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Climate change and its impact on the palm oil industry

An oil palm with a bunch of fruits

Three countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand produce the majority of the world’s palm oil production. In addition, palm oil is one of the major edible oils traded in the global oils and fats market. Palm oil and its products have extensively been used in the food as well as the manufacturing industries. In terms of supply, the oil palm is known to be the most efficient producer of oil compared with other oil crops. A report by staff of Malaysian Palm Oil Board [1] notes that palm oil production is strongly influenced by weather patterns.

According to a report on potential impact of climate change on oil palm cultivation [2], funded by University of York, United Kingdom, global weather patterns and sea levels are changing because of increasing temperatures caused by human activities releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  

Carbon dioxide has been the main cause of global warming to date, mainly released into the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels and land use change such as deforestation, although other greenhouse gases such as methane are also significant contributors [3]. Greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures will continue to increase throughout the 21st century. This will cause higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heat waves, drought and sudden heavy rainfalls. Sea levels are also continually rising with temperature increase.

How will climate change affect where oil palm is grown?

Oil palm requires high temperature, rainfall and sunlight levels as shown in the table below.

Key components of climate which determine the suitability of location for growing oil palm

Component of climate Optimal range for oil palm Range of extreme values which oil palm tolerates
Temperature Mean annual temperature of 24-330C 15-380C. Cold-tolerant varieties may tolerate 120C  
Rainfall (mean annual rainfall) 2,000-2500 mm 1,250-6,000 mm  
Seasonality of rainfall Minimal: no months with less than 100 mm rainfall   Up to 6 months with less than 100 mm rainfall; tolerates temporary flooding  
Sunlight (solar radiation) 15-17 MJm-2per day 7-21 MJm-2per day  

Source: [2]

Oil palm yield is limited by the length of annual dry season, so areas with constantly high rainfall throughput the year have particularly high yields, such as in parts of Southeast Asia. Although much of the tropics is climatically suitable for oil palm, there is relatively low availability of land for planting globally, given other land uses and restrictions such as no planting on high carbon stock areas [4].

Where will oil palm grow in the future?

Climate change will directly affect where oil palm is grown, because the locations of areas suitable for growing oil palm will shift over the 21st century [5]. Temperatures will become too high, and drought risk will increase, so by 2100, there will likely be around three-quarters less land which is highly suitable for growing oil palm [6]. A particularly severe loss of suitable land is predicted for Thailand, Columbia, and Nigeria, which are all significant oil palm growing nations, and parts of Indonesia and Malaysia will also become less suitable.

Currently, areas at high elevation and latitude (far from the Equator) too cold for growing oil palm, but as temperatures become warmer, those may become newly suitable [5]. However, this will not be sufficient to compensate for the total loss of suitable areas for growing oil palm. Warner temperatures, and in some instances wetter climates, will improve the suitability of areas such as northern Argentina, parts of southern Brazil, South Africa, Madagascar, and highland areas of Malaysia and Indonesia throughout the 21st century [6].

How will climate change affect oil palm yield?

Climate change will have multiple effects on oil palm yield, depending on the specific climatic conditions at a location, and changes to pests and diseases of oil as shown below.

How factors which determine oil palm yield will change over the 21st century, how this will effect oil palm yield

Factors which affect oil palm yield Expected changes over the 21st century Impacts on palm oil yield
Rainfall: total per year Depends on location. May increase or decrease   Gain in yield likely if total rainfall increases provided this does not cause prolonged flooding. Loss of yield likely if total rainfall decreases.    
Rainfall: seasonality Rainfall will become less regular: dry periods will become more intense and flooding will occur more regularly.   Severe loss of yield.
Temperature Increase Loss of yield likely (mainly because soils become drier.  
Carbon dioxide Increase Gain in yield  
Sea levels Increase Severe loss of yield in costal plantations  
Pests and diseases   Various changes Uncertain
Pollination Various changes Uncertain

     Source: [2]

However, we do not know how the combination of these effects will affect oil palm yield overall, and whether  the positive effects on oil palm yield will compensate for the negative effects.

Impacts on changes in rainfall

The most important factor determining oil palm yield is the availability of water in the soil, which largely depends on rainfall, but is also affected by the temperature and other factors such as soil type. When there is less rainfall, there is also greater risk of fire, as seen during the recent El Nino events in Indonesia, which is a hazard for workers, in terms of air quality, and causes loss of yield [7].

Although there is low confidence in predictions of future rainfall in specific locations, there is more confidence in changes at a large scale. The risks of drought and flooding will increase across the tropics throughput the 21st century given that the effects of ENSO (El Nino and La Nina events) will become more intense [8]. Please also see [1] for explanation of the ENSO.

Drought frequency and intensity will increase in parts of West Africa over the coming decades and will become more likely in parts of Southeast Asia, where annual dry periods are predicted to become more intense [9]. Low-lying areas are also at risk of yield loss due to flooding [10].

Impacts of increasing temperature

As temperatures become warmer, soil water evaporated more quickly, so the impacts of dry periods become intense. The impacts of higher temperatures alone are likely to be less severe, but projections for Southeast Asia in 2100 suggest that temperatures will become too high for oil palm [5]. A small rise in temperature may improve oil palm yield, as seen on the west coast of Sabah, Malaysia [10].

Impacts of increasing carbon dioxide levels

Yields could improve by up to 75 per cent in 2100 due to higher carbon dioxide levels although this depends on the increase in temperature [5]. It is unsure whether increasing carbon dioxide levels will offset losses in oil palm yield lead caused by climate change, because the combined effects of these are not understood [11].

Impacts of rising sea levels

In Malaysia, up to 100,000 hectares of coastal plantations could be flooded in the future [12]. Coastal plantations can be managed to reduce flood risk, but the costs of this will increase in tandem with the rise in sea levels.

Impacts of changes in pests and diseases

Differing environmental conditions may be less suitable for pests and diseases of oil palm, which would allow yield to improve. However, there is particular uncertainty regarding pests and diseases in possible new locations for oil palm. When conditions are sub-optimal for oil palm such as when temperatures are high or there is limited water availability, palms may be less able to resist pests and diseases, causing yield loss.

Impacts of changes in pollination

Oil palm in Southeast Asia is primarily pollinated by a single species of weevil, Elaeidobius kamerunicus. The pollination activity this species changes with climate, so it is possible that the rate of pollination of oil palm in Southeast Asia will decrease under climate change [13]. Additionally, climate change could put Elaeidobius kamerunicus and other pollinators at greater risks of disease (in a similar way, that oil palm may have greater risk of disease). Just a small number of individual      Elaeidobius kamerunicus were introduced   to Southeast Asia from West Africa, so all individuals in Southeast Asia are genetically similar [13].  There is a risk that a disease which infects Elaeidobius kamerunicus in Southeast Asia could quickly and severely reduce the population, causing a sudden drop in yield. Please also see our book, The palm oil multinationals from Malaysia, available on Amazon.com.

Where should oil palm be planted?

The changes to locations where oil palm can be grown, and the potential yield losses in current plantations will enable oil palm to expand into new areas over the 21st century. This will increase the risk of deforestation of suitable areas for planting. In particular, areas at high elevation will become suitable for growing oil palm, but in many tropical regions, the majority of large areas of forests are  also at high elevation [14]. These large areas of forest at high elevation are particularly important  for tropical biodiversity under climate change, because they are cooler than lowlands, so species can shift to these locations to avoid high temperatures [15].

For new oil palm plantations to be viable in the long-term, they should be located where there is low risk of negative impacts from climate change, and ideally where conditions for may improve. There is currently limited knowledge of where such areas coincide with low forest cover, to enable planting without deforestation. The report  suggests that the most suitable areas are likely in South America and South Africa, such as southern Brazil, and South Africa, because in Southeast Asia, highland areas will become suitable, but these areas are generally forested [6]. An analysis [16] shown below demonstrates the averages of four data sets illustrating trends in the change of suitable climate more clearly.

  Areas (km2)
Scenario Unsuitable Marginal Suitable Highly suitable
Current 3.32 x 105 6.12 x 103 7.91 x 103 1.79 x 106
2030 2.27 x 105 1.01 x 104 3.41 x 104 1.87 x 106
2070 1.39 x 105 5.67 x 104 2.71 x 105 1.67 x 106
2100 1.29 x 105 4.76 x 105  5.33 x 105 1.00 x 106

 Source; [16]

Conclusion

Climate variability does significantly influence the palm oil production patterns in Malaysia and Indonesia, the two leading palm oil producing countries in the world. Climate change may expand the areas suitable for oil palm growing such as in South America and South Africa.

References

[1]  Nur Nadia Kamil and Syuhadatu Fatimah Omar. Climate variability and its impact on the palm oil industry.

[2] Susannah Fleiss, Lead Author (2017). Potential impacts of climate change on oil palm cultivation; A science-for- policy paper by the SENsoSor programme.

[3] IPCC ,2013. Summary for Policy Makers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

[4] Pirker, J., Mosnier, A., Kraxner, F., Havlik, P. and Obersteiner, M. (2016). What are the limits to oil palm expansion? Global Environmental Change, 40, 73-81.

[5] Corley, R.H.V. and Tinker, P.B.H. (2015). The oil palm.5th edition. Wiley-Blackwell.

[6] Paterson, R., Kumar, L., Shabini, F. and Lima, N. (2017). World climate suitability projection to 2050 and 2100 for growing oil palm. The Journal of Agriculture Science, 155(5), 689-702.

[7] Noojipady, P., Morton, D.C., Schroeder, W., Carlson, K.M, Hunag, C., Gibbs, H.K, Burns, D., Walker, N.F., and Prince, S.D. (2017). Managing fire risk during drought: the influence of certification and El nino on fire-driven forest conversion for oil palm in Southeast Asia. Earth System Dynamics, 8 (3), 749.

[8] Christensen, J. H., K. Krishna Kumar, E. Aldrian, S.-I. An, I.F.A. Cavalcanti, M. de Castro, W. Dong, P. Goswami, A. Hall, J.K. Kayanga, A. Kitoh, J. Kossin, N.-C. Lau, J. Renwick, D. B. Spephenson, S.-P. Xie and T. Zhou (2013). Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change. In; Climate Change 2013: The Physicak Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

[9] Chotamonsak, C., Salathe, E.P., Kreasuwan, J., Chantara, S. and Siriwitayakorn, K. (2011). Projected climate change over Southeast Asia simulated using a WRF regional climate model Atmospheric Science Letters, 12(2), 213-219.

[10] Wen, P.P. and Sidik, M. J. (2011). Impacts of rainfall, temperature and recent El Ninos on fisheries and agricultural products in the West Coast of Sbah (2000-2010). Borneo Science, 28.

[11] Long, S.P., Ainsworth, E.A., Leakey, A.D., Nosberger, J. and Ort, D.R. (2006). Food for thought: lower-than-expected crop yield stimulation with rising CO2 concentration. Science,312 (5782), 1918-1921.

[12] Siwar, C., Ahmed, F. and Begum, R.A. (2013). Climate change, agriculture and food security issues: Malaysian perspective. Journal: Food, Agriculture and Environment, 11(2), 1118-1123.

[13] Jackson, L., van Nordwijk, M., Bengtsson, J., Foster, W., Lipper, L., Pulleman, M., Said, M, Sanddon, J., and Vodohe, R. (2010) Biodiversity and agricultural sustainability; from assessment to adaptive management. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2(10, 80-87.

[14] Proctor, S., McClean, C.J., and Hill, J.K. (2011). Protected areas of Borneo fail to protect forest landscape  with high habitat connectivity. Biodiversity ande conservation, 20(12), 2693.

[15] Scriven, S.A., Hodgson, J.A., McClean, C.J., Hill, J.K. (2015). Protected areas in Borneo may fail to conserve tropical forest biodiversity under climate change. Biological conservation, 184, 414-423.

[16] Paterson, R. R.M. and Lima, N. (2017). Climate change affecting oil palm agronomy, and oil palm  cultivation increasing climate change, require amelioration. Ecology and Evolution, 2017, 1-10.

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David Sinclair, the anti-ageing scientist who thinks we could all live to 150

Professor David Sinclair, who could help us live till 150 years

My mother in-law is 85 years old and watches her diet carefully. She sees her physician at a Malaysian government clinic regularly. My wife takes care of her well-being like any daughter would do. She is the oldest among her siblings, who grew during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War. She also saw how the British rubber planters lived in her small town of Rantau, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. In the 1960’s she saw at every evening British rubber planters and their wives congregated at a club house in the centre of the town till the early hours. We hope she can live till 100 years.     

We read an interesting article by Damian Whitworth in the Times London on September 30th on advances made in the area of ageing. He reported research works done by geneticist David Sinclair, who is a longevity expert who believes we will soon be able to boost our genes to defy the ageing process

He interviewed David Sinclair who is a professor at the Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, USA.  He is a 50-year old and believes that the pioneering work he and other human biologists are doing could help him to live for another 80 years. He is an author of a book, Lifespan: Why We Age-and Why We Don’t Have.

The following is an extract of the interview.

David Sinclair, an expert on ageing, has some extremely eye-catching things to say about  how long we might live and what that means for the future of our species. He would like to see the 22nd century. “That would mean making it to my 132nd year. To me, that is a remote chance, but not beyond the laws of biology or way off our current trajectory,” he writes in Lifespan, his new book about how medical science is changing our futures.

Jeanne Calment, who is believed to have lived longer than any other recorded person, died in France at the age of 122 in 1997. By the turn of the next century a 122-year-old will be thought of as having led a full life, but not a particularly long one, Sinclair says. Hitting 150 may not be out of reach. And then? “There is no biological law that says we must age.” We are, he says, about to “redefine what it means to be human, for this is not just the start of a revolution; it is the start of an evolution”.

Sinclair runs a laboratory  at Harvard Medical School, where he is a professor in the department of genetics and a co-director of the Center for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging. He runs a sister laboratory at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where he grew up. He made his name in the mid-2000s when he demonstrated that the natural chemical resveratrol mimicked calorie-restriction in yeast and made the cells live longer. In 2013 he made headlines with his work to stimulate longevity genes in mice so that the effects of ageing were reversed and old mice found new vitality.

I had been expecting, after reading his book with its bold claims, to encounter a grand figure, but Sinclair is relaxed and understated in conversation. Clearly, though, he is not shy of making the sorts of assertions of which many scientists are usually wary.

“Well, the world, in my view, is sleeping on the job,” he says. “I’ve just spent the last two years seeing results in my laboratory and in my colleagues’ laboratories that I thought I’d never see; finding that there’s a back-up hard drive of youthfulness. In 50 years’ time it’s really impossible to imagine the kinds of advances that’ll be possible.”

Sinclair works on sirtuins, which have been dubbed “longevity genes”. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, made by almost every cell in the body. They control health, fitness and survival, and require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). The diminishment of NAD as we age is understood to be a primary reason why our bodies develop diseases when we are older. Longevity genes can be activated by exercise, intermittent fasting, low-protein diets and exposure to cold temperatures, Sinclair says. “But over time, diet and exercise are not sufficient. We need more than that.”

That’s where science comes in. NAD increases the activity of all seven sirtuins. Sinclair’s research has found that old mice that were fed nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), an NAD-boosting molecule, suddenly started running ultra-marathons.

NAD boosters extend the lives of mice. There are indications that NAD boosters may restore the fertility of old mice, and positive signs from another trial in mares. The implications are enormous if women can look forward to extending their fertility window. Sinclair is careful to say that what happens in mice might not necessarily happen in humans, but “if that works in women the way it’s working in mice and in horses, then women can start to think differently about their lives”.

Sinclair predicts that another key path to prolonging youth will be cellular reprogramming, in which ageing cells are reset — like DVDs that have had their scratches removed and lost information restored. Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 2012 for discovering that a set of genes could turn adult cells into pluripotent stem cells, which can become any other cell type. Sinclair’s team is working on developing this “switch” to reset cells in the petri dish and then, he hopes, in the body. He envisages a day when we could be administered a specially engineered virus carrying reprogramming genes that are switched on by an antibiotic. A person in their forties would feel 35 again. Then 30 and 25.

“Theoretically you could reset tissue or the entire body every ten years,” he says. “We don’t know how many times we can reset, but that’s one of the exciting areas of the field.” The very significant downside could be that the process causes cancers. “But I’ve been pleasantly surprised that we reprogrammed mice with a virus last year and those mice are still fine — no evidence of any downsides.”

A third part of the approach that Sinclair outlines in his “information theory of ageing” is attacking senescent, or “zombie”, cells. These are cells that have stopped dividing, but aren’t dead. They can cause inflammation, and while restoring them would be a tall order, a class of drugs — senolytics — are being developed to kill them, which should aid rejuvenation, according to Sinclair.

He is not a medical doctor, so he won’t give advice, but he does share details of how his knowledge of the frontline research on ageing shapes his daily life. His aim is to walk a lot of steps each day, take the stairs, and lift weights and run at the weekend at the gym, where he also takes a sauna and dunks in an icy pool. He tries to stay cool during the day and when sleeping.

His diet is plant-heavy, but he’ll eat meat after he has done a workout. He tries to miss one meal a day or have one very small one. His sugar, bread and pasta intake is low, and he gave up desserts a decade ago. Every few months he has his blood analysed for biomarkers and makes adjustments to his diet and exercise if anything shows up. He doesn’t smoke and avoids microwaved plastic, excessive exposure to UV, x-rays and CAT scans.

As well as daily doses of vitamin D, vitamin K and aspirin, he takes a “triple combo” of anti-ageing supplements. NMN is made by our cells and found in avocados, broccoli and cabbage. It increases the levels of NAD in the body, but you’d need to eat an awful lot of avocado toast to achieve the same effect as the gram that Sinclair takes at breakfast.

Metformin, a derivative of French lilac, is used as a diabetes medication, but shows signs of prolonging vitality. In studies it has been seen to increase the lifespan of mice, and among human users it apparently reduced the likelihood of dementia, cardiovascular disease, cancer, frailty and depression.

Sinclair takes a gram of that too, along with a gram of resveratrol in his homemade yoghurt. Resveratrol, which is found in red wine, protects against many diseases and extended the lifespan of yeast cells and fruit flies. Is this good news for boozers? Not really. The dose Sinclair takes “would be the equivalent of about 500 glasses of wine for breakfast”. He drinks the occasional glass of red wine.

Sinclair was a co-founder of a company that was set up to test resveratrol, which he promoted as “close to miraculous”. The company was sold to GlaxoSmithKline, which allegedly ended the research because the results were underwhelming. Sinclair, who made a reported $8 million from the sale, says that he would love to “reinvigorate” the programme.

His sprightly 80-year-old father is on the same regimen as Sinclair, who has even put the three family dogs on NMN. He shows me the ring he wears that monitors his heart rate, body temperature and movements. This is just the beginning of the way in which we will monitor ourselves as companies read our genomes and monitor our glucose, the oxygen levels in our blood, vitamin balance and hormones, and diagnose neurodegenerative diseases from subtle changes in our movement long before symptoms are noticeable.

Is there not a danger that all this data will result in losing some of the fun of life?

“You can combine fun and fact,” Sinclair says. “It’s not for everybody. A third of the population, at a rough guess, is really interested in their long-term health and would love to have some additional incentives.”

He has done some “conservative” maths about what scientific developments will achieve over the next 50 years. DNA monitoring will soon be alerting us to diseases long before they become serious, allowing us to start treating cancer and other conditions earlier — that could give us an extra ten years of life.

Eating fewer calories and fewer animals, doing more exercise and getting cold enough to boost the development of “healthy” brown fat, which research suggests correlates with longevity in rodents, could add another five years. Molecular treatment to turbo-charge our longevity genes could add another eight.

Then we could reset our epigenome — the control systems and cellular structures that govern which genes should be turned on and off — with molecules or genetic modification, destroy senescent cells with drugs or vaccinations and replace worn-out organs with those from genetically altered farm animals or 3D printers. All this might add another decade.

That’s 33 years added to the roughly 81-year life expectancy of a person in the UK. And we won’t be decrepit old people; we will be full of vitality.

Yet will a life expectancy of 114 be just for the rich? Sinclair warns that we stand on the brink of a world in which the wealthy could ensure that their children, or even their pets, live far longer than the children of those living in poverty.

“Some of these medicines might be very expensive initially, though they’ll come down in price.”

And don’t those rejuvenated people eventually become incapacitated? “They will,” he says, but the research suggests they’ll die quicker. The expensive people are the ones who are sick for a long time.

Sinclair is unusually energetic, and you can imagine him carrying that into deep old age. But what if millions and millions of the rest of us are quite happy to be ancient and fit, but just want to sit around? “We can’t retire at 65 and live another 65 years,” he says. “It’s just not tenable. It’s not fair to the younger people. There will have to be adjustments.”

We’d have to address our levels of consumption to make living on our planet sustainable and to avoid the environmental crisis becoming further exacerbated by a growing, ageing population. Our social security systems can’t support half a life of retirement. “We are flying blind into one of the most economically destabilising events in the history of the world,” Sinclair says. He doesn’t have all the solutions.

Critics suggest that there is a temptation for those in the highly lucrative field of longevity research to over-hype what is possible, although Sinclair tells me that “income to my family from my inventions is put back into medical research and innovation”.

Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School, this year criticised the publicity on longevity studies. “If you say you’re a terrific scientist and you have a treatment for ageing, it gets a lot of attention,” he said on the website Kaiser Health News. “There is financial incentive and inducement to overpromise before all the research is in.”

What Sinclair says he wants more than anything is for everyone to expect to meet their great-great-grandchildren. By knowing future generations, he argues, we will feel more accountable for our actions today. “It will compel us to confront the challenges that we currently push down the road,” he says. “To invest in research that won’t just benefit us now, but people 100 years from now. To worry about the planet’s ecosystems and climate 200 years from now.”

Note: 

Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To by David Sinclair is published by Harper Thorsons.