Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) producers failed to meet the government target set 10 years ago to reduce the area of degraded land and allow the recovery of native vegetation in the Amazon. After examining the forms of land use in a 765.65-square-kilometers (km2) area of a river basin in the Tome-Açu region of Pará, researchers from the Emílio Goeldi Museum of Pará (MPEG) and the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) found that between 2002 and 2018, the area occupied by primary forest shrank by approximately 50% to 140.7 km2, and that the area of secondary forest almost doubled to 156.6 km2. Since oil palm expansion began in 2010, it has expanded 27-fold, occupying 91.8 km2 in 2018. In a 16-year period, it took over almost half (48%) of the primary forest area, which had already been deforested and previously occupied by pastures and secondary forest. “The law considers oil palm a low-impact species that is important to the restoration of degraded areas, since it grows well in unproductive soils with little fertilization, but in large-scale plantations, it can harm biodiversity conservation and social dynamics,” says Ima Vieira, an ecologist from MPEG (Biological Conservation, July; Plant Ecology and Diversity, February 2020).
RepublishEcology
Oil palm advances in Pará
Large Elaeis guineensis plantations can harm biodiversity
Zineb Benchekchou / EMBRAPA
