OOS 23: Socioecological Impacts of Oil Palm Agriculture

Session Organizer(s)

• Michael Pashkevich

  Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge
  Cambridge, United Kingdom

Moderator(s)

• Valentine Reiss-Woolever

Volunteer(s)

• Shih-Huai Cheng

  Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

Oil palm is a widely farmed tropical crop that is grown to produce palm oil: the most traded vegetable oil worldwide. The expansion of oil palm agriculture has caused substantial declines in biodiversity and shifts in ecosystem functioning across the tropics. Additionally, as its growth affects the jobs and income of millions of people, oil palm agriculture has important socioeconomic effects within producing regions. Assessing the impacts of oil palm agriculture on tropical systems, and advocating for a more sustainable global palm oil industry both ecologically and socially, requires an interdisciplinary socioecological approach. In this session, we share case studies of large-scale collaborative research that is occurring between international academics and the palm oil industry, in order to provide an overview of the socioecological impacts of oil palm agriculture and to identify possible strategies to increase sustainability of the palm oil industry. The session includes projects based in all three major regions of palm oil production: Southeast Asia, West/Central Africa, and Central/South America. Collectively, we recommend the establishment of further collaborations between academia and the palm oil industry to develop a more sustainable global palm oil industry, with implications for increasing global food security, economic livelihoods, and conservation of tropical ecosystems.

Presentations:

• ON DEMAND

  Challenges of the oil palm sector in Cameroon and sustainable production options
  

  Presenting Author: Raymond Ndip Nkongho – Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, University of Buea
• ON DEMAND

  Ecological restoration with biodiversity enrichment in oil palm plantations
  

  Presenting Author: Delphine Clara Zemp – Faculty of Forest Sciences and Forest Ecology, University of Göttingen
• ON DEMAND

  Oil palm cultivation impacts on biodiversity in Colombia
  

  Presenting Author: Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela – University of California Santa Cruz
• ON DEMAND

  Smallholder perceptions of land restoration activities: Rewetting tropical peatland oil palm areas in Sumatra, Indonesia
  

  Presenting Author: Caroline Ward – Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, University of York
• ON DEMAND

  Testing the efficacy of riparian restoration strategies in oil palm
  

  Presenting Author: Michael Pashkevich – Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge