Bushwhacking in Borneo: Part 1

We have A LOT to say… so decided to break this up into 2 parts 😃 

In our quest to go off the beaten path, we ventured from mainland Malaysia over to the island of Borneo for jungle trekking and scuba diving.

Borneo is the third largest island in the world (twice the size of Germany!). It’s divided between 3 countries- Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. We were only able to explore Sabah (a Malaysian state) during our 10-day adventure.

Borneo has the world’s oldest rainforest and is the second largest rainforest just behind the Amazon. It houses the most diverse species of wildlife across any rainforest on earth. Most famously, it’s the only place in the world to see wild orangutans. Fun fact: the word orangutang translates to “person of the forest”.

We decided to sign up for a 3-day/2-night jungle expedition in the Deramakot Forest Reserve. Unlike other popular tourist destinations in Borneo, this jungle is very regulated and only allows 34 total visitors a day (including tour guides/ park rangers!). We ended up only running into one other tourist group the entire trip.

Getting to the jungle was a journaaay!! A 4-hour bus, to an 8-hour BUMPY ride of dirt roads passing palm oil plantations (more on this below!) until we arrived at our accommodation deep into the jungle.

When we signed up for the trek, we expected to be hiking and trekking through the jungle with machetes as if we were on Season 1 of Survivor. Unfortunately, our “trek” ended up being a safari lead in the back of a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck.

On the morning of our safari, we were lucky to see a male orangutan in the first 10 minutes of driving. It was perched up on a tree chomping on durian fruits (the same smelly fruit we mentioned in the last newsletter!). He had turned his back to us while eating his breakfast the whole time (we were told orangutans don’t love being watched). It’s fascinating to learn most animals are fully aware of humans’ presence, regardless if they’ve made eye contact with us; they recognize our our smells and sounds miles before we even spot them.

Itching to feel like we were a part of the local native tribes of Borneo (and to satisfy our desire to actually “trek”) Sam and I found spare machetes in our safari truck and DIY’d a bushwhacking adventure into the jungle (all while our guides prepared a tasty breakfast for us, pictured below).

We followed elephant footprints into the forest and made our way approximately 40 yards into the jungle. It was super muddy (I obviously slipped lol) and was way harder to “bushwhack” than we expected. They made it look so easy on Survivor!!!! The 15 minute play time was all the bushwhacking we needed to feel accomplished 😉 

Throughout the day and night (we were out from 7 am -11 pm) we saw herds of elephants (which made the scary trunk noise at us!!!), HUGE insects that Sam was brave enough to hold (I abruptly flung them off my hands straight to the ground out of fear), gibbons that make the loudest yet most beautiful whooping sounds across the canopy of trees, and other random animals our guide pointed out. Sam also wanted to note we saw frogs banging (sexual intercourse for any more PC readers) during our night drive. 😉 

On our morning drive out of Deramakot we spotted a lone male elephant (his tusks over 1 meter long!) so we parked and followed him on foot to get a good look of him through the trees he was disguising himself in (not too close though- don’t worry Mom!). He instantly knew we were there but cautiously stood still and eventually turned to meet my gaze for well over a minute. He would slowly pop one eye out behind a large bush as if we were playing a game of peekaboo.

The uniqueness of that interaction made us realize we experience animals so differently in zoos or sanctuaries. Those animals have adapted to humans and aren’t afraid of us like they are in the wild. We continued our journey out of the jungle and transitioned from viewing natural, wild jungles to man-made palm oil plantations along the way.

Palm oil plantations became such a common topic of thought, conversation, and sight during our time in Borneo, we did a little deep dive! Strap in for a History lesson written by Sam 😃 

Sam’s History Lesson on Palm Oil

What allows our washing powder (laundry detergent) to foam, our biscuits not to crumble, our ice cream not to instantly melt, our chocolate to maintain that appetising sheen, and our lipstick to stay solid and smooth? Surprise surprise, the answer is Borneo, and more specifically, the palm oil plantations that now cover 35% of this sprawling island’s land mass.

Borneo has become the beating heart of our physical global economy. Palm oil is the second most important oil in the world behind petroleum. There are 200 common ingredients used to produce our food, household products, personal care products, and cosmetic products that contain palm oil. Only 10% explicitly say the word ‘palm’ in it (most are disguised as vegetable oil). From 1995-2015 palm oil production quadrupled (15.2M to 62.6M tonnes) and is expected to quadruple again by 2050. 70% of processed foods now contain palm oil. The average consumption per person is 8kg of palm oil per year (Americans consume 800kg per year in food on avg for reference) and plantations now account for 10% of global crop land. Malaysia/Indonesia produces 85% of the world's palm oil, with the vast majority produced here in Borneo.

So, how exactly did palm oil become so intertwined into what seems like everything we consume? And why did Borneo become its breeding ground?

Palm oil had long been a sought-after material for many, many products and industries up until the end of WW2. By this time, Malaysia and Indonesia had overtaken West Africa (where palm oil trees originate from) as the world’s primary exporter due to their more reliable production climate & open foreign investment policies. This allowed eager Europeans to set up shop quickly and continue to fuel the growing number of use cases across the continent.

While production grew consistently, and largely on plantations on the mainlands of both countries, the end of WW2 saw the rapid decline of demand for rubber (Malaysia and Indonesia’s biggest industry at the time) and when independence came in the 50’s, it left Malaysia and Indonesia with a drastic need to drum up cash. Enter Borneo. The idea, given by the British, went something like this:

You’ve got loads of rainforest. Cut it down, sell the timber, and build government-controlled, foreign-owned palm oil plantations. Not just that, move all your poor people to the plantations and give them jobs farming palm oil as a way to increase their income and eradicate poverty. Even go and build schools, shops, and houses for their families on the plantations so they never have to leave. Indonesia didn’t listen (and didn’t recover for 20+ years when they started accepting foreign investment again)- Malaysia did. The British Food Administration promised to only buy palm oil from Malaysia, and they were off to the races. The results were so successful on the surface (economically speaking) that the World Bank and UN started providing direct investment to Malaysia, Indonesia (when they eventually wanted it), and any other country that wanted to scale palm oil plantations as a way to eradicate poverty. This continued well into the early 2000s and was used as a form of funding to help countries out of economic crises, often setting raw material production targets as part of the funding deals.

An open foreign investment policy coupled with government subsidies and tax breaks concocted the perfect landing spot for foreign investors to spin up plantations, and for the poor to earn a better living.

Things didn’t stop there for Borneo. The 70’s brought improvements in milling technology and the start of palm oil fractionation, the core of what makes it such a desirable material today. Essentially this means palm fruits are picked from the plantation, sent to the mill, squeezed, and then molded into hundreds of different derivatives, strands, and consistencies for the oil’s various potential uses. This has led to palm oil being one of the most complicated (and untraceable) supply chains in the world.

The 80’s brought another significant step change. Unilever released 1,000s of a specific type of beetle onto one of their primary plantations, and validated that this type of beetle would self-pollinate the trees year round. It increased production on the single plantation by 400,000 tonnes that year and reduced the need for manual pollination. Yields up/ costs down -> more demand from investors -> more trees chopped in Borneo.

By the 90’s, Borneo was primed to handle whatever the world needed when it came to palm oil. Unsurprisingly, the world found its way to palm oil as the perfect answer to various global issues over the past half-century.

First, enter India. In the late 70’s they started importing palm oil to their fair-priced shops (food distribution for the poor) in rural areas as the only available cooking oil. Fat consumption (largely generated from cooking oil) is often synonymous with an increase in income (we eat more fat as we get richer), so as poverty halved and the population grew 40% over the next 30 years, India’s palm oil use ballooned. 1980 -> 250K tonnes, 1995 -> 1M tonnes, 2015 -> 9M tonnes. When you throw on top India’s rapidly evolving fast food market (it grew 83% from 2011-2016), India is well and truly swimming in cheap, versatile palm oil and loving every second of it. The details for China were harder to come by, but it is very likely a similar scenario. Together they now account for 40% of global palm oil consumption.

The West’s deep modern reliance on palm oil occurred slightly differently. The mass increase has largely been driven by activist consumers fighting for various changes on certain issues that some of you probably remember all too well.

Who remembers the fight against trans-fats in the 90’s (parents looking at you)? It was so unhealthy for us, and consumers became so angry about it, in 2001 the FDA banned food manufacturers from creating any processed foods that had trans-fat in them. The whole industry had to search for a replacement overnight. The only economically viable alternative that maintained the consistency, taste, and shelf life consumers demanded? Palm oil.

Who remembers animal activists’ war on the cosmetic industry to stop using animals in their products? Well, the FDA banned the use of animal tallow (a waste fat from dead animals) in cosmetics not long after. The only viable economic alternative that maintained the quality consumers demanded? You guessed it.

Multi-national food, cosmetic, and household goods conglomerates never looked back. Once the power of fractionation became apparent, palm oil became the gift that keeps on giving to these companies and us.

Lastly, enter Biofuels. Known as a sustainable energy alternative, In the early 2010s, the EU set aggressive targets for using biofuel as a means of transport fuel across the region. To make biofuel, you still need ‘natural oil’. Rapeseed and soy could have been used, but palm oil was the only option that could be produced cheaply enough to make biofuel affordable. From 2011-2014, Biofuel use tripled in the EU, and palm oils share of the overall material 5x’ed in the same period. Today, half of the EU’s share of palm oil goes to biofuel.

The thread that seems to link palm oil’s success together is a pretty simple one— Palm oil is really, really, really cheap to make and returns the highest per acre yield of any oil crop by far (5x rapeseed. 6x sunflower. 8x soybean). This means conglomerate suppliers (of which there are only a few) can still sell it cheaply while making significant profits. The real winners however are consumer goods companies, who are estimated to retain 66% of the gross profits the palm oil industry generates globally.

To be honest, this all sounds like a pretty epic tale of how a natural raw material helped fuel global economic development for over a century while reducing poverty and helping our transition to renewable energy.

The reality, of course, is slightly different. The palm oil industry has engaged in ravaging deforestation across the world for half a century. This has been most significant in Borneo, claiming 70% of the island’s rainforest since 2010 alone. Burning or chopping down large areas of trees releases an immense amount of carbon into the atmosphere. A single deforestation event in Borneo in the late 90s caused a year’s worth of forest fires across the island, releasing an estimated 400 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, at the time 1/5th of ALL global emissions for that year. You couple that with the Earth now losing those trees as a carbon sink and the compounding effects on the environment are pretty grim to think about. And when you sprinkle in the thought of where all that wildlife go once their homes are chopped down at that scale, the whole tale becomes rather somber, rather quickly.

The reality is there is seemingly no scenario where palm oil plantations won’t continue to expand across Borneo and the world. Only a slither of the remaining rainforest globally is truly protected and even with the mass investment in technology to potentially double yields per hectare on current plantations, that won’t keep up with quadrupling demand in the coming years. Measures are also being put in place to attain ‘sustainable’ accreditation for palm oil and production, but it’s been found a consumer product can still get a certified sustainable label even if 99% of its palm oil is produced from freshly deforested land. On a brighter note deforestation is slowing, and in Sep ‘22 the Indonesia PM signed a 3-year moratorium (a delay) on new palm oil plant development.

Transitions away from palm oil seem to lie in innovation outside the industry, with potential alternative oil companies popping up slowly but surely. Zero Acre Farms is an alternative cooking oil company that has big aspirations, but at $30 a bottle, they’ll have to work on getting that cost down quickly to compete in rural India.

Laura and I knew nothing about palm oil before coming to Borneo. Seeing the vastness of palm oil trees from a viewpoint on our journey to the jungle implored us to learn more.

Borneo is the oldest rainforest in the world at 145 million years. It’s been a primary heartbeat, lifeblood, and engine of the Earth since. Originally acting as the willing breeding ground to spawn unimaginable wildlife and biodiversity (there are to this day 9,000 unique plant types to Borneo) while guzzling up any natural carbon that was emitted, Borneo is now a servant to humans ever-growing needs and desires, while the Earth’s basic necessities are very much taking a back seat.

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We then left the jungles and spent the next few days on a small island off the coast of Borneo to scuba dive and experience local village life. More on this in part 2!