Greening the world with palm oil?

Douglas Sheil, CIFOR's senior associate comments on current palm oil expansion as a series of trade offs."Implementing oil palm developments involves many tradeoffs," Sheil and CIFOR colleagues wrote in a report published in 2009. "Oil palm's considerable profitability offers wealth and development where wealth and development are needed—but also threatens traditional livelihoods. It offers a route out of poverty, while also making people vulnerable to exploitation, misinformation and market instabilities. It threatens rich biological diversity—while also offering the finance needed to protect forest. It offers a renewable source of fuel, but also threatens to increase global carbon emissions."