Passage2

Palm oil

棕榈油

A Palm oil is an edible oil derived from the fruit of the African oil palm tree, and is currently the most consumed vegetable oil in the world. It’s almost certainly in the soap we wash with in the morning, the sandwich we have for lunch, and the biscuits we snack on during the day. Why is palm oil so attractive for manufacturers? Primarily because its unique properties – such as remaining solid at room temperature – make it an ideal ingredient for long-term preservation, allowing many packaged foods on supermarket shelves to have ‘best before’ dates of months, even years, into the future.

棕榈油是一种可食用油，提取自非洲油棕榈树的果实，目前是世界上消耗量最大的植物油。它几乎必定存在于我们早上洗漱用的肥皂里、中午吃的三明治里，以及一天之中当作零食小点的饼干里。棕榈油为什么对于生产商来说如此有吸引力？首要的原因在于它的一些独特属性——例如在室温条件下仍是固体，这使得它成为长时间存储性产品的理想配料，令许多超市货架上的包装食品得以拥有几个月甚至几年的保质期。

B Many farmers have seized the opportunity to maximise the planting of oil palm trees. Between 1990 and 2012, the global land area devoted to growing oil palm trees grew from 6 to 17 million hectares, now accounting for around ten percent of total cropland in the entire world. From a mere two million tonnes of palm oil being produced annually globally 50 years ago, there are now around 60 million tonnes produced every single year, a figure looking likely to double or even triple by the middle of the century.

许多农夫都抓住了这个机会来尽可能地种植油棕榈树。在1990年到2012年间，全球用于种植油棕榈树的田地从600万公顷增加到了1,700万公顷，现在占到了全世界耕地面积的约百分之十。从50年前全球年产量的区区两百万吨棕榈油，到现在每一年都有大约6,000万吨的产量，这个数据看起来到本世纪中期很有可能会翻倍甚至成三倍地增长。

C However, there are multiple reasons why conservationists cite the rapid spread of oil palm plantations as a major concern. There are countless news stories of deforestation, habitat destruction and dwindling species populations, all as a direct result of land clearing to establish oil palm tree monoculture on an industrial scale, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia. Endangered species – most famously the Sumatran orangutan, but also rhinos, elephants, tigers, and numerous other fauna – have suffered from the unstoppable spread of oil palm plantations.

但是，有多种原因使得环境保护主义者们将油棕榈种植园的快速扩张视作一个很大的隐患。有数不清的新闻故事报导了森林乱砍滥伐、生物栖息地破坏和不断减少中的物种种群数量，这些都是以工业生产规模清理土地、以建立油棕榈树单一种植农业所造成的直接后果，特别是在马来西亚和印度尼西亚。各种濒危野生动物——其中最为人所熟知的是苏门答腊猩猩，但还包括犀牛、大象、老虎和许多其他动物物种——深受油棕榈种植园势不可挡的持续扩张之苦。

D 'Palm oil is surely one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity,' declares Dr Farnon Ellwood of the University of the West of England, Bristol. 'Palm oil is replacing rainforest, and rainforest is where all the species are. That's a problem.' This has led to some radical questions among environmentalists, such as whether consumers should try to boycott palm oil entirely.“

棕榈油当然是对全球生物多样性的最大威胁之一，”位于布里斯托的西英格兰大学的Farnon Ellwood博士如是说。“棕榈油正在取代热带雨林，而热带雨林正是所有物种的存身之处。这就是问题所在。”这种情况引发了环保主义者之间的一些激烈争论，例如消费者是否应当尝试彻底抵制棕榈油。

Meanwhile Bhavani Shankar, Professor at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, argues, 'It's easy to say that palm oil is the enemy and we should be against it. It makes for a more dramatic story, and it's very intuitive. But given the complexity of the argument, I think a much more nuanced story is closer to the truth.'

与此同时，伦敦东方和非洲研究学院的Bhavani Shankar教授却认为：“要口头上说说棕榈油是敌人、我们应该反对它当然很容易。这能成为一个更富戏剧化的故事，而且非常直观。但是考虑到这场论辩的复杂性，我认为一个远为更加细致入微的故事才更接近真相。”

E One response to the boycott movement has been the argument for the vital role palm oil plays in lifting many millions of people in the developing world out of poverty. Is it desirable to have palm oil boycotted, replaced, eliminated from the global supply chain, given how many low-income people in developing countries depend on it for their livelihoods? How best to strike a utilitarian balance between these competing factors has become a serious bone of contention.

对抵制运动的回应之一，是提出了棕榈油在帮助成百上千万发展中国家里的人们走出贫困方面所扮演的至关重要的角色。考虑到发展中国家里有多少低收入人口在依靠它来维持生计，真的应该让棕榈油受到抵制、被取而代之并从全球供应链中被剔除么？如何能在这些彼此冲突的因素中最好地达成一个切实有用的平衡，这已经成为一大争论焦点。

F Even the deforestation argument isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Oil palm plantations produce at least four and potentially up to ten times more oil per hectare than soybean, rapeseed, sunflower or other competing oils. That immensely high yield – which is predominantly what makes it so profitable – is potentially also an ecological benefit. If ten times more palm oil can be produced from a patch of land than any competing oil, then ten times more land would need to be cleared in order to produce the same volume of oil from that competitor.

即使是森林乱砍滥伐这一反对理由也并不像它看起来的那么简单直白。油棕榈种植园的每公顷产油量是大豆、油菜籽、向日葵或其他油料作物产油量的至少四倍，最高的时候甚至可达十倍。这一极高的产量——也就是之所以使得它如此有利可图的主导原因——也是一个潜在的对生态系统来说的益处。如果从一块地里能产出的棕榈油量比其他任何油料作物的产量都多十倍的话，那么要使用另外那些油料作物产出相同量的油，就需要清出多十倍的土地来。

As for the question of carbon emissions, the issue really depends on what oil palm trees are replacing. Crops vary in the degree to which they sequester carbon – in other words, the amount of carbon they capture from the atmosphere and store within the plant. The more carbon a plant sequesters, the more it reduces the effect of climate change. As Shankar explains: '[Palm oil production] actually sequesters more carbon in some ways than other alternatives. […] Of course, if you're cutting down virgin forest it's terrible – that's what's happening in Indonesia and Malaysia, it's been allowed to get out of hand. But if it's replacing rice, for example, it might actually sequester more carbon.'

至于碳排放这个议题，问题其实真正在于油棕榈树取代的到底是什么。农作物在隔离碳——也就是说，它们能从大气中捕捉到和储存在植株内的碳量——方面的程度是各有不同的。一种植物能隔离的碳量越高，它就越能减少气候变化的影响。正如Shankar解释的那样：“棕榈油生产在某些意义上实际比其他生产方式隔离了更多的碳量。当然了，如果你要砍倒原始森林，这很可怕——那也正是印度尼西亚和马来西亚正在发生的情况，事态居然被允许失控至此。但如果是替代了比如说水稻，那也许实际上还能隔离更多的碳。”

G The industry is now regulated by a group called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), consisting of palm growers, retailers, product manufacturers, and other interested parties. Over the past decade or so, an agreement has gradually been reached regarding standards that producers of palm oil have to meet in order for their product to be regarded as officially ‘sustainable’. The RSPO insists upon no virgin forest clearing, transparency and regular assessment of carbon stocks, among other criteria. Only once these requirements are fully satisfied is the oil allowed to be sold as certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO). Recent figures show that the RSPO now certifies around 12 million tonnes of palm oil annually, equivalent to roughly 21 percent of the world’s total palm oil production.

这个行业目前受到“可持续棕榈油圆桌倡议组织”（RSPO）的监管，该组织的成员包括棕榈种植者、零售商、产品生产商，以及其他有兴趣参与的各方。在过去十年左右的时间里，逐渐达成了一项协议，规定了棕榈油的生产者需达到什么标准才能使自己的产品被官方认证为“可持续的”。RSPO坚持要求的各项标准包括：不得砍伐原始森林，生产运作全程透明，以及定期评估碳储量。只有在这些要求全部得到充分满足以后，油才能被允许作为“官方认证可持续棕榈油” （CSPO）进行售卖。近期的数据显示，RSPO目前每年认证大约1,200万吨棕榈油，相当于全球棕榈油总产量的约21％。

H There is even hope that oil palm plantations might not need to be such sterile monocultures, or ‘green deserts’, as Ellwood describes them. New research at Ellwood’s lab hints at one plant which might make all the difference. The bird’s nest fern (Asplenium nidus) grows on trees in an epiphytic fashion (meaning it’s dependent on the tree only for support, not for nutrients), and is native to many tropical regions, where as a keystone species it performs a vital ecological role. Ellwood believes that reintroducing the bird’s nest fern into oil palm plantations could potentially allow these areas to recover their biodiversity, providing a home for all manner of species, from fungi and bacteria, to invertebrates such as insects, amphibians, reptiles and even mammals.

甚至有这样的希望，油棕榈种植园也许并不需要成为如此贫瘠的单一农业之地，或是像Ellwood所描述的那种“绿色沙漠”。Ellwood实验室里的新研究表明，有一种植物也许能带来翻天覆地的不同。鸟巢蕨（Asplenium nidus）以一种附生的方式生长在树上（意思就是说：它只依赖树木提供支撑，而不是养分），在许多热带地区都是土生土长的品种，作为一个关键物种扮演了至关重要的生态角色。Ellwood相信，将鸟巢蕨重新引入油棕榈种植园将有可能使得这些地区恢复其生物多样性，为所有种类的生物提供一个栖身之所，从真菌和细菌生物，到例如昆虫这种无脊椎动物、两栖动物、爬行动物，甚至还有哺乳动物。