THE urgency to decarbonise has never been greater. While crude palm oil prices are projected to trade at a healthy RM5,000 per tonne in the first half of 2022, palm oil’s climate impact – deforestation, draining of peat swamps, land clearance by burning, biodiversity loss – is less rosy.
In Malaysia and Indonesia, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oil palm-driven land conversion alone have reached a staggering 1.4% of the global aggregate, bringing it on par with global emissions from the aviation industry. Given this reality, integrating climate action across palm oil supply chains is a critical step towards achieving net-zero status by 2050.