What are the long-term impacts of oil palm expansion on global biodiversity?
Supervisor: Edgar Turner
Co-Supervisor: David Williams, University of Leeds
Project Summary (MPhil):
Agricultural production is set to double by 2050, related to both dietary shifts and increases in the global population. Associated with this is a large increase in demand for vegetable oil, with a growth in area and production of both tropical and temperate crops supplying this demand (particularly oil palm, soya, rapeseed and sunflower). This agricultural expansion is likely to come with significant costs to the environment and biodiversity globally, but the relative impact of different supply scenarios is currently unknown.
Making use of projected GDP and consumption changes into the future, this project will model how much vegetable oil consumption is likely to increase, and the land area required to fulfil this demand under differing scenarios (including different mixes of crops and expansion scenarios, varying trends in yield changes, and future climate impacts). Utilising methods developed by Williams and colleagues that link food demand and area suitability to different crops, the project will model where this expansion is likely to take place. Finally, projected changes will be linked to impacts on carbon stock and global biodiversity, by linking this to species distributions, the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), and the Land-cover change Impacts on Future Extinctions (LIFE) metric.
Type of Work:
The student will work with a wide range of existing online datasets to model the likely changes in demand and impacts of vegetable oil consumption. The project will benefit from a close collaboration with David Williams (University of Leeds), who is an expert in these areas. We anticipate that the student will also work closely with existing oil palm industry partners to solicit feedback and input into results and approaches.
Importance of the area of research concerned:
Findings will develop important understanding of the increasing demand for vegetable oil on the environment, potentially informing more sustainable approaches in land development and policy decisions.
References:
Williams DR, Clark M, Buchanan GM, Ficetola GF, Rondinini C, Tilman D (2021) Proactive conservation to prevent habitat losses to agricultural expansion. Nature Sustainability 4, 314–322.
Eyres A, Ball TS, Dales M, Swinfield S, Arnell A, Baisero D, Durán AP, Green JMH, Green RE, Madhavapeddy A, Balmford A (2025) LIFE: A metric for mapping the impact of land-cover change on global extinctions Open Access. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci (2025) 380 (1917): 20230327.