Little People: How "Green" Bio-Fuel is Destroying the Malaysian Rainforest, Disrupting Lives

Clear cutting Borneo's rainforest (bottom half of photograph) for conversion to oil palm plantations (top right quarter of frame) seen from the air. Near Marudi, Sarawak, Malaysia. Oil palm plantations are impoverished "green deserts". Lian Pin Koh and David S. Wilcove of Princeton University, analyzing data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, found that 55-59 percent of oil palm expansion in Malaysia, used in part to produce bio fuel, spread at the expense...
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Clear cutting Borneo's rainforest (bottom half of photograph) for conversion to oil palm plantations (top right quarter of frame) seen from the air. Near Marudi, Sarawak, Malaysia. Oil palm plantations are impoverished "green deserts". Lian Pin Koh and David S. Wilcove of Princeton University, analyzing data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, found that 55-59 percent of oil palm expansion in Malaysia, used in part to produce bio fuel, spread at the expense of the rainforest. Between 1990 and 2005 the area of oil palm plantations in Malaysia more than doubled to 3.6 million hectares while Malaysia correspondingly lost roughly 1.5 million hectares of forest.
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