Palm oil giants push out smallholders in Guatemala; deforestation risks remain

Guatemala is now the third-largest palm oil producer after Malaysia and Indonesia (which produce 88% of the global supply) and is often seen as a more sustainable alternative. Today, more than 60% of Guatemala’s plantations are certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). High certification rates are largely attributed to plantations owned by a handful of producers, making it easier to certify large chunks of the industry, according to RSPO.

But thousands of traditional rural Guatemalan families are being negatively impacted by the country’s fast-growing palm oil industry. Plantations now cover about 450,000 acres, accounting for nearly 2.5% of the nation’s total arable land. The palm oil industry’s expansion in Guatemala is causing a huge transfer of rural territory from traditional subsistence farming communities to a handful of palm oil mill owners. Local populations are cornered into working for these companies for low wages and often poor working conditions.

Meanwhile, a recent study co-authored by Benjamin Goldstein, Adjunct Professor in McGill's Department of Bioresource Engineering, found that certification in Guatemala did not drastically improve deforestation rates. Between 2009 and 2019, certified plantations showed 9% forest loss compared with 25% on noncertified plantations.

Certification does not stop deforestation

In Guatemala’s main palm-producing northern region, a total of 215,785 acres—almost twice the size of the Island of Montreal— were converted to palm oil plantations between 2009 and 2019, a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Environmental Management found.

The results showed that 17,868 acres were deforested in key biodiversity areas and 12,854 acres in protected areas. Almost two-thirds of farms accessed in the region were certified by the RSPO, the world’s leading sustainable palm oil certifier.

For Benjamin Goldstein, the results of the satellite analysis exposed the risk of deforestation and the inadequacy of overrelying on the RSPO in addressing unchecked oil palm expansion. “I am concerned that this is just the tip of the iceberg,” he told Mongabay in a telephone interview. “Guatemala is set to become one of the world’s top palm oil producers. I fear the encroachment on KBAs will go unnoticed until the problem becomes much larger.”

Between 2009 and 2019, noncertified plantations showed 25% forest loss compared with 9% on certified plantations, according to the study’s satellite imagery analysis. Any deforestation after 2004 in these areas is illegal in Guatemala.

RSPO told Mongabay in a video interview that the organization is not a silver-bullet solution but has made huge strides to set an acceptable industry standard for palm oil. “There isn’t one sector, country or community that is fully sustainable,” Yasmina Neustadtl, RSPO’s Latin America market transformation manager, said in the interview. “Agricultural commodities are difficult to put in black or white. Our job is to be in the middle and find the right path.”