The Changing Landscape: Palm Soars, Environmental Costs Rise

 

Global vegetable oil output doubled by AI.

Over the past twenty years, the demand for vegetable oils has soared to unprecedented levels. 

According to the Oil World Annual 2024, global vegetable oil production nearly doubled —from 130.8 million tonnes in 2003/04 to 259.8 million tonnes in 2023/24— with palm oil climbing from a 23.1 percent share to 31.5 percent of that output . 

Observers and experts predict that this trend will continue, with production expected to reach record highs. Key drivers include biofuel mandates, surging food consumption in emerging economies, and rising demand from the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.

This boom is championed by agribusiness giants and national governments as a triumph of agricultural efficiency and global trade. Palm oil’s high yield per hectare and versatility make it a favored ingredient from supermarket shelves to fuel tanks. Yet the same market forces that celebrate these numbers have masked the human and environmental costs borne by the communities whose ancestral forests have been carved into endless rows of oil palms.

Roots of Displacement: Kalimantan’s Forgotten Communities

In Indonesia’s Kalimantan —home to the iconic Bornean orangutan and the Indigenous Dayak peoples— the rush for palm oil has translated into hundreds of land‐use conflicts. A recent survey in Central Kalimantan province recorded some 300 disputes over the past two decades, with local communities claiming their customary (ulayat) lands were seized without proper consultation or compensation. Forest Peoples Programme, an NGO working with Indigenous groups, reports that formal land titles are rare among Dayak villages, leaving them vulnerable to concession grants issued by provincial and national authorities.

These conflicts often play out in courtrooms far from the jungle, where corporate lawyers wield power over communities whose understanding of “legal title” is woven into oral traditions and customary usage rather than government documents. The result is a systemic disenfranchisement: concessions approved in Jakarta or provincial capitals override local claims, fracturing not only land rights but the social cohesion of communities long stewarding these forests.

Personal Stories from the Frontlines

For the Dayak of Desa Ensaid Panjang in West Kalimantan, the first inkling of displacement came in the form of surveyors and government agents, not warnings or community meetings. 

“They arrived with cameras and maps, told us the forest was theirs now,” recalls a village elder whose name has been withheld for safety. Without formal titles, the community’s objections were dismissed as “unverified.” In the months that followed, towering trees —once the source of medicinal herbs, honey, and ceremony—fell to heavy machinery, replaced by neat seedlings destined to become palm oil.

In another case, widows in Central Kalimantan reported receiving compensation checks of just a few million rupiah—less than the value of a single palm oil crate for a year’s harvest. Meanwhile, companies cleared thousands of hectares, sold on international markets at a premium. These anecdotes, documented by local NGOs, reveal the stark imbalance between corporate gain and community loss, where monetary “compensation” fails to account for the cultural, spiritual, and ecological value of the land.

Environmental Toll: Beyond Trees

The deforestation driven by palm oil expansion is one chapter in Kalimantan’s larger story of ecological upheaval. A 2023 Greenpeace report found that large pulpwood concessions—often linked to the same corporate conglomerates behind palm oil—have cleared natural forests and peatlands, releasing vast stores of carbon and destroying critical orangutan habitat. In Central Kalimantan alone, NGOs documented a surge in illegal logging and peatland drainage, practices that exacerbate the region’s notorious haze crises and threaten biodiversity hotspots.

River systems, the lifeblood of many Dayak villages, have also suffered. Sedimentation from plantation runoff pollutes waterways, undermining fish stocks and contaminating drinking supplies. Rainfall patterns have shifted as canopy cover shrinks, leading to more frequent floods in the monsoon season and drought spells during the dry months, further destabilizing traditional agricultural practices and food security.

Paths to Justice: Advocacy and Reform

Despite these challenges, grassroots movements and civil society organizations are mobilizing for change. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) 2024 Impact Report acknowledges slow progress in enforcing deforestation‐free supply chains, but highlights pilot programs in East Kalimantan testing jurisdictional sustainability standards—efforts that include mapping customary lands and seeking Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) from Indigenous communities. Human Rights Watch and international NGOs advocate for stronger legal recognition of customary land rights in Indonesia’s forthcoming revisions to the Omnibus Law on Job Creation and agrarian reform statutes.

At the local level, alliances between Dayak councils, environmental activists, and sympathetic policymakers are pressing for participatory land‐use planning, transparent licensing, and benefit‐sharing mechanisms. Some villages have secured community forestry (hutan desa) status, granting them legal rights to manage forests sustainably and negotiate directly with companies—a model that offers a blueprint for balancing development and cultural preservation.

Reconciling Growth with Rights

The global appetite for palm oil shows little sign of slowing. As consumer markets in Asia, Europe, and North America continue to demand ever‐greater supplies, the pressure on Kalimantan’s forests and communities will intensify. Yet the question remains: can international markets, governments, and corporations reconcile economic growth with the rights of Indigenous peoples and the integrity of tropical ecosystems?

Stronger enforcement of FPIC, legal recognition of customary lands, and binding commitments from buyers for deforestation‐free palm oil are steps in the right direction. But true justice for the Dayak and other forest‐dependent peoples will require more than policy tweaks—it demands a fundamental revaluation of forests not as “resources” to be exploited, but as living communities whose health and heritage are inseparable from our own. Only then can the tonnage in global production charts be matched by genuine respect for the land and the people who call it home.

-- Rangkaya Bada