The socioecological benefits and consequences of oil palm cultivation in its native range: The Sustainable Oil Palm in West Africa (SOPWA) Project

Pashkevich, Michael D, Marshall, Cicely AM ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7397-6472, Freeman, Benedictus, Reiss-Woolever, Valentine J, Caliman, Jean-Pierre, Drewer, Julia, Heath, Becky, Hendren, Matthew T, Saputra, Ari, Stone, Jake, Timperley, Jonathan H, Draper, William, Gbarway, Abednego, Geninyan, Bility, Goll, Blamah, Guahn, Marshall, Gweh, Andrew N, Hadfield, Peter, Jah, Morris T, Jayswen, Samuel, Jones, Tiecanna, Kandie, Samuel, Koffa, Daniel, Korb, Judith, Koon, Nehemiah, Manewah, Benedict, Medrano, Lourdes M, Palmeirim, Ana F, Pett, Brogan, Rocha, Ricardo, Swope-Nyantee, Evangeline, Tue, Jimmy, Tuolee, Josiah, Van Dessel, Pieter, Vincent, Abraham, Weah, Romeo, Widodo, Rudy, Yennego, Alfred J, Yonmah, Jerry and Turner, Edgar C (2024) The socioecological benefits and consequences of oil palm cultivation in its native range: The Sustainable Oil Palm in West Africa (SOPWA) Project. Science of The Total Environment, 926. art: 171850. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.171850

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Text 15392 Pashkevich, Marshall, Freeman et al (2024) The socioecological benefits and consequences of oil palm cultivation in its native range - The Sustainable Oil Palm in West Africa (SOPWA) Project.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (7MB) | Preview

Abstract

Agriculture is expanding rapidly across the tropics. While cultivation can boost socioeconomic conditions and food security, it also threatens native ecosystems. Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), which is grown pantropically, is the most productive vegetable oil crop worldwide. The impacts of oil palm cultivation have been studied extensively in Southeast Asia and – to a lesser extent – in Latin America but, in comparison, very little is known about its impacts in Africa: oil palm’s native range, and where cultivation is expanding rapidly. In this paper, we introduce a large scale research programme – the Sustainable Oil Palm in West Africa (SOPWA) Project – that is evaluating the relative ecological impacts of oil palm cultivation under traditional (i.e., by local people) and industrial (i.e., by a large-scale corporation) management in Liberia. Our paper is twofold in focus. First, we use systematic mapping to appraise the literature on oil palm research in an African context, assessing the geographic and disciplinary focus of existing research. We found 757 publications occurring in 36 African countries. Studies tended to focus on the impacts of palm oil consumption on human health and wellbeing. We found no research that has evaluated the whole-ecosystem (i.e., multiple taxa and ecosystem functions) impacts of oil palm cultivation in Africa, a knowledge gap which the SOPWA Project directly addresses. Second, we describe the SOPWA Project’s study design and—using canopy cover, ground vegetation cover, and soil temperature data as a case study—demonstrate its utility for assessing differences between areas of rainforest and oil palm agriculture. We outline the socioecological data collected by the SOPWA Project to date and describe the potential for future research, to encourage new collaborations and additional similar projects of its kind in West Africa. Increased research in Africa is needed urgently to understand the combined ecological and sociocultural impacts of oil palm and other agriculture in this unique region. This will help to ensure long-term sustainability of the oil palm industry and, indeed, all tropical agricultural activity—in Africa.

Item Type:	Article
Article Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Land use change; Tropical agriculture; Community agriculture; Elaeis guineensis; Sub-Saharan Africa; Systematic map; Liberia
Subjects:	Q Science > QH Natural history S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General)
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > Countryside and Community Research Institute
Depositing User:	Cicely Marshall
Date Deposited:	27 Oct 2025 13:35
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2025 13:45
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/15392

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