The United States Congress should pass the End Palm Oil Deforestation act of 2021 because its implementation will lessen the country’s financial support towards the palm oil that is produced through unethical land degradation. 

According to National Geographic, deforestation makes up one quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. Major agribusinesses practice deforestation to manipulate the peatland of rainforests in places like Indonesia and Malaysia to farm palm oil (Coca). Palm oil is a popular vegetable oil that is used in about half of all packaged products sold in stores, including foods, cosmetics, cleaning products, and bioenergy fuels (Shanahan). The United States was the fifth largest importer of palm oil in 2022, spending 2.22 billion dollars on it just within that year (OEC).

Peatlands are the moist and carbon-rich soils that are commonly found in tropical forests. On a global scale, peatlands contain 550 gigatonnes of carbon. That makes up 42% of carbon stored in soil. So, as forests are burned down to create palm oil plantations, that carbon is burnt and released into the atmosphere, rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Just the act of turning a rainforest into a palm oil plantation releases approximately 174 tonnes of carbon for each hectare of forest lost (Shanahan). Between 2001 and 2018, Indonesia lost 25.6 million hectares of forested land (Swain).

The End Palm Oil Deforestation Act of 2021 was first introduced by Congressman John Garamendi. According to the act, all palm oil must be proven to be sustainably, ethically, and legally produced. And, the finished product must include palm oil on the list of ingredients, as well as list palm oil’s country of origin (Congress). According to Jack Foster and Alexander Brintup from the University of Cambridge Department of Engineers, mislabeling products is a common practice of food fraud. Foster and Brintup used the example of peanut butter. Although peanut butter contains palm oil, it may not be included on the ingredient labels. The misrepresentation on the label means palm oil products go under the radar of policy makers and consumers, causing them to make uninformed decisions, like buying products that were made by the sacrifice of tropical forests without knowing. Furthermore, the bill prohibits palm oil to be considered a renewable fuel (Congress). 

 Congress should do their part in combating climate change by refusing to let deforestation fly under their radar. The United States Congress can achieve that goal by passing the End Palm Oil Deforestation Act to enforce ethical production of palm oil and to require detailed labels on palm oil products. 

Sources:

Asner, Gregory P. Measuring Carbon Emissions from Tropical Deforestation: An Overview ! 2008.

Coca, Nithin. “The Everyday Ingredient That Harms the Climate.” Www.bbc.com 2021, www.bbc.com/future/article/20211025-palm-oil-the-everyday-ingredient-that-harms-the-climate

Resnick, Harriet I. "ARTICLE: Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Public and Private Law Tools for Halting Deforestation." Pace Environmental Law Review, 37, 1 Fall, 2019. advance-lexis-com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/api/document?collection=analytical-materials&id=urn:contentItem:5YH6-TSY1-F1H1-20R8-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed April 9, 2024.

Foster, Jack; Brintup, Alexandera "Aiding food security and sustainability efforts through graph neural network-based consumer food ingredient detection and substitution". Scientific Reports, November 01, 2023. advance-lexis-com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:69J1-1CW1-F129-P45W-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed April 9, 2024.

National Geographic Society. “Deforestation.” Education.nationalgeographic.org, National Geographic, 21 Feb. 2024, education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/deforestation/.

“Palm Oil in United States.” The Observatory of Economic Complexity, oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/palm-oil/reporter/usa. Accessed 30 Mar. 2024.

Shanahan, Mike. “Palm Oil: The Pros and Cons of a Controversial Commodity.” China Dialogue, 4 Nov. 2019, chinadialogue.net/en/food/11627-palm-oil-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-controversial-commodity/.

Text - H.R.5863 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): End Palm Oil Deforestation Act. (2021, November 30). https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5863/text