How does Indonesia’s palm oil industry fuel the climate crisis?

Indonesia accounts for more than half of the global palm oil supply, the world’s most widely used vegetable oil that is found in everything from food to cosmetics to fuel. But environmentalists fear surging demand for the versatile product may drive mass deforestation in Indonesia, home to the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, and exacerbate the global climate crisis. Palm oil production reached 50 million tonnes in 2023 from 45 million tonnes the year before, according to the Indonesian Palm Oil Association. As companies and small landholders replace natural habitats with palm oil plantations, activists and researchers are warning that large amounts of planet-heating carbon is being released into the atmosphere. Palm oil plantations cover more than 42.7 million acres of Indonesia, compared with 41.5 million acres in 2019, the government’s Geospatial Information Agency said this month. Indonesia lost 721,000 acres of primary, or old growth, forest in the last two decades ...