Earlier this year, I was chatting online with my aunt in Singapore while cooking my instant noodles. After briefly exchanging stories from our uneventful lives, she started complaining about the haze all over Singapore.
“The haze was really bad two weeks ago,” she said. “The highest record of PSI (Pollutant Standards Index) is 400, schools were suspended, the sale of masks skyrocketed.”
It’s considered hazardous for people’s health when PSI hits 300. Although the PSI has now dropped to less than 100 in Singapore, my aunt is worried the haze will come back again. Pondering the implications of the air pollution, I absentmindedly picked up the package of my instant noodles. I froze when I saw palm oil in the ingredient list.
Southeast Asia is hazing up partly because of me.
Palm oil is the most commonly used vegetable oil in the world. It’s made from the fruits of oil palm, which grows in Southeast Asia. About 85 percent of the world’s palm oil plantations are located in Indonesia and Malaysia.
As big palm oil companies in Indonesia routinely clear rainforests by setting fires without precautions, fires often get out of control and the resulting haze travels all the way to neighboring Singapore.
What’s unusual about this year’s forest fire in Indonesia is its unprecedented scale. The dry climate in an El Niño year has turned fires that may have otherwise been extinguished into an out-of-control calamity.
The fires have persisted for more than two months and at their peak have released more carbon dioxide daily than the entire U.S. economy, and produced more than what Germany annually releases in a mere three weeks.
This melts down the boundary between a regional and international issue. The forest fires in Indonesia are taking a large portion out of the world’s carbon budget before we reach the tipping point of catastrophic climate change.
What makes the matter worse is that in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, there are a lot of peatlands, which are basically wetlands that store a lot of carbon dioxide. In fact, according to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, if the carbon dioxide is released from all the peatlands in Southeast Asia, it will be equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide from nine years of global fossil fuel combustion.
Obviously, these wetlands are not usually very flammable. However, large palm oil companies often intentionally drain the water from them in order to plant more palm trees, which makes the peatland more susceptible to fires.
Moreover, the negative impacts of burning rainforests and peatlands in Indonesia don’t stop at a rapidly shrinking carbon budget. The fires are also huge setbacks for the conservation of endangered species and human rights.
The tropical rainforest in Indonesia is one of the ecosystems with the highest biodiversity on Earth. In this habitat dwell many iconic species such as orangutans, Sumatran tigers, and rhinos, all of which are endangered. The routine, large-scale burning is pushing them even closer to the brink of extinction.
Humans aren’t doing well either. As PSI reached a ghastly 1,990 in some parts of Indonesia, numerous people are affected by the dangerous level of air pollution. Since July, 500,000 incidents of serious respiratory tract infections have been reported.
The recurring fires have especially dire consequences on the indigenous tribes who rely heavily on the natural resources of the forests. Many indigenous people have had to flee their homes as forests were engulfed by fire. There’s no way these underprivileged people can fight the big corporations.
As far away as America is from Indonesia, we are all in this together. Palm oil could be in any of our daily products like soap, shampoo, and cereal. It’s everywhere, often in its numerous forms of derivatives, such as stearic acid and sodium kernelate.
As we all likely use palm oil, we all unintentionally contribute to this gigantic environmental, social, and economic disaster. The best thing about being responsible for a problem is also being responsible for the solution.
If we act, we have the power to stop the loss of more endangered species, human lives, and our tight carbon budget to fires carelessly set by companies who aren’t held accountable for their actions.
Since palm oil is so prevalent, a complete shift from it may not be practical. To stop using palm oil all together is not that environmentally friendly either, since palm oil produces high yield per ration of land used.
The best solution is to shift to the production of more sustainable palm oil. By cultivating palm trees on existing farmlands and implementing responsible management, the destruction of rainforests can be minimized. Buying Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified palm oil is just the first step toward less destructive palm oil production.
The good news is that some major companies have made big strides toward using more sustainable palm oil in response to customers’ concerns. However, there are also big companies like Starbucks and Burger King that have yet to make adequate transitions in the way they use palm oils.
Actions like boycotting these companies or demanding them to buy more sustainable palm oil sends a clear message to large companies that unethical business practices are unacceptable.
The fact that some large companies have switched to sustainable palm oil means pressure from consumers works, but the movement is not big enough. Each of our voices matters in adding momentum to this movement. The greatest movements in history are created when a bunch of individuals start to act for a common goal.
To make palm oil sustainable at a ground level, it’s all about personal choices you make when you go on your daily schedule to eat, bathe, and shop.
And they are personal choices you can make today.
Reach contributing writer Sylvia Lin at development@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @SylviaLin13
