IUCN says banning palm oil would displace risks to other feedstocks

In France, banning palm oil would most likely increase the production of other oil crops to meet demand for oil, displacing rather than halting the significant global biodiversity losses caused by palm oil, warned an IUCN report published last week. The IUCN report, Palm Oil and Biodiversity, is an objective analysis of palm oil impacts on global biodiversity and possible solutions. Given other oil crops require up to nine times as much land to produce than palm oil, its replacement would significantly increase the total land area used for vegetable oil production to meet global demand. Avoiding further palm oil-related deforestation will deliver the biggest gains for biodiversity by far, the report found.