India’s palm oil plans fail to account for climate change

India’s ambitious drive to expand domestic palm oil production fails to consider the subcontinent’s changing climate

India’s ambitious drive to expand domestic palm oil production fails to consider the subcontinent’s changing climate, analysis shows. It’s an oversight which may derail the country’s plans to become self-sufficient in the oil.

With US$9.6 billion worth imported in 2021, India is the world’s biggest buyer of palm oil, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia. It hopes to shift part of the present and future revenues of this market to the pockets of its farmers, by increasing the country’s cultivated area of oil palm to 1 million hectares by 2026, up from 350,000 hectares in 2019.

Once established, palms take three to four years to become productive, and will bear fruit for 20 to 25 years. Researchers have been working with the government to identify the most suitable ecosystems for such a long-term undertaking. In the past, these could have been effectively identified by observing historical climate data to predict rainfall, among other factors. But as climate change alters weather and water patterns across the globe, such information tells only part of the story.

M.V. Prasad, principal scientist for the palm oil branch of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), explains that the institute, which operates under the government of India, has identified nearly 2.8 million hectares of suitable land in 18 states. The north-east of the country is seen as particularly promising. “The plan looks at water requirements for irrigation, rainfall, temperature and relative humidity, also keeping in mind that palm oil production should not disturb forest cover nor local flora and fauna.” Only areas with adequate humidity and water availability have been earmarked for expansion, Prasad says.

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Roxy Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, notes that “the assessment considers the long-term average conditions of the past rainfall (1950–2000) over India to zoom in on regions with favourable rainfall.” However, he explains, “rainfall patterns have changed during this period, with a reducing trend over central and north India, and the assessment does not consider these observed changes,” instead averaging out the results over the examined 50 years.

“Since oil palm cultivation is planned for the near future,” Koll adds, “we need to consider future changes in rainfall gauged from climate projections, which the assessment also omits.”