You can turn on layers in the Forest Use tab to see the correlation between where fires are/have been burning and where palm oil concessions are. It's pretty clear what's going on.
You can try to reduce your own palm oil usage, but it's difficult, because it's in everything from cookies to shampoo and it's not always clearly listed in the ingredients list for various reasons. A second issue is that palm oil has incredibly high yields per hectare when compared with other oil crops... so from a sustainability perspective choosing a different source of plant oil is a tough call and depends on where the alternative is being produced.
Whatever happens, there must be some way to reward Indonesians for sustainably producing palm oil or some other crop. Large food companies can do a whole lot, they should absolutely be working to get their supply chains certified under the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) program (you can also turn on a layer on the map to see these areas as well). This program is far from perfect, but is much better than the wild west of conventional palm oil, and rewards responsible producers.
Paper and timber are a bit easier, you can make sure all of the paper you use in your office or packaging is FSC certified, and you should require that any construction done on you or your company's behalf sources FSC timber. It's not necessarily more expensive.
http://fires.globalforestwatch.org/#v=map&x=121.59&y=-1.01&l...
You can turn on layers in the Forest Use tab to see the correlation between where fires are/have been burning and where palm oil concessions are. It's pretty clear what's going on.
You can try to reduce your own palm oil usage, but it's difficult, because it's in everything from cookies to shampoo and it's not always clearly listed in the ingredients list for various reasons. A second issue is that palm oil has incredibly high yields per hectare when compared with other oil crops... so from a sustainability perspective choosing a different source of plant oil is a tough call and depends on where the alternative is being produced.
Whatever happens, there must be some way to reward Indonesians for sustainably producing palm oil or some other crop. Large food companies can do a whole lot, they should absolutely be working to get their supply chains certified under the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) program (you can also turn on a layer on the map to see these areas as well). This program is far from perfect, but is much better than the wild west of conventional palm oil, and rewards responsible producers.
Paper and timber are a bit easier, you can make sure all of the paper you use in your office or packaging is FSC certified, and you should require that any construction done on you or your company's behalf sources FSC timber. It's not necessarily more expensive.