and export, but also in literature generated on social and environmental challenges. In Latin America, Colombia is the dominant producer with oil palm expanding in disparate landscapes with a strong focus on palm oil-based biodiesel; and small-scale growers and companies in Peru and Brazil offer contrasting ways of inserting oil palm into the Amazon. Nigeria and Cameroon represent African nations with traditional groves and old plantations in which foreign ‘land grabs’ to establish new oil palm have recently occurred.

Oil palm basics. Oil palm and palm oil. Historical summary. Palm oil biology, products and productivity. Oil palm cultivation. Yield and its improvement. Palm oil production and global trends. Palm oil production. Biofuel development, demand and expansion. Palm oil prices. The boom continues. A driver of deforestation?. Greenhouse gas emissions.

Since the 1960s, Southeast Asia's agricultural sector has experienced phenomenal growth, with increases in production linked to an energy-intensive capitalization of agriculture and the rapid development of agrifood systems and agribusiness. Agricultural intensification and territorial expansion have been key to this process, with expansion of areas under cultivation playing an unusually important role in the transformation of the countryside and livelihoods of its inhabitants. Borneo, with vast tracts of land not yet under crops, has been the epicenter of this expansion process, with rubber and oil palm acting as the spearhead. Indonesia's Kalimantan provinces and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak have all undergone major changes but the time frames have varied, as have the crops involved. Agricultural expansion in Borneo is both an economic and a political process, and it has brought about profound socio-economic transformations, including deforestation, and development of communication networks. There has also been rapid population growth, much faster than in either Indonesia or Malaysia as a whole, with attendant pressures on employment, housing and social services. Until the end of the 20th century, agricultural expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia was largely state driven, with the goal of poverty reduction. Subsequently, as in Borneo, boom crop expansion has been taken over by private corporations that are driven by profit maximization rather than poverty reduction.

Oil palm plantations and smallholdings are expanding massively in Indonesia. Proponents highlight the potential for job creation and poverty alleviation, but scholars are more cautious, noting that social impacts of oil palm are not well understood. This report draws upon primary research in West Kalimantan to explore the gendered dynamics of oil palm among smallholders and plantation workers. It concludes that the social and economic benefits of oil palm are real, but restricted to particular social groups. Among smallholders in the research area, couples who were able to sustain diverse farming systems and add oil palm to their repertoire benefited more than transmigrants, who had to survive on limited incomes from a 2-ha plot.

Despite the efforts of Southeast Asian governments and of ASEAN, transboundary haze continues to be a major environmental problem in Southeast Asia. This book demonstrates that the issue is complex, and explains why efforts to solve the problem in purely political terms are ineffective, and likely to continue to be ineffective. The book shows how state-led, state-incentivised agribusiness development lies at the heart of the problem, leading to a large rise in palm oil production, with extensive clearing of forests, leading to deliberate or accidental fires and the resulting haze. Moreover, although the forest clearing is occurring in Indonesia, many of the companies involved are Malaysian and Singaporean; and, further, many of these companies have close relationships with the politicians and officials responsible for addressing the problem and who thereby have a conflict of interest. The author concludes by discussing the huge difficulties involved in overturning this system of 'patronage politics'.