Palm Oil

I really liked these articles from Bloomberg BusinessWeek over the past couple of months or so. Palm oil has increasingly been seen as a highly desirable ingredient in many applications, not least cooking. But for years, it had an human rights underside. A couple of months ago, the Indonesian government took many acres of rain forest off limits to palm oil plantations. This can only help prevent de-forestation. More recently, (and possibly more importantly in the long term) Bloomberg BusinessWeek published an expose of some human rights abuses within the palm oil industry. Hopefully, worldwide consumer pressure (along with exposes such as this) will help put a stop to some of the most egregious practices. These two articles combine to show that sustainability can have both an environmental side and a human side as well.

Making Virgin Forest Off-Limits

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-30/indonesia-goes-green-to-the-dismay-of-palm-oil-producers

The Human Cost

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-18/indonesias-palm-oil-industry-rife-with-human-rights-abuses