Palm oil is a highly controversial topic in the sustainability community. Why? Because palm oil is made from the fruit of oil palm trees — or Elaeis guineensis trees, which grow in rainforests. They’re bulldozed, burned down, or otherwise cleared for palm oil production, destroying natural habitats and releasing harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.…
World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch can now track deforestation shortly after it occurs despite being obscured by cloud cover. The functionality will greatly improve efforts to monitor tropical deforestation and degradation. Radar for Detecting Deforestation (RADD) alerts use radar data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites, which cover the tropics every 6 to…
Swiss voters will decide on a free trade agreement (FTA) with Indonesia on Sunday, with lower tariffs on palm oil imports the main issue in what the polls predict will be a tight referendum. The Alpine country signed the pact with Indonesia in 2018 together with the other European Free Trade Association (EFTA) members Iceland,…
