Palm oil is a vegetable oil drawn from the high-yield fruit and kernel of fast-growing oil palms, primarily the African species, Elaeis guineensis. It is an ingredient in over half of all processed food. A highly versatile agricultural product, palm oil is also used in many non-food items, including soap, shampoo, deodorant, cosmetics, massage oil and machine lubricants. Palm oil also faces a growing worldwide demand as a biofuel.

Intense palm oil cultivation began in the early 20th century in Indonesia and Malaysia, which have cut down over six million hectares of their tropical rain forests for palm plantations. Today, Indonesia and Malaysia provide over 80% of the world’s annual palm oil supply, employing four million people directly or indirectly.

When local farmers pursue local needs, palm farming can be environmentally and socially sustainable interspersing palm oil with traditional subsistence crops and jungle. However, millions of hectares of tropical rainforests been converted to large-scale palm oil monocultures in Indonesia, destroying vast biomes of biodiversity under pressure from distant, profit-seeking political authorities or national and international agriculture and food companies.

Now, Guatemala produces the highest yield of palm oil per hectare than any country in the world. When palm oil was first introduced there, people hoped to avoid the negative environmental, social, and economic effects of the monocultures that were historically problematic for Malaysia and Indonesia. Since the 1980s, the government has overseen most of the country’s plantation-style palm oil cultivation through joint agreements with national and international agriculture and food companies. The government’s proposed economic, social and environmental goals were: (1) to increase the country’s GNP, (2) improve the lives of rural Guatemalans and (3) protect the land for future generations. After reaching the first goal with a 3% annual GNP growth rate since 2012. However, the second and third goals remain elusive.

The government’s promise of improved rural education and health did not materialize, and large-scale palm oil plantations include resulted in irreversible damage to the region’s environmental biodiversity, water supply, and food resources. Corporate and government “land grabs” pushed indigenous people off their ancestral territories.

Guatemala’s most tragic palm oil disaster took place on 28 April 2015, when heavy rains overflowed Reforestadora de Palma del Petén SA (REPSA) palm oil refinery’s oxidation ponds. That sent toxic material into the Pasión River in northern Guatemala’s Petén. Within two days, over 100 miles of the river were covered with thousands of dead fish and other aquatic life. In addition to losing their food source, over 12,000 people along the river also lost their source of water.

Government officials and business people loyal to REPSA sought to block legal action. Nevertheless, a courageous judge ruled that the spill was an “ecocide” and ordered REPSA to temporarily cease operations while government authorities conducted an investigation.

Not long after this landmark decision, Rigoberto Lima Cioc, the first indigenous person to document the social and ecological damage of REPSA operations, was gunned down in broad daylight by unidentified assailants. Then three more community leaders were abducted and killed by people loyal to REPSA. In this violent context, the courageous judge was forced to back down and his ruling was overturned. Today, REPSA remains in business and the killers and assailants who murdered the Guatemalan community leaders remain at large.[i]

Beyond this case, palm oil monocultures have been found to be inherently unsustainable for ecological and biological reasons,[ii] in addition to the accompanying violations of human rights related to habitat.

[i] “Case Study: Guatemalan Palm Oil,” Healing Earth (undated), http://healingearth.ijep.net/chapters/food/food-case-study-guatemalan-palm-oil/.

[ii] Roberto Cazzolla Gatt, Jingjing Liang, Alena Velichevskaya and Mo Zhou, “Sustainable palm oil may not be so sustainable,” Science of The Total Environment, Vol. 652 (10 November 2020), pp. 48–51, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30359800/; Selvakumar Dhandapani and Stephanie Evers, “Oil palm ‘slash-and-burn’ practice increases post-fire greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient concentrations in burnt regions of an agricultural tropical peatland,” Science of The Total Environment, Vol. 742 (10 November 2020), 140648, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004896972034170X; Roberto Cazzolla Gatti and Alena Velichevskaya, “Certified “sustainable” palm oil took the place of endangered Bornean and Sumatran large mammals habitat and tropical forests in the last 30 years,” Science of The Total Environment, Vol. 742 (10 November 2020), 140712, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969720342340; World Rainforest Movement, “Communities resisting the impunity and impacts of oil palm growers in Ecuador: Cases from Esmeraldas,” WRM Bulletin No. 261 (16 June 2022), https://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin-articles/communities-resisting-the-impunity-and-impacts-of-oil-palm-growers-in-ecuador-cases-from-esmeraldas.

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