We sat in the bus as hill after hill of beautiful palm trees rolled past our eyes.  Never had I seen so many palm trees and, as a native Floridian, that is indeed saying something.  I assumed they were natural until someone mentioned that they were actually from India.  India?  If they weren’t indigenous, how had they made their way over here to Malaysia and, more importantly, why were there so many of them?

As we would later come to discover, plantations of oil palms are playing a large role in environmental degradation and marginalization of indigenous communities as they take over peatlands and coastal areas.  But how had it gotten to this point?

The oil palm actually originates from West Africa and was introduced to Malaysia in the 1870s for purely ornamental purposes.  Commercialization started in the early 1900s but took off when the World Bank pushed for export diversification in the 1950-60s to shake Malaysia’s dependence on rubber, paving the way for the plantations that cover the hills today—which, according to the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), amount to about 4.49 million hectares.  Refining in the 1970s led to further diversification of palm oil products.  Now, Malaysia is one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of palm oil at 61.1% of the world’s exports in 2001 with over half a million people employed within the industry.

To be sure, palm oil greatly spurred Malaysia’s economic development.  Palm oil  can be found in a variety of products, has all kinds of different health and nutritional properties, and can be used as biodiesel.  However, the uses of palm oil are not always all they’re cracked up to be—the environmental impact of destroying forests to grow more palms may release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than leaving the lands untouched, particularly when those areas are peat lands which store large amounts of carbon.

And the usurpation of land rights from indigenous populations further marginalizes them.  We saw this at the Hma’ Meri community, where once coastal land had been illegally developed and later turned into a plantation for palm oil.  The community was left with their restricted borders that now have no water outlet, effectively destroying their livelihood from the land.  But the oil palm encroachment, they say, is indicative of a larger issue—it’s how the land is managed, how it’s divided, that is really the problem.

Environmental NGOs and advocates like the Malaysian Nature Society and the Global Environment Centre are working to encourage environmental consciousness in society and government, even if not directly on palm oil issues.  As advocates push for responsible development, the key word is sustainability—how Malaysia can continue its impressive economic success while balancing environmental and land right concerns.