Researchers from the United States' prestigious Yale University have warned that expanding global production of palm oil, a common ingredient in processed foods, soaps and personal care products, is driving rainforest destruction and leading to massive carbon dioxide emissions.

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Their warnings come following completion of a study which looked at the development of oil palm plantations in Indonesian Borneo; the study revealed deforestation driven by plantation expansion is leading to a globally significant source of carbon dioxide emissions from palm production.

Plantation expansion is projected to pump more than 558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2020, an amount greater than all of Canada’s current fossil fuel emissions, the researchers said.

Indonesia is the leading producer of palm oil and palm kernel oil, which together account for more than 30 percent of the world's vegetable oil use and can also be used for biodiesel. Most of Indonesia’s oil palm plantation expansion is occurring on the island of Borneo. Plantation leases cover 32 percent of the island's land area outside of protected zones, meaning a large amount of land is slated for development over the next decade.

In 2010 alone, land-clearing for oil palm plantations on Borneo emitted more than 140 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. The island is also home to the world's third-largest tropical forest. Indonesia is also one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gasses, due to rapid loss of carbon-rich forests and peatlands.

Since 1990, development of oil palm plantations has cleared about 16,000 square kilometers of forest, accounting for 60 per cent of the total deforestation on the island in that time.

Project leader Lisa Curran said of the situation, "Despite contentious debate over the types and uses of lands slated for oil palm plantations, the sector has grown rapidly over the past 20 years." Her study used field measurements and analysis of satellite imaging to examine the lands targeted for plantations and document their carbon emissions when converted to oil palm.

Professor Curran said her study has generated the first comprehensive maps of oil palm plantation expansion from 1990 to 2010. She also documented carbon emissions and sequestration from oil palm agriculture. Kimberly Carlson, a co-author on the study said, "With [our] information, we were able to develop robust carbon bookkeeping accounts to quantify carbon emissions from oil palm development."

Using information gathered on leases to palm oil companies and their mapping work, the Yale team estimated future land-clearing and carbon emissions from plantations on the island. The analysis showed that, as 80 percent of leases remained unplanted in 2010, if all of the granted leases were developed, more than a third of Kalimantan, the Indonesian-governed portion of Borneo, lowlands would be planted with oil palm by 2020.

The study's authors have published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change and warned that attempts to expand palm oil production on the scale envisaged would be disastrous for the environment.

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