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A small opinion piece about to be published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (June 2009 issue) discusses a major concern we (Lian Pin Koh, Rhett Butler and I) have with Indonesia’s decision to allow peatlands less than 3 m deep to be converted to oil palm. Is nothing immune to the spread of this crop (see previous posts here and here on oil palm plantations)?
Why is this such a big deal? Well, we list five main reasons why it’s a bad idea for Indonesia, the world in general and biodiversity:
- Peatlands are amazing carbon sinks, so their destruction necessarily equates to a large release of carbon into the atmosphere (Page et al. 2002)
- Tropical peatlands take a hell of a long time to generate – 100s to 1000s of years (Chimner and Ewel 2005)
- Tropical peatlands harbour a massive biodiversity, but they are still poorly described and their ecosystems only superficially understood
- The burning of peatlands to provide the conditions necessary to plant oil palm will contribute to the massive ‘haze’ problem in South East Asia (Lohman et al. 2007)
- The decision goes against the principles of ‘reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation‘ (REDD), which means it will be more difficult to implement carbon trading schemes that intrinsically value intact forests
More detail can be found in the Write Back piece that will be published shortly in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. For more information on oil palm and its conservation implications, see the following:
- Koh, LP, DS Wilcove. 2008. Is oil palm agriculture really destroying tropical biodiversity? Conservation Letters 1: 60-64
- Fitzherbert, EB, MJ Struebig, A More, F Danielsen, CA Brühl, PF Donald, B Phalan. 2008. How will oil palm expansion affect biodiversity? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23: 538-545
- Koh, LP, DS Wilcove. 2009. Oil palm: disinformation enables deforestation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24: 67-68
- Butler, RA, LP Koh, J Ghazoul. 2009. REDD in the red: palm oil could undermine carbon payment schemes. Conservation Letters 2: 67-73
- Koh, LP, P Levang, J Ghazoul. 2009. Designer landscapes for sustainable biofuels. Trends in Ecology and Evolution DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2009.03.012
ConservationBytes.com 