Forest fires in Indonesia cause haze and green house gas emissions. Slash-and-burn practices used by palm oil producers are the source of these fires. Palm oil that comes from these plantations is used to make biodiesel to reduce green house gas emissions… Wait… What??
“Slash”
Palm Plantation
Jakarta Post
The process of creating 1 gallon of biodiesel from palm oil that was grown on previously forested land and cleared via slash and burn releases 1,272.6 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Burning 1 gallon of gasoline produces about 19.6 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Deforestation and forest degradation account for up to 12% of global carbon emissions – more than the emissions from all the planes, trains, automobiles and ships in the world.
(Mario Bocucci, Head UN-REDD Program Secretariat, 2015)
Source: BBC News
A joint study between Harvard and Colombia estimated that fine particulate found in haze coming from fires in Sumatra & Kalimantan hastened the deaths of 100,000 people.
(Koplitz, S., et al 2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11094023)
Borneo is the 3rd largest island in the world and at the heart of the palm production industry. Borneo has the highest rate of deforestation in the world, losing about 350,000 hectares per year since 2001. The majority of forest that remains is due only to the fact that the elevation is too high to be considered viable farm land.
