Summary
There is abundant literature focusing on the palm oil sector, which has grown into a vigorous sector with production originating mainly from Malaysia and Indonesia, and on increasing consumption in many countries around the globe, particularly those in the European Union, China and India. This sector expansion has become quite controversial, because while it has negative social and environmental impacts, it also leads to positive benefits in generating fiscal earnings for producing
countries and regular income streams for a large number of large- and small-scale growers involved in palm oil production. The global palm oil value chain has grown in complexity over time. A large number of consumer goods companies use palm oil and derivatives, yet the processing and refining is concentrated in a handful of corporate groups and traders, which in turn source their supply from their own concessions, a large number of third-party suppliers, and tied and independent smallholders connected through extended intermediation networks. While the expansion of the sector was facilitated by public and private sector policies and institutional structures that encouraged investment in Malaysia and Indonesia, in both upstream production and downstream processing, the current sector transformation driven by sustainability concerns is influenced by pressures from consumer companies and NGOs.
This document undertakes the challenge of reviewing the current global trends of the sector development while assessing its implications from multiple angles, including an examination of the main trends of oil palm expansion linked to an analysis of drivers and the decisive influence on the sector of political and institutional factors. This work also revisits the geographies of production, consumption and trade of palm oil and derivatives, and describes the structure of the global palm oil value chain, with special emphasis on Malaysia and Indonesia. In addition, this work reviews the main socio-environmental impacts and trade-offs associated with the palm oil sector’s expansion, with a primary focus on Indonesia. Main interest is on the social impacts in local populations, smallholders
and workers, as well as the environmental impacts on deforestation and their associated effects on carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. Finally, the growing complexity of the global oil palm value chain has also driven a more complex oil palm policy regime change to govern the sector expansion. This work also assesses the main features of this emerging policy regime, with emphasis on Indonesia.