Why palm oil does not deserve its bad press

In total, at least two million Malaysian and Indonesian workers depend on the palm oil industry for their livelihoods, including from the large plantation communities that make up a majority of the planted oil palm, who don't just provide salaries for workers but also heavily, or wholly, subsidised healthcare, housing and education services.

Attacks on the industry also ignore the clear benefits of palm oil. At a side-event at the United Nations Copenhagen climate change conference, critics attacked palm oil because, like many other comestibles, it may contribute to the contraction of diabetes.

But palm oil is also a rich source of vitamin A and, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, each year a million infant deaths are caused by vitamin A deficiencies.

But there's no choice between accepting one million preventable infant deaths and allowing the consumption of palm oil that may lead to the contraction of a manageable chronic disease later in life.

And the crop is also substantially more sustainable in comparison with other oils because oil palm yields at least five times the same tonnage per hectare as equivalent seeds. As a consequence, oil palm needs less land and less resources to produce more.

The irony of the attacks on the oil is that if activists were successful in blackballing its use in food manufacturing, producers would have to switch to alternative lower-yielding crops to maintain their livelihoods. The consequence would be that they would require more land and more resources to produce less.

Palm oil isn't perfect and it is responsible for some deforestation caused by rogue growers. But the benefits of palm oil far outweigh the costs.

NGOs may think that eliminating consumer demand may remove the environmental consequences caused by the industry, but attacking the root of environmental degradation won't be solved by attacking palm oil.

Around the world, the key driver of environmental degradation is rarely a single industry, but poverty.

When urban and rural communities are poor, their best escape option is through the exploitation of primary natural resources that promote economic growth and drive the development of manufacturing and service industries.

Without the development of these industries, communities will always be trapped in subsistence living, where the environment will always come second to families finding ways to stay alive and secure food and shelter, especially in rural areas.

Protecting the environment only becomes a priority when societies prosper and can afford environmental protection regulation and the resources to sustainably manage and conserve their natural assets.

Anti-palm oil NGOs like NatureAlert, Greenpeace, Wetlands International and Friends of the Earth may think demonising palm oil will help Malaysia and Indonesia improve their environmental health.

But any short-term environmental improvements will be traded off against the livelihoods of the rural poor, who would be better able to protect their environment when they have economically developed and can afford to do so.