Palm-oil boom raises conservation concerns

Nature: Palm oil was once touted as a social and environmental panacea -- a sustainable food crop, a biofuel that could help to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and a route out of poverty for small-scale farmers. In recent years, however, a growing body of research has questioned those credentials, presenting evidence that palm-oil farming can cause damaging deforestation and reduce biodiversity, and that the oil's use as a biofuel offers only marginal benefits for mitigating climate change. But even as the...

URL: http://www.nature.com/news/palm-oil-boom-raises-conservation-concerns-1.10936
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