# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The main threat to the survival of orangutan populations in the wild is the massive expansion of palm oil plantations in Borneo and Sumatra.

Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil in the world, having even surpassed soya in terms of usage. Surging global demand for palm oil has fueled massive forest destruction throughout Indonesia and Malaysia, countries that together account for 85% of the world's palm oil production. Palm oil is ubiquitous! Half the packaged food (and other) products found on supermarket shelves now contain palm oil. Palm oil and palm kernel oil are found in all manner of baked goods, such as cookies, bread, and potato chips, as well as in chocolate and milk (where it adds Vitamin A). Palm oil has also replaced coconut as the main cooking oil traditionally used in Indonesia as well as replacing peanut oil in Myanmar. Palm oil is also extensively used in cosmetics and toiletries where it adds creaminess and/or foam to the product. Palm oil is an important ingredient in the manufacturing of soaps, shampoos, detergents, and toothpaste. Increasingly, palm oil is used as a biofuel.

Oil palms only grow in the tropics and need much water. Originally native to South America and West Africa, palm oil plantations have now spread throughout the wet tropics to Papua New Guinea, parts of Asia, Kenya, and also back to countries in West Africa and South America where the palms are native. The problem with palm oil is that vast areas of virgin tropical rain forest are clear cut to open up land for cultivation. Palm oil is a huge industry. Palm oil accounts for 11% of Indonesia's export earnings and is the most valuable agricultural export. Overall, it is Indonesia's third largest export earner.

The recent expansion of vast monocrop oil palm plantations in Asia, the Neotropics, and Africa threatens large areas of tropical rain forests. The two most affected countries in this expansion are Indonesia and Malaysia, home of the imperiled orangutans. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) indicated in 2007 that oil palm plantations are the leading cause of rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia. Another study by Princeton and a Swiss institution reported that between 1990 and 2005, up to 60% of palm oil expansion occurred at the expense of primary tropical rain forest. The establishment of palm oil plantations has been a disaster not only for endangered wildlife such as orangutans and tigers (in Sumatra) but has also exacerbated conflict with local communities in Indonesia over traditional land rights. Local people have been evicted from their customary land holdings and local communities impoverished, leading to much conflict with palm oil concession companies.

Help the displaced and orphan orangutans in OFI's care get a second chance at the life they deserve.

In Sumatra at least 10.8 million hectares have been opened up for palm oil plantations. The situation in Borneo is similar. Large scale conversion of tropical rain forests has had an absolutely devastating impact on biodiversity in both Borneo and Sumatra. In addition, deforestation may cause soil erosion and, because most forests have been cleared through the use of fire, massive air pollution from smoke. Much of the land on which palm oil plantations have been established consists of peat swamp forest. The draining, burning, and conversion of peat swamp forests to palm oil has been especially damaging to the world's climate as it has led to Indonesia being the third largest contributor of carbon to the world's atmosphere after China and the United States.

Palm oil companies prefer to clear primary forests, rather than degraded areas or grasslands, for economic reasons. They don't need to utilize or add as much chemical fertilizer (which is expensive) to forest land cleared by fire and fertilized from ash produced by the fire. In addition, the cost of clearing peatswamp forests is subsidized by the sale of commercially valuable timber taken from concession areas as part of the conversion process. After palm oil plantations are established, displaced starving orangutans are frequently killed in the most brutal ways as agricultural pests when they try to obtain food in the plantation areas.

The establishment of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)in 2004 set up voluntary guidelines for "greener" palm oil production and has tried to encourage palm oil expansion in a "sustainable" way that doesn't ruin primary rain forests or violate the land rights of local people. However, while this seems like a promising development, it is debatable whether it has had much influence on what actually has been happening in the field as forests continue to be torn down and local people shunted to jail for protesting the taking of their land.

How can you help?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The main threat to the survival of orangutan populations in the wild is the massive expansion of palm oil plantations in Borneo and Sumatra. Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil in the world, having even surpassed soya in terms of usage.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil aims to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil through co-operation within the supply chain and open dialogue between its stakeholders.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Another day and there's another study that undermines the case for biofuels as an eco-friendly source of energy. This time it's the booming palm oil plantations of Southeast Asia, which yield the raw ingredients for biodiesel, used most often in Europe. Activists have been warning for some time that the growth of palm oil is leading to deforestation in Southeast Asia, where forested land has often been cleared to build palm plantations. Malaysia and Indonesia produce 87% of the world's palm oil, and the combined harvested area for oil palm has reached 6.5 million hectares (ha), up fourfold from 1990 levels.

That's an environmental threat that has impacts both local and global. Deforestation can lead to the loss of habitat for species that depend on the forest, and the cutting down and burning of trees worldwide is responsible for some 15% of global carbon emissions.

Now a study on palm oil plantations published in the March 7 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirms what environmentalists have feared: palm oil plantations create deforestation and hurt biodiversity. Researchers from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich and the National University of Singapore looked at oil-palm plantations in peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra and found that 880,000 ha of tropical peatlnad-about 6% of the total territory-had been converted to palm oil plantations by the early years of the last decade.

That conversion has led to biodiversity loss that ranges from 1% in Borneo to 12.1% in peninsular Malaysia-equivalent to the extinction of some 46 species. Carbon was emitted in the land-use changes as well-some 140 million metric tons of carbon were added to the atmosphere thanks to the clearing of existing forests, even as the loss of those peatland forests further reduced the ability of the landscape to sequester carbon.

By 2010, a total of 2.3 million ha of peatswamp forest had been cleared-an area roughly the size of New Jersey. The study found that up to the early part of last decade, most of the deforestation occurring in peatlands wasn't due to oil palm-but that will likely change in the future if the industry keeps ramping up. There's every reason to expect it will-Indonesia has pledged to double oil palm production by 2020.

The palm oil industry has its defenders, who point to the jobs and economic growth that can be created by expanded plantation. (See this study by the pro-palm oil NGO World Growth, which estimates that the industry directly and indirectly supports nearly 20 million Indonesians alone.) And unlike corn ethanol, palm oil plantations don't necessarily compete directly with food-the product is often used as a cooking oil, in addition to providing biofuels.

But the PNAS study demonstrates that as the palm oil industry grows in Southeast Asia, it will inevitably compete-and beat-native forests, with dangerous consequences for biodiversity and carbon emissions. In a world where population is expanding and wilderness is shrinking, it's becoming increasingly obvious that we can't farm our way out of our energy problems with biofuels.

More from TIME on biofuels:
The Clean Energy Scam Gambling on Green Orangutans Under Threat
And check out this 2009 video report from Ecocentric's own Krista Mahr:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Palm Oil Plantations Equal Deforestation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Another day and there's another study that undermines the case for biofuels as an eco-friendly source of energy. This time it's the booming palm oil plantations of Southeast Asia, which yield the raw ingredients for biodiesel, used most often in Europe.

# data[].attributes.headline
National Geographic -  Advocacy Spotlight Articles

# data[].attributes.subject
National Geographic -  Advocacy Spotlight Articles

# data[].attributes.body
KAI:https://docs.google.com/a/chatsworth.com.sg/document/d/1jMhRb-TvAK8adzC_fzgy_TBN66bTTvSA2bXQ1ts9fl4/edit?usp=sharing

ADIT: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HKaMqke-FfVZAPm5FO0eaRdsnbDSKSNO5MB18DVnEzg/edit

HUILING:https://docs.google.com/document/d/15rvLUu5R68pM5nkR3V_yCKhiIgjIqzrlMR3BL92tnXU/edit

# data[].attributes.body
How can someone take part in your campaign for change?
Someone could help us start announcing what is happening now and also announce what we should do to make it a better.

How can they take action?

They can take action by spreading the word and soon it would be on the news and soon many people from the around the world would know and they can take action.

How can they offer support?

They can offer support by donating to RSPO and using other oils or peat or RSPO approved oils.

What will they need to do?
They will need to look for rspo approved products and take photos of them next to it. They can post it on social media

Money?

Make changes?

Vote?

Write?

How would their actions impact the campaign?
Their actions will raise awareness and make people act to buy rspo instead of other products.

How will their action help?

Lessen the pollution and save orangutan.

How will their participation impact the systems?

It will make the systems normal and not corrupted.

# data[].attributes.body
Who does this help?
People who are wanting help this issue and finally they have a chance t o help change this problem.

How was he/she affected?
He/She was affected by what was happening in Borneo rainforests and knew immediately that someone is going to save it.

# data[].attributes.body
What information do you need for your audience?
We need information that is informative enough for your topic and also information that are interesting so that people who read it would be more engage with the topic.

What events should they know about?
They should know about what is happening and also what we are planning to change.

What indicators should you use to educate your audience?
The indicators that we should use to educate our audience is what they should know of and also we would have something for our information so that we could educate our audience with those information that we researched on.

What are the important trends and relationships?
The important trends are what is going on now and how they are doing it and if those people who want to help to change have to know everyone in a friendly way so that no one would get mad at each other.

What human actions must change?
The human action that we have to change is, instead of just immediately stopping them from cutting down trees, we could also change it to destroyed homes in the rainforests.

How will these changes create sustainable systems?
These changes would create sustainable systems by building up an effective way to help change this problem/issue and so we could create a sustainable system.

Resources:

CIA World Fact book

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

Economic Complexity

https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/explore/tree_map/hs/export/sgp/all/show/2012/

Earth Systems & Cycles: International Geosphere-Biosphere Program

http://www.igbp.net/globalchange/earthsystemdefinitions.4.d8b4c3c12bf3be638a80001040.html

# data[].attributes.body
What actions does this person take?
This person has to take action to help the rainforest in Borneo.

What change has he/she made?
The change that she/he made was that she/he changed what we had to change and that was to help save the rainforests immediately.

How does he/she represent your campaign for change?
He/She represents our campaign for change as a community so that more people could help out.

Why did he/she take action?
He/She took action because that person really does want to help change to a better future.

# data[].attributes.headline
 Our Campaign Mission:  What is the mission of your Campaign for Change?

# data[].attributes.subject
 Our Campaign Mission:  What is the mission of your Campaign for Change?

# data[].attributes.body
Our Sustainability Compass:

Our Systems:

Our Global Context:

Reason for using this Global Context:

# data[].attributes.body
S-Specific | What do you want to sustain?I
would want to save the Orangutans and the rainforest in Borneo.

Why are human actions affecting the systems?
Human actions are affecting the systems because of the humans killing the animals and cutting down trees.

M-Measurable | TimelineWhat international organizations would assist your efforts?RSPO

What change need to happen immediately?We need to try and immediately change a way to save the Orangutans and also try to ask people to use an alternative for palm oil for example, vegetable oil, peat for energy and also olive oil and other alternatives.

A-Achievable | What change is achievable for you alone?
We could start by donating and spreading notice in the community and also that we could also probably find a easy way for the alternative. What change is achievable with help from the UN?We could start by convincing the companies and making rules to not to mine in some places. What change is achievable with help from the public?The public could help by saving the Orangutans before they burn and cut down trees.

R-Relevant | How can we evolve with our changing systems?
We could evolve with our changing systems by doing the first step which is collecting information of what we could know more of and then we could solve the bigger problem that is saving it. How can you make people understand the relevance of your Campaign for Change?We could tell and make videos on the topic we are doing and convince people to buy rspo products.

T-Time bound | Can life be sustained with this action occurring?
Well yes it can survive but it will be harder to sustain it.How can your campaign for change sustain life?Our campaign for change could sustain life by how it could keep by what is happening but changing to an alternative way.