Palm oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the forests they replace. But high-falutin’ ideas of paying farmers not to plant oil palms are doomed to failure for two reasons. First, as developing countries rush to point out, Europe and America destroyed their own forests to power their development, so who are they to ask developing countries to forego similar development? Secondly, palm oil is so profitable that very little else is likely to appeal to farmers. Lian Pin Koh and David Wilcove have a nifty idea in a recent Nature. Conservationists should invest in small palm oil plantations and use the profits to buy — and protect — rainforest.
Koh and Wilcove say that a typical mature oil-palm plantation in Malaysia makes an annual net profit of roughly $2,000 per hectare. Existing oil palm-cultivated land sells for about $12,500 per hectare, so the capital investment could be recovered in just 6 years. Thereafter, the profits from a 5,000-hectare oil palm plantation would be about $10 million, which could buy 1,800 hectares of forest each year. The forest would be set aside as private nature reserves. Furthermore, new and more sustainable palm plantations could then be established on degraded land, which is feasible, but currently not as cheap as chopping down forest.
Sounds to me like a plan.
The Nature paper is behind a paywall; more details at Biopact and Mongabay.