Palm oil as a case study of distal land connections

The production of palm oil is often associated with negative environmental and social impacts that are mainly related to land-use change (LUC), and more specifically to d eforestation of t ropical rainforest. However, most consumers of palm oil-based products are located far away from production, LUC, and its impacts so that they do not directly, nor immediately, feel these impacts. This chapter investigates the main trends and underlying factors that shape this connection and land use for the case of palm oil. It identifies possible entry points for minimizing undesired impacts of LUC related to palm oil production. Reducing the impacts of palm oil production generally focuses on the production areas and includes better land-use zoning as well as the use of degraded land for new plantations, increasing palm oil yields and applying production schemes that are more beneficial to local communities. However, to identify additional potential entry points for change, it is necessary to understand decisions that are not made at the local level o f production; that is, those made increasingly by actors in distant places and through interactions between different markets for land, palm oil, and palm oil uses. Therefore, a global perspective on land use and land-use governance is needed. In addition to better global land-use g overnance, it is important to make producers, traders, processors, and consumers take more responsibility for the impacts. This could be made possible by requiring these actors to comply with international normative standards, by requiring multinational companies to take responsibility for adverse social and environmental impacts, and by creating consequences for not meeting standards. Consumers may influence decisions on where and how palm oil is produced by demanding certified sustainable palm oil or products produced according to normative standards for multinational companies. In addition, a global cap on LUC-related emissions for all countries, which should account for the emissions in all product chains, could provide better governance of land-use change and minimize the displacement of land use and associated emissions. Consumers and consuming countries could be made more responsible for LUC-related emissions by allocating these emissions to consuming countries or by placing a c arbon tax on products with high LUC-induced greenhouse gas emissions.