{"id":996,"date":"2026-09-17T15:05:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T13:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forumpalmoel.local\/herausforderungen\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T10:19:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T08:19:04","slug":"challenges","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/forumpalmoel.org\/en\/challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenges & opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Challenges & opportunities<\/h1>\n \n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Challenges<\/h2>\n \n
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As the world population grows, demand for palm oil is also rising steadily. While 3.62 million hectares of land were used for palm oil production worldwide in 1961, the figure was almost 20 million in 2021<\/a>, and today almost 30 million hectares (2026), with an upward trend. The associated land-use changes, and above all the resulting effects on the environment, are therefore much-discussed topics in politics, science and the public sphere. And there are indeed clear reasons to criticise palm oil production: whether rainforest clearance, CO2 emissions or human rights violations, the negative impacts of expanding palm oil plantations are almost as diverse as the positive properties of this booming agricultural commodity.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n <\/div>\n\n\n

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Rainforest destruction & slash-and-burn<\/h2>\n \n
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Because oil palms grow only in a tropical climate, rainforest is often cleared on a large scale for their cultivation, and greenhouse gas emissions are released through slash-and-burn. Indonesia and Malaysia in particular have recorded major losses of primary forest due to oil palm cultivation. Primary forest clearance rose in both countries for decades. For some years, however, the area of forest cleared each year has been declining. For Indonesia this means an average decline in primary forest loss<\/a> of 64 percent between 2017 and 2022, and 57 percent for Malaysia. These are notable advances, yet in 2022 more than 0.2 million hectares of primary forest were still cleared in Indonesia.<\/p>\n

Palm oil production thus contributes significantly to species extinction. Besides the endangered orangutan, many other species are affected by rainforest destruction. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London were able to show, using bats as an example, that plantation cultivation has catastrophic consequences through the constant fragmentation and destruction of tropical old-growth forests. In particular, the diversity of animal species, but also the genetic diversity of a species, is lost. These findings were already published in 2011 in \u201cScience Daily<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n <\/div>\n\n\n

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