IUCN Oil Crops Taskforce report highlights sustainability concerns of vegetable oils

In Switzerland, a new report from the IUCN Oil Crops Taskforce assesses the future environmental, economic and social impact of the production, trade and the consumption of vegetable oils.

The report, published by IUCN in collaboration with the Sustainable Nutrition Scientific Board, found that growing demand for vegetable oils could translate into the conversion of natural areas into farmland, negatively impacting global biodiversity, particularly where biodiverse environments are displaced. But there is potential to limit harms to nature by improving production methods, while meeting a growing global demand. According to the report, Exploring the future of vegetable oils, the negative impacts on biodiversity are closely tied to production methods regardless of the type of oil crop. For instance, where and how an oil crop is planted, owned, managed, traded and consumed, as well as the scale and the specific landscape within which these crops are produced, all influence its impact.

However, production could be increased while minimising the expansion of crop land, according to the authors. For example, smallholder oil palm growers attain only about 42% of the potential yield, and closing this yield gap could increase production on existing land.

To estimate the potential benefits of conservation and restoration in oil crop production zones, the report applied the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric to global areas where 12 different oil crops are grown. The STAR metric, which assesses the potential of actions in specific locations to contribute to reversing global biodiversity loss, suggests that these zones have a critical role to play in helping deliver the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – the international agreement committing nations to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.