Abstract
While the myriad benefits of palm oil as a food, makeup, and cleaning product additive drive its demand, globally, the palm oil industry remains largely unsustainable and unregulated. The negative externalities of palm oil production are diverse and devastating to tropical ecosystem integrity and human livelihoods in palm oil nations. Given the current trend in increasing sustainability and transparency in global supply chains, we suggest that sustainability policy reforms are feasible and have the potential to promote 21st century U.S. and international sustainability standards. Polycentric governance may improve the attainment of sustainable global palm oil standards with a set of rules that interact across linear and nonlinear hierarchies and structures, thereby improving collaboration efforts, and increasing connectivity and learning across scales and cultures. Transformations towards sustainability in international palm oil governance has the potential to make valuable contributions to global sustainable development and improve the prosperity of poor rural communities in the tropics by providing a framework for achieving palm oil trade transparency and aligning the sustainability goals across a range of actors.
Highlights
Palm oil is embedded in myriad food products that fill pantries and cupboards around the world [1]
A stepAinstep the in right valries, normative appropriation, and provision problem outcomes the direction for improving multi-stakeholder accountability in the palm oil industry, examright direction for improving multi-stakeholder accountability in the palm oil for industry, ple, evidenced collectivebyforestry certification such as the Roundtable on for is example, is by evidenced collective forestry programs, certification programs, such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil’s (RSPO’s) third-party grower-forest certification program, which has led to the protection of over 19% of forest land used in the global production of palm oil [80]
Global food-trade routes over the last several centuries were primarily used for commercial food exchange, but they facilitated an evolving international discourse, helping shape and direct the immersion of cultural and community experience since the
Summary
Palm oil is embedded in myriad food products that fill pantries and cupboards around the world [1]. Due to its shelf-stable nature, palm oil is often a key ingredient in inexpensive snack foods. Palm oil does more than just settle a sugary craving for delightful confectionery—it drives global demand for makeup and cosmetics, cleans our clothes and our homes, provides biofuel to the world, and livable wages for poor rural communities across the tropics [3,4,5]. While the benefits of palm oil as fuel, food, makeup, and cleaning product additives drive its demand, globally, palm oil production remains unsustainable and unregulated [12,13,14]. Aggregating data from a range of primary sources, we provide a map for tracing the impacts of palm oil pantry products on tropical forest integrity. We offer a framework for transforming the palm oil industry through polycentric governance and global coordination
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