Data from: The impacts of oil palm on recent deforestation and biodiversity loss

Palm oil is the most widely traded vegetable oil globally, with demand
projected to increase substantially in the future. Almost all oil palm
grows in areas that were once tropical moist forests, some of them quite
recently. The conversion to date, and future expansion, threatens
biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Today, consumer
pressure is pushing companies toward deforestation-free sources of palm
oil. To guide interventions aimed at reducing tropical deforestation due
to oil palm, we analysed recent expansions and modelled likely future
ones. We assessed sample areas to find where oil palm plantations have
recently replaced forests in 20 countries, using a combination of
high-resolution imagery from Google Earth and Landsat. We then compared
these trends to countrywide trends in FAO data for oil palm planted area.
Finally, we assessed which forests have high agricultural suitability for
future oil palm development, which we refer to as vulnerable forests, and
identified critical areas for biodiversity that oil palm expansion
threatens. Our analysis reveals regional trends in deforestation
associated with oil palm agriculture. In Southeast Asia, 45% of sampled
oil palm plantations came from areas that were forests in 1989. For South
America, the percentage was 31%. By contrast, in Mesoamerica and Africa,
we observed only 2% and 7% of oil palm plantations coming from areas that
were forest in 1989. The largest areas of vulnerable forest are in Africa
and South America. Vulnerable forests in all four regions of production
contain globally high concentrations of mammal and bird species at risk of
extinction. However, priority areas for biodiversity conservation differ
based on taxa and criteria used. Government regulation and voluntary
market interventions can help incentivize the expansion of oil palm
plantations in ways that protect biodiversity-rich ecosystems.