The many paths towards sustainable palm oil in India

This is the second of a two-part series on palm oil in India. Read the first part here. Love it or hate it, palm oil is likely here to stay. It is the cheapest edible oil to produce, refine and purchase, and a key ingredient in thousands of products, ranging from lipstick to packaged bread. It’s also increasingly in demand. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, global palm oil production grew 20 percent between 2010 and 2014. This uptick in popularity has contributed to widespread deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia and increased greenhouse gas emissions, among other social and environmental concerns. Conservationists see palm oil as a crop in need of a sustainable solution, and Asian markets led by India, Pakistan and China, which purchase 55 percent of Indonesia’s palm oil exports, have a key role to play. As the world’s leading importer of palm oil, India in particular holds great potential to tip the global scale in favor of sustainability. Palm oil is a popular cooking oil in India. Photo by Claude Renault (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons. While the number of Indian companies receiving sustainability certifications via the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is growing, incentive to drive the market towards sustainability in India remains low. Although there’s certainly no easy path forward, several of the industry’s stakeholders have suggested long and short-term solutions to increase the uptake in sustainable palm oil. Prohibitive costs One of the greatest challenges to certified…