The quest for renewable energy has intensified since the escalating price of crude petroleum in the recent years. Renewable energy such as biodiesel has the potential to replace petroleum-derived transportation fuel in the future. Biodiesel is defined as the mono-alkyl esters of long-chain fatty acids derived from vegetable oils such palm oil, rapeseed and soybean. Currently, more than 80% of the world biodiesel productions are from rapeseed oil. However, the cost of palm oil which is at least US$ 200 per tonne cheaper than rapeseed oil indicates that palm oil could be a more suitable and attractive candidate as the source of biodiesel compared to other vegetable oils. Although palm oil is known to be a multi-purpose vegetable oil with products ranging from food to biodiesel, there are a lot of issues surrounding palm oil production. Nevertheless, some of these issues reported in the literature were found to be misleading and are thus confusing the public perception on palm oil. Thus, the aim of this paper is to highlight and clarify the negative issues reported in the literature surrounding palm oil production. Apart from that, various policies or/and strategies that will lead to a more sustainable production and development of palm oil industries will also be proposed. Hence, palm oil will be able to become the leading vegetable oil in terms of food and non-food production, especially as the main source of renewable energy, biodiesel.

Tropical forests in southeast Asia are under threat from oil-palm growers. This is an opportunity to combine sustainable economic growth with biodiversity conservation, argue Lian Pin Koh and David S. Wilcove.

Great ape populations are undergoing a dramatic decline, which is predicted to result in their extinction in the wild from entire regions in the near future. Recent findings have particularly focused on African apes, and have implicated multiple factors contributing to this decline, such as deforestation, hunting, and disease. Less well-publicised, but equally dramatic, has been the decline in orang-utans, whose distribution is limited to parts of Sumatra and Borneo. Using the largest-ever genetic sample from wild orang-utan populations, we show strong evidence for a recent demographic collapse in North Eastern Borneo and demonstrate that this signature is independent of the mutation and demographic models used. This is the first demonstration that genetic data can detect and quantify the effect of recent, human-induced deforestation and habitat fragmentation on an endangered species. Because current demographic collapses are usually confounded by ancient events, this suggests a much more dramatic decline than demographic data alone and emphasises the need for major conservation efforts.

The Sumatran orang-utan is in dramatic decline, including the population in its main stronghold, the Leuser Ecosystem, in Sumatra, Indonesia ( C. P. van Schaik et al. (2001)Oryx35, 14-25). The major threats to the survival of Sumatran orang-utans are identified as habitat loss (mainly from conversion to oil palm plantations), habitat degradation and habitat fragmentation. The immediate causes of this are identified as weak compliance with regulations and laws; weak law enforcement and the weak legal environment. Corruption is identified as the ultimate causal factor underlying these three immediate causal factors, along with a frontier mentality and bureaucratic constraints. Together, they have resulted in the destruction of prime orang-utan habitat. Several political actions are recommended to improve the effectiveness of habitat conservation for the orang-utan and several technical challenges are to be overcome once the policy context is right. The most crucial problem to solve is the lack of regular funds for enforcement operations and establishing a new system of enforcement that is effective. In addition, the Gunung Leuser National Park needs to be redesigned by enlarging it to cover all high biodiversity areas within the Leuser Ecosystem. Moreover, habitat corridors between important forest tracts need to be re-established.