Jose Suter

Palm oil assessment

Year 11

Tropical rainforest is an ecosystem type which often takes place between the Tropic of Cancer and tropic of Capricorn. Many countries have tropical forests, the countries with the largest areas of tropical forest are Brazil, Congo, Peru, Indonesia and Colombia. Rainforests experience high temperatures and large amount of rainfall, which makes it warm and wet. Tropical rainforests cover less than 6% of Earth, but still half of all the worlds fauna and flora live there, it can give habitat for between 50 and 90 percent of plants and animals species. Rainforests are found in 85 countries around the world, most occur in South America, Africa, and in Southeast Asia. They are located where the equator is due to the high temperatures above 80 degrees, temperatures at the equator are high which causes evaporation of water, and give frequent rain in forested areas. In this type of forests you can find massive amount of tall trees in warm weathers, rainfall is most of the time above 100 inches per year and they produce forty percent of Earths oxygen. A tropical Rainforest has three types of layers, one of these is the forest floor which has poor soil and mainly insects and large mammals live there such as the jaguar. Then theres the understory layer which has smaller animals such as the lemur. And finally the canopy layer where large trees that can grow over 200 feet high can be found and as well many animals used to the environment such as the monkeys, snakes and other animals. Over one quarter of natural medicines was discovered in this type of forest. Rainforest temperature hardly gets higher than 34C or goes below 20C, it has more different types of trees than any other place in the whole world, and seventy percent of rainforests plants are trees. The amazon is an example which is the worlds largest tropical rainforest and it has the worlds second longest river near the equator.

In the last 50 years fifty percent of rainforest has been destroyed in a fast rate, more than an acre and a half is loss of every day, it is estimated that if the destruction continues half of the rainforest will be burn out by 2025 and approximately at 2060 there will be no more rainforest. Every second an area of two football fields is gone from the rainforest, every minute 29 times the size of the

Jose Suter

Palm oil assessment

Year 11

Pentagon is gone and in every year we more than twice of the size of Florida is gone. This all happens due to agriculture, ranching, mining and logging practices. It was normally 6 million square miles of tropical rainforest worldwide, now because of deforestation, only 2.6 million square miles remain. More than 56,000 square miles of natural forest are lost each year. Palm oil is one of the things most used in the whole world from the rainforests, is plant oil with high in saturated fats obtained from the fruit of the oil palm tree. Palm oil is extracted from the pulp of the fruit by crushing it is edible and used in food. Basically shampoo, ice cream, margarine, lipstick, it all contain palm oil. They are highly efficient oil producers. Each fruit containing about 50% oil, is used for food products, detergent, cosmetics, etc. This type of fruit grows usually in West Africa and South America, and they have been introduced in Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The two most popular countries palm oil production is Malaysia and Indonesia which produce 85 percent in the whole world. In vegetable production theres about 144 million per year and palm oil covers 47 million of it, which means palm oil makes 60% of world production. Palm trees can only be plant in tropical areas of Africa, South America and Asia, through these countries palm oil production has been very popular in production and is expanding really quickly.

Orangutans are the worlds largest climbing mammals and are being affected by addiction of getting of palm oil from the tropical forest which massively affects these endangered animals. These animals have very long arms that can extend up to 2m to reach high distances and for better climbing, they have a similar face to the human such as the ape, with reddish fur and short feet. They usually weigh about 50 kg to 90 kg it all depends in their type of sex. The fact that orangutans takes a long time to give birth and reach sexual maturity, has decreasing and slowing their reproductive rate, in fact they normally give birth just one of their specie. This is why they can be really affected by population declines, because they will take a huge long time to recover from it. Orangutans are sensible to any threat against the number of their population; habitat destruction by the human is one of their greatest threats. Due to palm oil logging, people tend to bring tracts so it can clear the spaces in order to plant even more palm oil, for more profit in business with this product. About 50% of orangutans are found in places where they cant be safe and threat to death, by palm oil, mining companies, hunting and illegal trades with animals. Not only where they place can affect them but due to their big bodies and slow movement, they are easy target for the human. These animals are usually killed by reaching human areas where they are desperate of food and harm crops, when they cant find food, they do everything to find some and their chances of dying are higher. When they are hunted by the human, they take their children in order to pet it and then trade it which is a popular business for the ones who need money. Its all about money and takes advantage of it. Palm oil demands increase for realistic reasons, the demand is global, if a country stopped using it they will simply lost their production, business and they may starve to death, but it will come back anyways and banning palm oil wont save the rainforest. It could be possible to replaced but still it would have the same results later and it will be hard to produce sufficient in order to make it possible. All we can say is palm oil cant be stopped, it just increases their demands, the world has lots of people to feed, pal m oil is a balance of this and it really helps the whole human population but it affects other species population. If they reduce demands people will suffer from hunger, poorness and illness. Palm oil is basically something important in the whole world for the human being in order to continue the cycle, this oil produce s more edible oil than any other type of oil producing plant, it has an important role in humans life which is feeding them and letting them live longer and keep the specie safe. The cultivation of vegetable oil crops has increased faster

Jose Suter

Palm oil assessment

Year 11

than any other type of food or any crop in the past years. Not only their production but the consumption of any other type of food, vegetable oil is one of the top which has increased massively throughout the last 30 years-. Countries such as China and India are really focused in the growth of this Economic which lets their people to afford this vegetable oil, and consume even more of it. Most of the people are used to consume this oil that they cant stop, is part of their lives; they want this type of oil in every food they can have, that is why demands are always being supported to increase it. In Africa, Latin America, Asian countries mainly Malaysia and Indonesia are creating more farms and expanding older ones to create more and more, so they can be faster at their production of palm oil. Indonesia is on the top of this global market that demands more of this vegetable oil for the cooking, cosmetics and biofuel. In Indonesia by producing a huge amount of palm oil, they emit more greenhouse gases than any other country, except for United States and China. In this year 2013, due to this obsession of speeding the business, these countries creates more farms for more production where they replaced it most of the time with tropical forests, where this crops grows efficiently. This whole process kills endangered animals, affecting other communities and releases harmful gases. Development of new plantations has being a drastic destruction; it has harmed deeply the rich biodiversity the world used to have in these ecosystems. Especially with the orangutan problem by losing their habitat, due to the fast amount of palm oil production. It is estimated that in 100 years ago, there were around 315,000 orangutans, but today it has been reduced to 50, 000 which are the only ones existing in the world, because theyre so few their chances of living is even lower in order to survive. Unless they keep safe these animals in safer environments they will be gone completely by humans palm oil production. And this is most because of the main countries which are the ones producing these oils more than anyone, Indonesia Malaysia might lose 98% of their rainforests in about 15 years if they dont quick and find a way to produce sustainable palm oil. Rainforest are the main reason of why animals and we keep living, they create rain which is an important fact of our cycle in life. The way this rain is created is water that evaporates from the forest that then goes back to the atmosphere, it then form clouds in the air. The clouds release all this water back as rain which evaporates in the atmosphere and so on. Plants which are in the rainforest keep the air cleaner and safer as well as the rain. Trees which has roots, branches and leaves store their carbon dioxide for then to be released, so destroying will make greenhouses effects even worse because were actually releasing all that carbon dioxide that will drastically harm the atmosphere. Many plants in these forests are the miracle to save lives, they are medicine to revive the ones that are injure and there has been some that has not yet been discovered, which might help more in danger lives. These beautiful lands are not really being well seeing, if everyone could understand how important they are, then we will be safe and not in danger as we are right now, thats why we all need to be aware of it, its home to half of all plants and animals on earth. These are all reasonable facts for everyone to look after these forests; they are one of the main things for our cycle of life to continue, to keep it safe and beautiful as much as we can, we have to be reasonable of what is actually going throughout this man business for getting more.

Sustainable is an important thing to recognize, it all means living your life in a responsible and reasonable way, a way where you can use resources that doesnt have any destructible environmental effect. This world could mean when youre trying to shower, you could use that water in sustainable way, which means not wasting it and using it properly in order to safe water

Jose Suter

Palm oil assessment

Year 11

for future. All that includes raw materials and being reasonable about it means using it in sustainable manner. Its a practice to help the planet and support its life in the best way we can for a better future. Being sustainable means its being supported, so if you can do it, it will help, you and everyone on earth. Ways that people might acquire palm oil in a sustainable way might be just simply not destroying the trees or if thats going to happen the plant one more. Planting is an easy way to recreate what we have lost, and its something if we have the chance to do it, so we dont take away habitats from all those beautiful animals that might be endangered. Climbing the tree might be another way, so you dont have to cut the whole tree in order to get the fruits. Installing instruments to reach the tree such as stairs or something that helps you reach the height of the tree. Using apparatus that looks the same as an arm to take the fruits from the tree, they might be lots of methods but any of them shouldnt be cutting the whole tree off, because then it wont be sustainable and it will harm the environment, the animals habitat and the amount of carbon dioxide emitted will be higher than never. If this continues throughout the years all we can get is nothing but disaster, every graph that shows how harmful forests and animals getting will be higher and will reach the top of the graph. We have to low that and make it balanced, all we can do is giving or having methods to help, to think about everything that might killed what we love, which is our home. The idea is to get your head around everything you see, you buy, you eat, etc. We have to know at least what are we using or where does it comes from, all we can do is have an idea of whats going on so we dont live in blind way where we can destroy our own world without noticing. Everything will fall down if continue to let all this madness happening, there has to be a balanced in all we do. Although many of us might not care, at least they should try or have knowledge of it because thats what matters the most. Its really about thinking about where your food, clothes, energy and other products come from and deciding whether you should buy and consume these things. Honestly I dont think we could repair past harms, but we could make a difference in the future, we could improve everything if really care about our home, because we might be just like the orangutans one day, we might not have a habitat and our specie will extinct. We have to be aware of what we are capable of doing.