the palm pattern

1

The PalmPatternA CONTROVERSIAL PRODUCTION

2 3

Politecnico di MilanoDensity Design 8.0

Docenti:Paolo CiuccarelliStefano MandatoDonato RicciTommaso VenturiniSalvatore Zingale

Gruppo 09:Irene CantoniClaudio CardamoneSara De DonnoFabio Matteo DozioArianna Pirola

Index

Premise

Conclusion

8 9 91011

01 The controversy

02 Research protocol

03 Controversy by actors

04 Links meaning

05 Resume

1.1 Palm oil data1.2 Environmental consequences1.3 Uses and consumption1.4 Analysis of trends1.5 Project question

2.1 Corpus construction2.2 Geolocalization2.3 Mapping the controversy2.4 Network map2.6 Semantic analysis2.7 Protocol resume

4.1 Case study: Cargill

5.1 Actors resume5.2 Topics resume5.3 Links resume

3.1.1 Companies - Network3.1.2 Companies - Word3.2.1 Environmentalist - Network3.2.2 Environmentalist - Word3.3.1 Consumers - Network3.3.2 Consumers - Words3.4.1 Authorities - Network3.4.2 Authorities - Words3.5.1 Social and economics organizations - Network3.5.2 Social and economics organizations - Words3.6.1 Press - Network3.6.2 Press - Words3.7.1 Science and universities - Network3.7.2 Science and universities - Words3.8.1 Zoos - Network3.8.2 Zoos - Words

1718

14

192124

28

40

52

62

31

43

55

68

32

44

56

70

35

47

59

72

36

48

39

51

Monocultures and biodiversity loss

Premise

Intensive land exploitation, which is particularly exerted by big corpora-tions, transforms rainforests into mo-nocultures. The cultivated species, which is often non-native, is the only that can eventually grow and this leads to the die out of many animal species.

Soy monoculture and cattle breeding are the major causes of the biodiver-sity crisis in Brazil, which is known as the most biodiverse country. The Am-azon Rainforest is being destroyed to intensively cultivate soy which is mainly used as cattle feed. Public controversies around soy and meat consumption involve many different and huge topics, ranging from global starvation to vegetarianism. For this reason, we decided to analyze a re-stricted but similar controversy. We focused on palm oil monoculture, which is the main cause of deforest-ation in Indonesia, Malaysia and the other Sunda Islands.

This complex topic is very similar to the brazilian one because in both ar-eas the loss of biodiversity, due to rainforest destruction, is caused by the same big companies. These ac-tors manage often to hide from their consumers the bad consequences of their production processes.

6 7

The controversy

01

8 9

Deforested area Deforested area

Forest Forest

2010 2005 2000 1995

1.1 Palm oil data 1.2 Environmental consequences

1.3 Uses and consumption

< 2 mln MT

15 - 30 mln MT

Palm oil production areas

Sumatra 1985 - 2010 Borneo 1985 - 2010

Palm oil production

Major users of palm oil Palm oil uses

40

50

30

20

10

1995 2000 2005 2010

(million Metric Ton)

(million MT)

World Indonesia Malaysia

IndonesiaE.U.India China Malaysia

6

8

6.5 6.36.0

5.2

2.2

4

2

2012 production Annual growth rate

Indonesia Thailand28,000 9,96%

Malaysia Indonesia18,500 8,11%

Thailand Philippines1,700 5,26%

Colombia Colombia960 4,92%

Nigeria Papua New Guinea850 3,92%

Papua New Guinea Perù530 2,50%

Ecuador Malaysia505 1,64%

Cote d’Hivoire Ecuador300 1,00%

About palm oil

The oil palm plant (Elaeis guineensis) is native to Africa and grows in tropical areas. It was originally imported by eng-lish colonizers to Malaysia around 1910 and its cultivation was spread in the Su-matra-Java-Borneo archipelago. This area is very biodiverse and probably it holds 15% of the known species on Earth, in-cluding some of the endangered ones, as orangutans. Malaysia and Indonesia are

accounted for covering nowadays 80% of global palm oil production. The production has been growing quickly in Indonesia, while it’s keeping quite stable in Malay-sia. This has resulted both in a higher de-forestation rate and, according to Green-peace, the country is ranked the third for GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions. Because of global demand steadily in-creasing, palm oil production is also being

moved to Africa, specially to those coun-tries nearby Guinea Gulf. This area hosts habitats where gorillas and chimpan-zees live. These two, along with orangu-tans and humans represent the four hom-inid species left on the Earth. Therefore we can say that pam oil is actually one of the main threat to hominid survival.

Most biodiverse areas

(million Metric Ton)

Palm oil has several features that make it an advantageous choice in a competi-tive environment: it can be used for sev-eral purposes, it is easily refined, palm plants offer a very low ratio of wasted ma-terial and its cultivation takes place in the third-world countries, where manpower is very cheap.

It is used for the 70% in food products, such as cookies, chips, chocolates, baked goods and such; the remaining part can be found in cosmetics, soaps, cleaning agents and body care products. Although being used in relevant quan-tities, palm oil is often not specified di-rectly on products labels. On the con-trary it falls under the vague nomencla-ture of “vegetable oil”, which makes it impossible to recognize at a first glance. Another thing worth mentioning is that there is not a general consen-sus about palm oil being healthy. Some even claim that it is highly noxious for

man, as it contains highly saturated fats likely to induce severe deseases. To sum it up, intensive palm oil cultivation is modifying habitats and landscapes at a very fast pace, affecting the economy and culture of hosting countries. Meanwhile it is a distinctive mark of Western capitalist system, as it is contained in about 50% of packed products. All these features concur to make palm oil-related topics highly controversial, ei-ther debated by the scientific community and discussed by common people.

10 11

1.4 Analysis of trends Interest by time“Palm oil”

Palm oil, interest by countries (as of Jan, 3rd 2012)

We used the “Google Trends” tool (http://www.google.com/trends) in order to understand whether and how much the palm oil debate has been active lately. Some interesting results are already vis-ible by just querying “palm oil”: at a first glance, no correlation between produc-tion increase and interest in the topic appears, as the Trends curve just shows some up and downs corresponding to cer-tain events (mainly environmental cam-paigns) but isn’t really moving upwards as an increasing trend.Another noteworthy fact is how influential

Afterwards, we proceeded to query “ke-lapa sawit” (both malaysian and indo-nesian translation for “palm oil”) with Trends. In this case, research volume was grow-ing, almost matching “palm oil” results in the last two years. Despite this curve peaks were never associated directly to any of the news about corporations men-tioned above.In third place, huile de palme (french translation) was typed, believing that a large feedback of results would have been given by francophone african Coun-tries involved in palm oil production.We got the highest amount of research from France instead, due to french Sen-ate having approved on Nov, 12th 2012 a law which greatly increased taxation of palm oil products because of “negative ef-fects on human health” (Nutella tax).

The preliminar analysis in this section un-derlines the controversial nature of palm oil-related topics: knowledge about them strongly varies from location to location with Third World showing little awareness. However public debate shows quite active, both in scientific papers and on the Web. It also seems to involve organizations with opposite points of views; Web acts as a box of resonance for their voice, but at the same time offers the opportunity to unveil relations, intricacies and, arguably, pur-poses.

This is where our report starts to shape.

“Sawit” and “Huile de palme”

RSPO, interest by countries (as of Jan, 3rd 2012)

Malaysia 100*

Indonesia 79

Netherlands 13

U.K. 9

Germany 7

France 6

U.S.A. 3

Malaysia 100*

Cameroon 88

Nigeria 70

Ghana 59

Singapore 30

Indonesia 14

Bangladesh 12

Kenya 12

Sri Lanka 12

Australia 9

“Huile de palme”

“Palm oil”

“RSPO”

“Sawit”

Palm oil protests target Unilever sites

a. Nestlè drops indonesian palm oil suppliers

b. Nestlè forsakes a producer challenged by Greenpeace

c. French Senateadopts the “Nutella tax”

d.

the Greenpeace NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) has been on the issue. The two outstanding peaks displayed in the curve correspond to a double inquiry on a partnership between Unilever and Nestlè with World’s second largest palm oil pro-ducer, the Indonesia-based multination-al Sinar Mas. This company has been ac-cused of being the direct responsible for the loss of large forest chunks.

Moreover, the istogras below displays two more anomalies worth mentioning.The first one regards the sudden explo-

sion in 2012 of “palm oil” queries from english-speaking Countries in Africa- a trustworthy sign about what’s happen-ing there; the second lies in the very low number of queries from indonesian us-ers, opposed to the highest number com-ing from Malaysia. Although this may be attributed to caus-es concerning language (Malaysia was colonized by England, Indonesia by Neth-erlands), it still displays how little Indo-nesian people are interested, or perhaps awekened, to the topic. d.

a.

b.

c.

100

80

60

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

40

20

Lastly, we queried “RSPO”, acronym for Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which is a no-profit international asso-ciation that grants palm oil sustainabil-ity. RSPO has been criticized by environ-mentalists for applying certification marks (called “greenpalm”) based on criteria that they judge too weak and just driven by corporational interests.Although the Roundtable was original-ly founded to provide a relationship with consumers, we discovered that RSPO is exclusively queried (and not even in ap-preciable volume) in the Countries host-ing palm fields and factories. This in fact conflicts with its proclaimed purpose and feeds doubts about its reliability.

RSPO

*results are normalyzed in relation to the greatest value (100).

1.5 Project question

Which are the dynamics in the debate about

palm oil sustainability?

12 13

ResearchProtocol

02

14 15

2.1 Corpus construction

Queries Corpus by actors

After the Trends research, we pro-ceeded to build our Corpus of sites. We opted to use a varied array of terms to be queried, two of them being quite gen-eral while the others being more focused, with the purpose of involving all the actors thought to have a role in the controversy.

For each query only the first most rel-evant pages have been kept and, after some cleaning, we got a total of 208 pag-es, then divided into macro-categories ac-cordingly to the actors they belong to.

“Palm oil” <

<

<

<

<

<

<

<

<

50 pages

“Palm oil sustainability” 50 pages

“Palm oil threat” 20 pages

“Palm oil deforestation” 20 pages

“Palm oil biodiversity” 20 pages

“Palm oil rainforest” 20 pages

“Palm oil label” 20 pages

“Palm oil biofuel” 20 pages

“Palm oil free” 20 pages

240 pages

208 pages

http://mpoc.org.bd/?p=885http://www.avoncompany.com/corporatecitizenship/corporateresponsibility/sus-tainability/helpingenddeforestation/avon-palm-oil-promise.htmlhttp://olamonline.com/sustainability/palm-policyhttp://www.cargill.com/corporate-responsibility/pov/palm-oil/sustainable-produc-tion/index.jsphttp://www.cargill.com/corporate-responsibility/responsible-supply-chains/conserv-ing-forests-biodiversity/index.jsphttp://www.bunge.com/citizenship/sus_palm_oil.htmlhttp://www.pg.com/en_US/sustainability/point_of_view/palm_oil.shtmlhttp://www.pgchemicals.com/case-studies/responsible-and-sustainable-sourcing-palm-oil/http://www.nbpol.com.pg/http://www.goldenagri.com.sg/sustainability_report.phphttp://www.seventhgeneration.com/sustainable-palm-oilhttp://www.nestle.com/media/statements/pages/update-on-deforestation-and-palm-oil.aspx#.ULPETOMSXBchttp://greenpalm.org/en/about-palm-oil/what-is-palm-oilhttp://www.greenpalm.org/en/about-palm-oil/what-is-sustainable-palm-oilhttp://www.greenpalm.org/http://portal.fedepalma.org//oil_palm.htmhttp://www.americanpalmoil.com/http://www.americanpalmoil.com/benefits.htmlhttp://www.brambleberry.com/Palm-Oil-P3210.aspxhttp://www.earthbalancenatural.com/responsibility/palm-oil/http://www.ecostore.co.nz/pages/palm-oilhttp://www.epoil.co.uk/http://www.facesofpalmoil.org/http://www.palmoileu.com/http://www.poram.org.my/http://www.rspo.org/http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/red_palm_oil.htmhttp://www.wildernessfamilynaturals.com/category/food-oils-natural-red-palm-oil.phphttp://www.mpoc.org.my/http://theoilpalm.org/ http://theoilpalm.org/importance-for-sustainability/http://www.blommer.com/csr_palm_oil_statement.htmlhttp://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/sustainablesourcing/palmoil/http://www.beebeauty.com/palm-oilhttp://www.orangepower.com.au/palm-oil-free/http://www.palmoilfreesoap.com/http://www.nestle.com/media/statements/pages/update-on-deforestation-and-palm-oil.aspx#.ULPETOMSXBchttp://www.agrimoney.com/news/rainforest-fears-slow-indonesias-palm-oil-growth--2791.html

http://wwf.panda.org/?196732/Palm-oil-meet-underscores-sustainability-pledgeshttp://wwf.panda.org/who_we_are/wwf_offices/papua_new_guinea/?204355/Poor-environmental-performance-seen-as-risk-in-palm-oil-investmenthttp://www.wwf.org.uk/wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=5879http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/palm_oil/environmen-tal_impacts/biodversity_losshttp://www.wwf.org.my/?13940/Sustainable-palm-oil-is-good-for-business--WWF-studyhttp://www.wwf.org.au/our_work/saving_the_natural_world/forests/palm_oil/palm_oil_and_deforestation/http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/about_forests/deforestation/forest_con-version_agriculture/orang_utans_palm_oil/http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/palm_oil/http://www.wwf.org.au/our_work/saving_the_natural_world/forests/palm_oil/http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/safeguarding_the_natural_world/forests/

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/commentanalysis/environment/sustainablepal-moil.aspxhttp://www.ethicalconsumer.org/shoppingethically/palmoilfreelist.aspxhttp://www.saynotopalmoil.com/http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/palm-oil.phphttp://www.care2.com/causes/palm-oil-a-rainforests-most-dangerous-commodity.htmlhttp://www.care2.com/greenliving/how-to-stop-buying-palm-oil-and-help-save-the-orangutans.htmlhttp://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/label-palm-oil/http://www.kidsagainstpalmoil.org/index.htmlhttp://www.lifewithoutpalmoil.org/http://eco-label.org.uk/further_info/rspo/palm_oil_news.htmlhttp://freeofpalmoil.blogspot.it/http://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/guide-vegan-products-and-palm-oil/http://frugalkiwi.co.nz/2011/11/soapmaking-palm-oil-free-shampoo-bars/http://www.wrinklypepper.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117&Itemid=75http://nopalmoil.wordpress.com/http://lavieverte.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/whats-behind-the-sustainable-palm-oil-label/http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/label-palm-oil.html

http://ens-newswire.com/2012/09/06/palm-oil-plantation-cuts-core-from-cameroons-biodiversity/http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/3/5/business/10855124&sec=businesshttp://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/1/10/nation/10229574&sec=nationhttp://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/11/8/business/20121108093301&sec=businesshttp://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-guilty-secrets-of-palm-oil-are-you-unwittingly-contributing-to-the-devastation-of-the-rain-forests-1676218.html

http://greencommodities.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=166:indonesia-sustainable-palm-oil-initiative&catid=9:projects&Itemid=65http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/natural/deforestation/http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/T0309E/T0309E01.htmhttp://www.fao.org/es/esc/en/15/120/124/highlight_629.htmlhttp://www.palmoilworld.org/biodiesel.htmlhttp://www.mpob.gov.my/http://na.unep.net/geas/getUNEPPageWithArticleIDScript.php?article_id=73

http://www.ceopalmoil.com/2010/05/sustainability-new-market-for-certified-sustainable-oils-and-fats-2/http://www.ceopalmoil.com/2009/02/sustainability-of-palm-oil-production-revisited/http://www.ceopalmoil.com/2010/11/how-will-sustainable-production-of-palm-oil-contibute-to-reduced-global-warming/http://linkingsustainability.com/2012/02/02/migros-palm-oil-sustainability-case-study/http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/feature/2029238/palm-oil-firms-create-sustainable-futurehttp://www.worldwatch.org/node/6059http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6082http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15781http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/agriculture/crops/palm-oilhttp://www.die-gdi.de/CMS-Homepage/openwebcms3_e.nsf/(ynDK_content-ByKey)/JSAS-8LVEVS?OpenDocument&nav=expand:Research%20and%20Consulting%5CProjects;active:Research%20and%20Consulting%5CProjects%5CJSAS-8LVEVShttp://www.rainforest-alliance.org/agriculture/crops/palm-oilhttp://www.eco-business.com/news/aussie-govt-to-oppose-palm-oil-labelling-bill/http://www.soyatech.com/Palm_Oil_Facts.htmhttp://www.palmoilhq.com/http://www.palmoilhealth.org/http://www.friendsofpalmoil.com/http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/palm-oil-biofuel.htmlhttp://www.triplepundit.com/2012/04/epa-underestimates-emissions-palm-based-biofuels/http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/08/unilever-reaches-sustainable-palm-oil-goal-three-years-early/https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/04/26-9http://www.ethicalcorp.com/supply-chains/sustainable-palm-oil-nestl%C3%A9-supply-deal-may-be-game-changerhttp://www.newint.org/blog/2012/09/21/monoculture-plantations/http://ourworldtoday.com.au/news/article/palm-oil-threathttp://www.synchronicityearth.org/portfolio/forests/palm-oil/http://nakedeyeview.com.my/other/Ganodermathreattooilpalmindustry.htm

Companies & certificators

Environmentalists

Consumers

Press

Authoritiesforest_conversion/how_clean_is_our_palm_oil_.cfmhttp://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/borneo_forests/borneo_de-forestation/http://www.wwf.org.au/our_work/saving_the_natural_world/forests/palm_oil/fact_sheet/http://ran.org/palm-oilhttp://understory.ran.org/2011/06/22/what-is-sustainable-palm-oil-part-one-of-a-three-part-series/http://understory.ran.org/2011/09/22/palm-oils-dirty-secret-the-many-ingredient-names-for-palm-oil-or-what-ingredients-contain-palm-oil/http://a-z-animals.com/palm-oil/information/http://a-z-animals.com/palm-oil/products/http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/palm-oilhttp://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/kitkat/http://www.palmoilaction.org.au/environmental-impacts-of-deforestation.htmlhttp://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/palm-oilhttp://www.orangutanrepublik.org/become-aware/issues/orangutans-a-wildlife/threats-to-orangutans-mainmenu-5http://www.orangutan.org.au/palm-oilhttp://www.orangutan.org.au/orangutan-threatshttp://www.orangutans.com.au/Orangutans-Survival-Information/About-Palm-Oil.aspxhttp://www.orangutans.com.au/orangutans-survival-information/helping-you-buy-responsibly-palm-oil-free-alternatives.aspxhttp://www.orangutans-sos.org/campaigns/palm_oil_and_biofuelshttp://www.palmoilaction.org.au/http://www.palmoilaction.org.au/shopping-guide.htmlhttp://www.deforestationwatch.org/index.php?m=homehttp://palmoilfree.planetark.org/about/labelling.cfmhttp://palmoilfree.planetark.org/http://www.rainforest-rescue.org/topics/palm-oilhttp://www.rainforestrescue.org.au/ourprojects/orangutan-v-palmoil.htmlhttp://www.regnskog.no/languages/english/norway-palm-oil-consumption-reduced-by-two-thirdshttp://www.fauna-flora.org/biodiversity-and-palm-oil-a-pressing-issue/http://www.born-to-be-wild.org/http://forestnewscompilation.blogspot.it/2010/03/palm-oil-threats-deforestation-and-peat.htmlhttp://www.savethegibbon.org/the-problem/threaminus “spam”

(ads, social networks, unrelated content..)

<<

<

Social & economic organization

16 17

http://www.biodiversity.ox.ac.uk/iposc-international-palm-oil-sustainability-conference-2012http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/forest_solutions/palm-oil-and-forests.htmlhttp://www.mongabay.com/external/foe_palm_oil.htmhttp://kids.mongabay.com/elementary/palm_oil.htmlhttp://news.mongabay.com/2011/0619-palm_oil_labeling_australia.html http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0425-oil_palm.htmlhttp://news.mongabay.com/2012/0130-biofuels_eu.htmlhttp://news.mongabay.com/2012/0519-epa-palm-oil-lobby.htmlhttp://news.mongabay.com/2009/0924-orangutans.htmlhttp://theconversation.edu.au/want-to-avoid-palm-oil-you-need-a-label-275http://www.nature.com/news/palm-oil-boom-raises-conservation-con-cerns-1.10936http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=harvesting-palm-oil-and-rainforestshttp://e360.yale.edu/feature/sustainable_palm_oil_rainforest_savior_or_fig_leaf/2345/http://www.cspinet.org/palm/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaeishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oilhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_and_environmental_impact_of_palm_oilhttp://www.cheme.utm.my/cheme/index.php/featured-article/biofuel-from-oil-palmhttp://www.cifor.org/bioenergy/_ref/research/output/published-document.htmhttp://www.asiabiomass.jp/english/topics/1007_04.htmlhttp://www.zslblogs.org/biodiversity-and-palm-oil/http://www.zsl.org/conservation/regions/asia/indonesia/oil-palm-and-biodiversity-project,1180,AR.htmlhttp://www.zsl.org/zsl-london-zoo/whats-on/discussion-meeting-oil-palm,233,EV.htmlhttp://www.slideshare.net/ZSL_BPOhttp://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/blog/view/109http://foodsecurity.stanford.edu/news/3584http://www.climateavenue.com/en.biodiesel.palm.oil.htmhttp://conservationbytes.com/2008/09/18/oil-palm-plantations-destroying-tropical-biodiversity/

Science & Universities

http://www.aucklandzoo.co.nz/conservation/buy-palm-oil-free.aspxhttp://www.aucklandzoo.co.nz/conservation/buy-palm-oil-free/palm-oil-free-shopping-guide.aspxhttp://www.cmzoo.org/conservation/palmOilCrisis/http://www.zoo.org.au/get-involved/act-for-wildlife/dont-palm-us-off

Zoos

2.2 Geo-localization

Geo-localization by headquarters position

Geo-localization: number of pages per Country

A first attempt of geo-localizing the URLs of the Corpus was then carried out. When we noticed that many organiza-tions work on an international scale, we chose to use the declared position of their headquarters as parameter of classification (with a few exceptions). The countries more involved are the an-glophone ones. This seems obvious due to the queries being made in English, but also confirms how much the topic is dis-cussed on global scale. Compared to the related GHG (Green House Gases) contro-versy, the palm oil one appears equally widespread. Accordingly to what has been found out in Trends, Indonesia is still al-

most absent considering this country is one of the largest producers. On the con-trary, Malaysia is much more relevant on the Web, with government and produc-ers trying to advertise the quality of local palm oil.Australia shows a great interest towards orangutans’ extinction; United Kingdom web pages are split between corporations producing palm oil in Malaysia and a rel-evant number of environmentalist organi-zations.Last, United States carry the greatest vol-ume of pages, as proportioned to their physical extension and of course to the high number of PCs per person.

1-10 pages

31 - 70 pages

11 - 30 pages

70 - 90 pages

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/palm-oil-deal-a-threat-to-the-rainforest-1893312.htmlhttp://science.time.com/2011/03/07/palm-oil-plantations-equal-deforestation/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8296002/Malaysia-deforestation-Can-palm-oil-plantations-be-good-news.htmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/8295815/Malaysia-deforestation-Why-is-palm-oil-so-controversial.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/02/malaysian-palm-oil-forestshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/palm-oilhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/jan/27/biofuels-biodiesel-ethanol-palm-oilhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/apr/04/energy.indonesiahttp://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/commitment-sustainable-palm-oil-unileverhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/palm-oil-destroy-rainforest.htmhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/palm-oil-destroy-rainforest.htmhttp://wtvr.com/2012/07/07/groups-say-palm-oil-production-threatens-rainfor-ests-wildlife/http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/home/1273788/palm_oil_the_hidden_ingredient_causing_an_ecological_disaster.htmlhttp://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/15/14456815-demand-for-palm-oil-used-in-packaged-food-products-leaves-orangutans-at-risk?litehttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-11/food-industry-challenged-to-label-palm-oil/4124980http://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2011/08/25/federal-government-opposes-palm-oil-labelling-bill.htmlhttp://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2011/06/24/senate-passes-palm-oil-labelling-bill.htmlhttp://www.foodnavigator.com/Financial-Industry/French-firms-urged-to-back-away-from-no-palm-oil-label-claimshttp://www.foodnavigator.com/Financial-Industry/Palm-oil-sustainability-A-sensitive-issue-due-for-exponential-growthhttp://www.foodnavigator.com/Financial-Industry/Palm-oil-free-may-be-emerg-ing-trendhttp://www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nutrition/Palm-oil-sustainability-ham-pered-by-few-biodiversity-studieshttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31biofuel.html?pagewanted=allhttp://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/report-assails-palm-oil-project-in-cameroon/http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-31/epa-rejects-palm-oil-based-biodiesel-for-renewable-fuels-program.htmlhttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8ed0eb48-17a3-11e2-9530-00144feabdc0.htmlhttp://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/making-palm-oil-sustainable-1.22693http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/french-paradox-in-negative-labelling-of-palm-oil-1.150360http://www.makingitmagazine.net/?p=5467http://www.pri.org/stories/science/environment/french-grad-student-goes-palm-oil-free-for-a-year-10671.htmlhttp://biodieselmagazine.com/articles/8670/palm-oil-biodiesel-and-the-renewa-ble-fuel-standardhttp://www.theage.com.au/national/health-group-calls-for-palm-oil-labelling-20100416-sklh.htmlhttp://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2012/11/14/2003547685http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16336582http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/20/biodiversity-at-palm-oil-_n_781799.htmlhttp://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/the-threat-of-indonesias-palm-oil-rush/425993http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/10/08/us-indonesia-forests-idUS-TRE4973T020081008http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2012/11/14/2003547685http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/palm-oil-labels-to-inform-aussie-shoppers.htm

http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BTIMES/articles/AUSBEL/Article/http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001572http://topics.bloomberg.com/palm-oil/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/palm-oil-seen-extending-drop-on-falling-biofuel-appeal-fry-says.htmlhttp://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/palm-oil-even-worse-deforesta-tion-emissions-than-thought.htmlhttp://www.treehugger.com/green-food/palm-oil-a-rainforest-in-your-shopping.html

83 (sites)

U.S.A.

38

U.K.

3 2 1

ItalyNetherlandsSingapore

GermanyIndonesiaTaiwan

AustriaCanada ColombiaFrance IndiaJapanNorway

523

AustraliaMalaysia

14

Switzerland New Zeland

18 19

In order to understand the complexity of the relationships between all the actors involved, we used Navicrawler (http://webatlas.fr/wp/navicrawler/), using the whole Corpus as input and setting the Crawl function with the “depth” parame-ter to 1. This means that we collected only websites connected directly to the start-ing ones. After having removed spam and unrelated content (social networks, advertising and such) we unified URLs under the same macro-domains from the initial output of 7.273 sites (e.g., “www.panda.org/de” and “www.panda.org/uk” has been gath-ered under “www.panda.org/”). A further step was to get rid of all the sites linked only once, as we judged them not to yield relevant information.

A second crawl was then done to col-lect the connections between the sites obtained from the first one (i.e., the ones external to the original Corpus). After another manual refinement, we im-ported the final data into Gephi, which is the software that allowed to get a visuali-zation of the whole. Although the actors were already roughly divided into their “zones of interest”, a clear comprehen-sion of the whole was still difficult. In fact, the “Press” area appeared too wide, as it included many websites talk-ing just marginally about our topic, typical-ly in one or two pages only. Therefore, we decided to apply a deeper degree of re-finement to the Press category cutting out every website with less than 4 incoming links. Before doing so, we ensured that this operation wouldn’t have modified too much the visual aspect of the map.

We categorized manually this newly-ob-tained material once again by actors, as it was already carried out for the original Corpus.Since the content of websites had be-come more heterogenous with the aw-fully increased number of webpages, a further classification was introduced, subdividing the initial 8 categories into a total of 26.

2.3 Mapping the controversy 2.4 Network mapFirst crawl and data refinement

Map visualization

Second crawl and refinment

Actors, their composition and number of websites for each one

Further categorization

208 pages

“Nexts”

305 nodes1999 edges

Navicrawler

Navicrawler

7.273 “next”

Data refinement

-URL homologation -Ads removal

-Social networks removal- Revoming sites linked only once

Press with inDegree< 5 removal

2,669 edges

<

<

<

<

<

<

<

<<

Companies & Certificatorsa. Growersb. Consumer goods manufacturesc. Certificatorsd. Palm oil-free

Environmentalistse. Genericf. Apes protectiong. Conservation

Consumersh. Ethical consumptioni. Healthj. Petitionsk. Blogs

Authoritiesl. Environmentm. Othern. Agriculture

Social & economic organizationso. Sustainabilityp. Developmentq. Market information Pressr. Daily newss. Ecologicalt. Scientificu. Financialv. Others

Science & Universitiesw. Conservationx. Universitiesy. Others Zoos z. Zoos

In this visualization every bubble repre-sents a website of the network.the bubble dimension depends on the number of incoming links from other web-sites while their position is determined by an algorithm that puts closer sites with more connections between each other.We set up Gephi parameters (mode: “ForceAtlas2” with “LinLog” mode and “Gravity” equal to 0; dimension of nodes with “inDegree” ).

a.

Companies& Certificators

Environmentalists

Consumers

Authorities

Social & economicorganizations

Press

Science& Universities

Zoos

b.

c.d.

e.

f.

g.h.i.l. k. j.m.

n.o.

p.

q.

s.t.

u.v.

w.y.x z.

r.

386 nodes1,250 edges

5 26

24

6

7

22

32

12 4 4 4 713

14 5

15

9

13

33

8

6 8

4 12

5 7

Websites

Link

Bigger means more incoming links

Closer meansmore links betweeneach other

20 21

2.5 Second geo-localization

Geo-localization by area of action

After having finilazed the network map, the next step was to geo-localize all its pages. Differently from what we did on the starting Corpus, we decided to select the Country of provenance or the area of ac-tion as classifier rather than the real phys-ical location. To do so, some pages were labeled as “international” (e.g., World-bank.org).Visualization was achieved with a se-ries of pie charts for each country, where width stands for the number of sites and each slice represent the relevance of the actor within the country. They were then grouped and moved into geographical ar-eas corresponding to the World.

Interpretations

Once again, anglophone nations are those appearing the most; this time In-donesia pops at the 6th place, after US, UK, Australia, Malaysia and international actors. We checked those pages and we found that Indonesian authorities are still quite absent. This sounds strange, con-sidering the width of the debate and the role that Indonesia plays within the relat-ed global warming debate. Also Africa is almost absent apart from a South African website. This confirms that big vegetable oil multinationals operating in those countries are alien, with hedquar-ters placed in Western countries. Even China and India, despites they are among the top importers of the product, are quite

scarcely represented.Another interesting fact to point out is how companies are localized: the highest con-centration can be found in the US, were we find many palm oil retailers but also producers. The second biggest group is lo-cated in Malaysia, where producers are in greater quantity. UK shares a similar situation with the US: it is the natural consequence of the last-century colonization by the english Em-pire in the asian South-East. Australia displays an appreciable number of companies, mostly retailers or “palm oil-free” producers. These are a relevant force in the debate between local environ-mentalists and consumers.

Geo-localization and number of pages per actor

America Europe Africa Asia Oceania

USA

International

Ca

UK

Se

It

De

InQa

Ph

Sg

MyId

NL

BeCh

S.Afr. NZAu

CoBr

United States (USA) 109

United Kingdom (UK)

International

54

50

Malaysia (My) 27

Australia (Au) 15

Indonesia (Id) 3

Germany (De) 3

New Zeland (N.Z.) 3

Switzerland (Ch) 2

Singapore (Sg) 2

Canada (Ca) 2

Philippines (Ph) 2

Netherlands (Nl) 1

Belgium (Be) 1

South Africa (S.A.) 1

Italy (It) 1

India (In) 1

Qatar (Qa) 1

Colombia (Co) 1

Brazil (Br) 1

Sweden (Se) 2

Companies & Certificators

Environmentalists

Consumers

Authorities

Social & economic organizations

Press Science & Universities Zoos

We moved forward with the analysis of the most recurring topics and words for each actor, using the Alchemy API tool (http://www.alchemyapi.com/).It allowed us to process the semantic con-tent of the original Corpus divided into cat-egories. 14,782 keywords were harvested and then cut to 8,074 using a thereshold of relevance > 0,3. These were eventually grouped into the following “macro-topics”: Deforestation, Rainforest, Apes, Environ-ment, Sustainability, RSPO, Food, Biofuel, GHG and Production.

Every other result left out was eventually discarded.

2.6 Semantic analysisChoice of keywords

Corpus (208 pages)

8.074 keywords

Selection of 10 “macro-topics”

Results categorization

Visualizations

Alchemy API

14,782 keywords

<<

<<

<<

<

refinement (cutting all keywords with “relevance”< 3)

<

“Deforestation” (48)

“Tropical Peatlands”“Buying Deforestation”“Corporate Deforestation”“Deforestation”“Deforestation-Free Palm Oil”“Oil Drive Deforestation”“Tropical Deforestation Account”“Initial Logging”“Timber Companies”“Timber”“Intensive Timber”“Forest Fires”“Tropical Peatlands”“Carbon-Dense Peatlands”“Dry Peat”“Peat”“Peat Land Forest”“Peatland Degradation”“Tropical Peat Soil”

16 115211111111221172

“Biofuel”

“Companies”

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

We opted for a radar-like visualiza-tion to represent the way each actor “speaks” in relation to macro-topics, us-ing them as vertexes and, as values, the proportion between the number-words classified under a certain topic to the total of words counted for that actor.

Another fact worth mentioning is that the keyword “palm oil”, the most re-curring one in the original Alchemy re-sults, as expectable, carried sever-al adjectives and names with it, which adds a deeper degree of information. The top 7 results for each actor were col-lected and displayed in the bubble-chart on the left.

Radar and “palm oil” attributesSample of semantic visualizations: “Science”

“Production”

“Sustainable”

“Industry”

“Plantations”

“Malaysian”

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs*Of word related to a specific topic**Of a palm oil definition on the total used

30%*

20%10%0%

22 23

“Entities” analysis Organizations

Alchemy provides also an output called “Entities” from which we tried to identify the most quoted companies, organiza-tions and Countries. We represented the data in the following visualization. Very few corporations are displayed: the ones with the greatest relevance are Nestlè, Cargill and Unilever. This may be attributed to GreenPeace’s 2010 inquir-ies, as already documented in the Trends section (p. 11), although their common partner, Sinar Mas, is not as present. This may be explained by a possible loss

of information about Indonesia and its deforestation in the time frame from the starting point of the inquiry and its world-wide diffusion.World’s leading force in meat and soy pro-duction, Cargill, gets the second place. Not only it was already implied in the in-vestigations about the Amazon rainforest destruction, it buys directly palm oil from Sinar Mas, adding fuel to the turbulent net of corporations kept in check.Among organizations and their obvious leading players (WWF and Greenpeace),

it is worth to point out the position of the European Union among the organiza-tions. This probably happens because of the great volume of palm oil importa-tion in Europe as biofuel raw material. The same motivation can be attributed to China and India being quite talked among countries, which strengthens the anoma-ly already noticed in the geo-localization (p. 16). A huge number of references is also given to Indonesian government, mainly for its criticized decisions on envi-ronment tutelage.

Countries

Indonesia

Malaysia

United States

China

India

United Kingdom

Australia

Brazil

France

New Zealand

Thailand

Papua New Guinea

Cameroon

Norway

Singapore

Liberia

Germany

Belgium

Japan

Madagascar

Nigeria

Sierra Leone

South-Africa

South-Korea

Netherlands

Switzerland

RSPO

EU

WWF

UN

Indonesian government

Greenpeace

MPOC

Malaysian government

EPA

Oakland Institute

World bank

AFGC

Oxford University

EFSA

Australian Goverment

Rainforest Alliance

Wetlands International

Conservation International

Orangutan foundation

World Resources Institute

Asia Development bank

The Forest Trust

National Academy of Sciences

Sustainable Agriculture Network

WENGOs

Centre for Orangutan protection

France government

FAO

NASH

National federation of oil palm

Wildlife department

Audtralian national university

Orangutan Survival foundation

Borneo Resources Institute

Forest Stewardship council

Rainforest action network

Standford University

University of Montana

ZSL

Companies

Nestlé

Cargill

Unilever

Sinar Mas Group

Tesco

SGSO

Cadbury

Mintel

Wal-mart

Golden Agri

Coles

Felda

Herakles

Mark & Spencer

PepsiCo

Sainsbury

Rainforest Solutions

Kellogs

PTPN

Continets

Europe

Asia

Africa

South-America

North-America


Press


Zoos


Environmentalists

Consumers

Authorities

Companies

Continents

Countries

Organizations

2

Word count

3 4 5 6

2-3

Word count

4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11

2-3 Word count

4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11

2-7

Word count

8-13 14-19 20-25 26-31

24 25

2.7 Protocol resume

Google queries

Google results

2. Geolocalization

“Palm oil” <

<

<

<

<

<

<

<

<

50 pages

“Palm oil sustainability” 50 pages

“Palm oil threat” 20 pages

“Palm oil deforestation” 20 pages

“Palm oil biodiversity” 20 pages

“Palm oil rainforest” 20 pages

“Palm oil label” 20 pages

“Palm oil biofuel” 20 pages

“Palm oil free” 20 pages

240 pages

208 pages

208 pages

minus “spam” (ads, social networks, unrelated content..)

<

<

<

<<

208 pages

Navicrawler

7.273 “next”

- URL homologation - Ads removal

- Social networks removal- Revoming sites linked only once

<<

<<

<

386 nodes1,250 edges

Based on position of

headquarters

First geo-localization

Manual check

<<

1. Corpus

4. Network analysis

3. Categorization 5. Further geo-localization

6. Semantic analysis

7. Visualization

Nexts

Furthercategorization

305 nodes1999 edges

Navicrawler

Data refinement

Press with inDegree< 5 removal

2,669 edges

<<

<<

<<

208 pages 305 websites


EnvironmentalistsConsumersAuthorities


PressScience & Universities

Zoos

Eight actors

Categorization Geo-localizationby area of action

< <

<

Corpus (208 pages)

Visualizationof network map

Visualizationof the semantic analysis

Visualizationof the geo-localization

8.074 keywords

Selection of 10 “macro-topics”

Categorizationof words

Alchemy API

14,782 keywords

<<

<<

<<

<

refinement (cutting all keywords with “relevance”< 3)

“Deforestation” (48)

“Tropical Peatlands”“Buying Deforestation”“Corporate Deforestation”“Deforestation”“Deforestation-Free Palm Oil”“Oil Drive Deforestation”“Tropical Deforestation Account”“Initial Logging”“Timber Companies”“Timber”“Intensive Timber”“Forest Fires”“Tropical Peatlands”“Carbon-Dense Peatlands”“Dry Peat”“Peat”“Peat Land Forest”“Peatland Degradation”“Tropical Peat Soil”

16 115211111111221172

26 27

Controversyby actors

03

28 29

3.1.1 Companies & certificators - Network

Rapresentation of websites and their connections

Palm oil Certificators

Oil palm Growers

Palm oil-free products

Consumer goods manufactures

1. RSPORoundtable on Soustainble Palm Oil2. MPOCMalaysian Palm oil council, established by malaysian producers3. CargillFood market leader4. Sinar MasAn Indonesian company which is the second biggest palm oil producer

Percentage of the total analyzed websites

As this portion of the map displays, the most relevant position within companies is held by RSPO, accordingly visualized with the highest “inDegree” parameter. Palm oil growers and producers are placed in the highest region, with MPOC (Malaysian Palm Oil Council) (2), the most important union of malaysian growers, be-ing the main node among british, ameri-can and malaysian corporations. Consumer good manufactures, on the contrary, aren’t as homogenous; they are fragmented into 3 sub-groups:-the first, very close to RSPO;- another one, slightly more down and close to palm oil-free companies;- the last one, even more towards the bot-tom of the map, with few nodes. Meat and soy colossus Cargill (3) can be found at the same height of RSPO; this po-sition appears unusual if compared with Bunge’s and A.D.M.’s ones, the other top driving forces in the food market, which are really close to MPOC, as most of the

producers are. Being a leader means be-ing more exposed-which also implies the need to render the own public image trustworthy.Slightly above RSPO, we find the longly-inquired Sinar Mas (4) and its subsidiary Golden Agri. They both share a link with RSPO (to be read as “membership” ), de-spites their sustainability politics have been harshly criticized many times by NGOs. Sinar Mas is the only Indonesian producer in the map, along with Gapki. In the area (5) it is possible to notice the presence of consumption-driven compa-nies, split between palm oil-free ones and manifactures. As shown in the analysis of the Consum-ers group (p. 36), this region also includes consumer sites in there, as they cover a part in the debate about boycotting in-quired brands. Nestlè (6) plays a median role in the map, and its position well rep-resents its centrality in the issue, while Unilever (7) is slightly above and on the

right- probably because 4 years have passed since Greenpeace’s investigation.F.S.C. (Forest Stewardship Council) (8) is an authority that certifies wood and paper obtained from forests.Part of the debate about deforestation in Indonesia is centered around whether or not the so-called High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF) should be protected. They are defined as “very biodiverse, hosting endangendered species and/or ecosys-tems, meeting basic needs of tribal popu-lations, or playing a central role in critical environmental scenarios (e.g., erosion)”. The problem is that the logging of trees (cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading) turns primary forests into sec-ondary ones- thus, no more worth of be-ing preserved according to RSPO’s crite-ria; this drives actors into opposite opin-ions. F.S.C. also holds a central place in the environmentalists area, being directly supported by them, although its conduct may be defined controversial.

Websites geolocalization

Number and kind of sites by Country

United States

Malaysia

United Kingdom

Australia

Indonesia

International

Singapore

Belgium

Colombia

Italy

Netherlands

New Zealand

Sweden

Switzerland

Network map interpretation

1.

6.

7.

8.

3.

4.

5.

2.

21%Website

Link



5. Consumption areaDebate about palm oil packaged products6. Nestlé7. Unilever8. FSCCertifier of wood and paper produced through eco-friendly processes.

30 31

3.1.2 Companies & certificators - Keywords

Certificators

Growers

Palm oil free

Manufactures

a.

b.

c.

r.

u.

v.t.

n.

m.l.

e.

f.g.q.p.i.

k.y.w.x.z.

Radar visualization displaying which are the most quoted topics

Notes

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

Production

Sustainable

Plantations

Malaysian

Industry

Crude

Olein

Food related words

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

1.Vitamin - 2.French - 3. Products - 4.Regulation - 5. Ingredient - 6.Deep fried - 7-Safe

A term often used within this category when talking about food is “vitamin”-probably with the purpose of praising the supposed healthy benefits of crude palm oil; something that sounds curious, if compared with the “Nutella Tax” by the french Government.


18%

**Of a palm oil definition on the total used

*Of word related to

a specific topic

Keywords associated with palm oil

Rapresentation of the links going from inner subcategories to the others (also self link are displayed)





Social & economic orgso. Sustainabilityp. Developmentq. Market information

Pressr. Daily newss. Ecologicalt. Scientificu. Financialv. Others

Science & Universitiesw. Conservationx. Universitiesy. Others

Zoosz. Zoos

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs

Percentage of the total analyzed websites

30%*

20%10%0%

32 33

3.2.1 Environmentalists - Network

1.

11.

10.

13.

14.

12.

Conservation

Apes protection

Generic

As companies, so environmentalists are split on the map into 3 defined areas.Generic environmental organizations are located in the middle; some are closer to WWF (10), which is the second greatest node in the whole map, while others are closer to Greenpeace (11).Conservation institutes (12) are placed halfway between WWF and the interna-tional authorities, like UN and UNEP; fi-nally, sites for the tutelage of endangered apes (13) can be found in the bottom-right corner, representing a relevant portion on the total (around half). Their interaction with the core of the debate is at a mini-mum, as they are just connected among themselves and to similar-purpose nodes. What sounds interesting is that, despites Indonesia hosting an appreciable number of species at risk (Sumatran tiger most of all, with just 400 examplars left), the on-ly animals directly mentioned in this sub-group are orang-utans and, marginally, gibbons, as they are fit to live just in those

rainforests.On the other side, there are a few sites concerning the protection of gorillas, which is to be interpreted in regard to the expansion of plantations in Africa.We can trace a parallelism between the positions held by the members of this ac-tor on the map and the debate: if RSPO was to be considered the point where the controversy about sustainability reaches its peak in relation to environmentalists, we could define Greenpeace and its “min-ions” as the first-front line, WWF the sec-ond one, and the conservation groups as the rear guard. While the first two lines are concerned about deforestation and the whole spec-trum of its consequences (GHGs increas-ing, biodiversity loss, etc.), with the front one attacking corporations, the latter just focuses on protecting the primary rainfor-est to save its hosts; which is uncorrect, since even losing secondary forests, al-though being less relevant for fauna/flora

richness, means generating as much Car-bon Dioxide increase.

Alone on the top appears Deforestation Watch (14), a malaysian environmental-ist association linked exclusively to those local authorities strongly supporting palm oil use. Unsurprisingly, this group of sites also displays several connections with oil producers (moved by strong econom-ic purposes), and therefore their content can’t be considered entirely truthful.

United States

United Kingdom

Australia

Indonesia

International

Germany

Malaysia

Brazil

Sweden

22%1. RSPORoundtable on sustainable palm oil10. WWF11. Greenpeace12. Conservationgroup13. Apes protectionarea14. DeforestationwatchPro palm oil website

Website

Link



Rapresentation of websites and their connections Percentage of the total analyzed websites




34 35

3.2.2 Environmentalists - Words

Notes

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

Plantations

Sustainable

Production

Industry

Companies

Trees

Trade

On a semantic point of view, it is worth noting how often the word “deforesta-tion” is replaced with “destruction” with-in this websites - an emphasis that well renders their position.

19%


*Of word related to

a specific topic

Generic

Apes rpotection

Conservation

e.

f.

g.

r.

s.

u.

t.

v.

w.

x.

y.l.

m.

n.

c.b.d.

a.

p.q.j.h.k.z.

Deforestation related words

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1.Destruction - 2.Deforestation - 3.Fires - 4.Loss - 5.Clearance








Zoosz. Zoos

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs




Rapresentation of the links going from inner subcategories to the others (also self link are displayed) Percentage of the total analyzed websites

30%*

20%10%0%

30%*

20%10%0%

36 37

3.3.1 Consumers - Network

6%

1.

11.

10.

16.

5.15.

Petitions

Blogs

Ethical consumption

Consumer goods manufactures

If we were to simplify the whole content of the controversy to few words, we could say: “ Some companies are destroying the rainforest, cradle of many rare species and source of oxygen, to produce palm oil, which will be eventually filled into prod-ucts bought by consumers, (un)awarely fi-nancing palm oil producers and retailers with their money.”Although being too straightforward of a description, it matches with how poor-ly consumers hold relevance on the map, considering how important they should be; this may be imputed to their lack of knowledge on the subject. The greatest crowding of consumer-dedi-cated websites can be found in the Area (5) along with several brands using palm oil, as well as palm oil-free ones; they are placed halfway between the inquired-brands and those who petition boycott for moral and ethical reasons.Another interesting fact is the distance be-tween producers and consumers, which is

as physical (the first hold their industries in the asian South-East or in Africa, while the latter are located in North America, Europe or Australia) as virtual: very few in-formation is given away about how palm oil gets refined and produced, so the on-ly thing allowed is trying to understand which buyable products are filled with.While being the eye of storm in the ten-sions with environmentalists, RSPO works here as a filter between the two parts, serving as a certifying authority for those who seek guarantees.Saynotopalmoil.com (15), a blog founded by a 16-year old Australian boy that sup-ports information on palm oil usage, is worth to be mentioned not just for its con-tent, but also for relevance in the Goog-le queries: it was always ranked 3rd of 4th among the top results, coming be-fore Greenpeace, WWF, MPOC and even RSPO.

Another point of relevance is in the Area (16), containing Palmoilhealth.org and Tocotrienol.org. They aim to give a de-tailed description of the benefic effects, but their direct connection with some pro-ducers make them as unreliable as De-forestation Watch in the Environmental-ist group.

United States

United Kingdom

Malaysia

Australia

International

Philippines

1. RSPORoundtable on sustainable palm oil5. ConsumptionareaDebate about palm oil packaged products10. WWF11. Greenpeace15. Say No To Palmoil16. Palmoilhealth

Website

Link







38 39

3.3.2 Consumers - Words

Notes

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

Sustainable

Production

Industry

Trade

Biofuel

Business

Unsustainable

Consumers often match the adjective “ethical” to “food” and “consumption”, as they try to promote responsible buy-ing choices.

8%


*Of word related to

a specific topic

Ethical

Blogs

Health

Petition

e.

f.

g.

r.

u.

s.

b.

c.

d.

a.

q.

p.

o.j.k.h.i.m.

n.l.w.

x.z.

Food related words

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1.Ethical - 2.Ingredient - 3.Cooking - 4.Product - 5.Snack








Zoosz. Zoos

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs





30%*

20%10%0%

40 41

3.4.1 Authorities - Network

10%

1.

19.

18.

17.

20.

11.

10.

Agriculture

Environmental

Other

International authorities are mainly locat-ed in the bottom-left corner on the map, where we can find UN (United Nations, al-so known as ONU) and its environment-driven subsidiaries, UNEP and UNESCO. This cloud of nodes is disjuncted from RSPO, as they don’t recognize it as a val-id certifying act; still, their distance from the core of the controversy renders very well the liberal setting that underlies palm oil trade.If things worked out properly, authorities would act as a bond between companies and consumers, as well as monitoring deforestation and production rates; this role is actually held by RSPO itself- a fact that makes it easy for companies to de-fend their own business by keeping cer-tifying standards and warranties very low (although being criticized even by WWF, which is actually a member of RSPO). Governmental acts directly connected to the Roundtable are: english DEFRA (De-partment for Environment, Food and Ru-

ral Affairs) (18) and MPOB (Malaysian Palm Oil Board) (19), both operating on territory and agriculture. They also hap-pen to be share a relation, as Malaysian Government’s logo can be found in DE-FRA’s website pages; anyways, MPOB’s position at the top of the map close to corporations, along with fellow Ministry of Plantation Indutries and Commodities, al-ready talks clear about how local Govern-ment is financing palm oil production to support the economic growth of the Coun-try.Node (20) stands for EPA (Environmen-tal Protection Agency), which debated the use of palm oil as a fuel with Malaysian authorities – until being judged inappro-priate in January of 2012.

International

United States

Australia

Malaysia

United Kingdom

New Zeland

1. RSPORoundtable on Soustainble Palm Oil10. WWF11. Greenpeace17. UNEPUnited Nation EnvironmentalProgram18. DEFRAUK Department for environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Website

Link



19. MPOBMalaysian PalmOil Board20. EPAEnvironmentalProtection Agency





42 43

3.4.2 Authorities - Words

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

Production

Sustainable

Sector

Supply

Extracted

Indonesian

Economy

3%


*Of word related to

a specific topic

Environment

Other

Agricolture

l.

m.

n.

r.

u.

t.v.w.

x.y .g.

e.

f.

a.

c.b

p.o.q.








Zoosz. Zoos

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs





30%*

20%10%0%

44 45

3.5.1 Social & economic org. - Network

12%

21.

24.

23.

22.

1.

11.

10.

Sustainability

Development

Market Information

This is the most heterogeneous group, as shown by its extension on the map, although some crowds are still rec-ognizable (especially around WWF). The first one is located in the lower ar-ea, and includes companies basing their business on sustainability, as well as no-profit associations; there also acts con-cerning social development and inequali-ties, like WorldBank (21) and Amnesty In-ternational.Another node worth mentioning is Surviv-al International (22), describing itself as “The movement for tribal people” living in the forest and thus in serious danger be-cause of palm oil plantations. In this context, the palm oil case can be read as an allegory of colonialism, in which a dominating culture (the capital-ist one) moves and destroys the autoch-tonous. This parallelism may be valid be-cause palm oil is produced by non-local multinationals just to be exported and consumed by non-local populations.

It also strikes a lot how much orangutans weigh more on the map (thus arguably al-so in society) than those populations.The two informative websites, Ceopalmoil.com (23) and Palmoiltruthfoundation (24), are both malaysian and located nearby MPOC; once again, they’re strong-ly supporting the palm oil cause, with the promise of “getting the facts right” (as CE-Os’ moniker claims). Their belief is that western environmen-talist, financed by european governments, are attacking palm industry to boycott their products so that european vegeta-ble oil industry no longer holds competi-tors. This interpretation is quite popular in the malaysian domain; France’s “Nutella tax” was criticized as a visible attempt to break their market supremacy.

United States

United Kingdom

International

Malaysia

Australia

1. RSPORoundtable on Soustainble Palm Oil10. WWF11. Greenpeace21. Worldbank22. Surviva InternationalOrganization for tribes protection

Website

Link



23. CeopalmoilMalaysian Pro palm-oil org 24. Palm Oil TruthFundationMalaysian Pro palm-oil org





46 47

3.5.2 Social & economic org. - Words

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

Production

Plantation

Industry

Sustainable

Malaysian

Biofuel

Development

12%


*Of word related to

a specific topic

Sustainability

Market Info

Development

r.

u.

s.

v.t.

e.

g.f.

a.

c.

b.

q.

p.

o.

l.

m.

n.

y.w.x.j.k.








Zoosz. Zoos

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs





30%*

20%10%0%

48 49

3.6.1 Press - Network

19%

1.

28.

25 26.

27.29.

11.

10.

Daily news

Financial

Scientific

Ecological

Other

Although its content was refined twice, news still result as the most weightful among all the actors. It is composed for the most part of daily newspapers, the most linked one being The Guardian (25); it can be found in the cent-er of the map near Greenpeace and WWF. Indonesia’s Jakarta Post (26) and Jakarta Globe (27) carry notable weight, mainly be-cause they are written and refer to an Eng-lish-speaking target, healthiest class in lo-

cal society; the first one probably shares a point of view similar to The Guardi-an’s, moved by an indipendent attitude. Malaysian press finds its place in the high-er area, as it shares MPOC’s entusiasthic faith in palm oil forces as valid leaders in the asian economic boom.Moving to West, the very-quoted New York Times (29) takes distance UK’s counter-parts, as much in physical position (near-by finance) as in its attitude towards the

controversy, more geared towards neu-trality. Meanwhile, ecologism-related acts agree with environmentalists and dis-cuss RSPO and sustainable production; scientific press obviously find their place nearby science-driven communities.

United States

United Kingdom

Australia

Malaysia

Indonesia

Canada

India

International

Philippines

Qatar

1. RSPORoundtable on Soustainble Palm Oil10. WWF11. Greenpeace25. The Guardian26. The Jakarta Post27. The JakartaGlobe28. Malaysian PressArea29. New York Times

Website

Link







50 51

3.6.2 Press - Words

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

Sustainable

Production

Plantations

Industry

Malaysian

Business

Council

24%


*Of word related to

a specific topic

Daily news

Ecological

Scientific

Other

Financial

r.

u.

s.

v.

e.

f.

g.

l.

m.n.

w.

y.

x.c.

a.b.d.q.o.p.j.h.k.z.

t.








Zoosz. Zoos

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs





30%*

20%10%0%

52 53

3.7.1 Science & universities - Network

8%

1.

7.

30.

32.

34.

33.

31.

6.

Conservation

Universities

Other

As consumers, so science is under-repre-sented on the map. This was quite strik-ing to us, since palm oil debate revolves around two important scientific issues to say the least, i.e. biodiversity loss and global warming; we don’t know the real causes of such marginality, but we may assume that it happens because scientif-ic research needs consistent funds to live, and those are usually distributed by rich companies, as food and energy corpora-tions involved in the palm oil case.In the area (30), it is possible to observe a dense crowding of nodes, with Realcli-mate showing several links; deforesta-tion and its consequences are being dis-cussed in here, in an echoing dialogue that involves first-class acts as Nature and PNAS (Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences).The lower part is populated by conserva-tion institutes, as well as those for the tutelage of rare species. Among these, the most important is IUCN (Internation-

al Union for Conservation of Nature) (31), which is the main voice on matter of bio-diversity loss; it has published a “red list” of endangered species that has become the scientific standard. Still, it’s surprising to note that it covers just a side position on the net.Curiously, the most centered nodes in this category aren’t directly bound to big sci-entific institutes.America’s Mongabay (32), financed by pri-vates, shares news and discoveries about wildlife and rainforest; pretty high on the map there’s also CSPI.net (33), Center for Science in the Public Interest, no-profit organization defending consumers’ right to get truthful information and author of the explicitly-named “Cruel Oil” reportage. The third one is The Conversation.edu (34), sharing research material from uni-versities and quite near to RSPO. All these actors offer critical positions to-wards the issue.

United States

United Kingdom

International

Indonesia

South Africa

Switzerland

Australia

Website

Link



1. RSPORoundtable on Soustainble Palm Oil10. WWF11. Greenpeace30.Realclimate31. IUCNInternational Unionfor Conservationof Nature

32. MongabayWebsite about world rainforests33. CSPInetCentre of Science inthe Public Interest34. The Conservation





54 55

3.7.2 Science & universities - Words

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

Production

Sustainable

Industry

Plantation

Malaysian

Biofuel

Companies

12%


*Of word related to

a specific topic

Conservation

Other

Universities

r.

t.

u.

v.s.

e.

f.

c.

l.

n.

x.

w.

y.

p.o.q.c.a.b.j.

m.

Notes

The word “biodiversity” is very popular within the scientific realm, appearing more times than half of the other envi-ronment-related terms.

Environment related words

1. 2. 3. 4.

1.Biodiversity - 2.Environmental - 3. Habitat - 4.Ecosystem








Zoosz. Zoos

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs





30%*

20%10%0%

56 57

3.8.1 Zoos - Network

2%

1.

13.

11.

10.

Zoos

Apes protection

The last group, notably smaller than the others, is composed of zoos. They claim themselves “protectors of bio-diversity”, as caging animals works as a way to preserve them from dangers relat-ed to deforestation. Zoos gain their profits selling wildlife; this is the reason why they are so concerned about the issue, and is also the core of an argument between malaysian produc-ers and australian organizations for oran-gutans protection, some of which are con-

nected with zoos themselves; because of this, the two groups are close on the map. This led us to a deeper observation: if we observe the position of environmentalists, we can realize how the more they are far from RSPO and the core of the controver-sy, the narrower their purpose of conser-vation becomes. While the nodes in the center care about saving forests, the ones under them only focus on HCVFs; groups even lower go further in considering only one specie, as it happens for orangutans.

The proximity shown by zoos with these latter environmentalists made us think that if the focus on the debate gets away from deforestation caused by companies, maybe they’ll become the only place able to conserve biodiversity.

United States

Australia

International

New Zeland

1. RSPORoundtable on sustainable palm oil10. WWF11. Greenpeace13. Apes protectionarea

Website

Link







58 59

3.8.2 Zoos - Words

30%*

20%10%

6%12%

18%

24%**

0%

0%

Palm oil - free

Sustainable

Consumption

Crisis

Industry

Plantations

Production

3%


*Of word related to

a specific topic

Production

Deforestation

Rainforest

Orangutan

Environment

Sustainability

RSPO

Food

Biofuel

GHGs

Zoos

e.

f.

w.

m.

l.

n.

c.

z.

h.

j.

r.








Zoosz. Zoos





60 61

Links meaning

04

62 63

4.1 Case study: CargillCargill’s position in the network visualization

1. RSPO

46. Fediol

7. Unilever

44. Poram

42. Worldwatch

45. Soyatech

40. World Food Program

33. Cspnet

As already explained, the position of a cer-tain node depends on the quantity of in-coming and outgoing links; still, not all of them underlie the same meaning.In order to explain certain “hidden” dy-namics in the net, we opted to analyze a notable case: Cargill and its connec-tions. Not only one of the most controver-sial players in the dispute, being longly inquired in the debate about biodiversity loss, it is also the central act in the central region on the map, as it talks to most of the other groups.

The importance of Cargill Company

1.

7.

3.

10.

33.

29.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

42.

43.

41.

44.

45.

46.

4.

47.

3. Cargill

10. WWF

35. R.A.N.

43. Fauna-flora

47. Wall Street Journal

39. Thedailygreen

41. Financial Times

37. Huffington Post

29. New York Times

38. CBS News

36. BBC

Links

Relations

Incoming to Cargill

Outgoing from Cargill

Possible connectiondenouced byenvironmentalists

Criticism

Quotation

Membership

Partnership

Supply

Cargill’s links meaning

All the criticism links come from the lower region of the map, where the debate and the cloud of nodes is more dense.

3.Cargill

38.CBS

35.RAN

29.NYTimes

47.WSJ

33.CSPNet

39.The Dayly Green

41.Financial Times

46.Fediol4.Sinar Mas

44.Poram

7.Unilever

45.SoyaTech

1.RSPO

40.WFP

42.World Watch

36.BBC

10.WWF

43.Fauna Flora

37.Huf�ngton Post

Producers region

Debate region

The visualization displays Cargill’s website (in the center) and its main connections.Cargill is the largest private soy grower company that is also related to palm oil production in the Sunda Islands.

64 65

There are four visible links connecting Cargill with other companies.The first one is inbound from Malaysia’s Poram, and has to be read as a money-involving relationship: more precisely, Po-ram is a supplier of Cargill.Another incoming connection comes from Fediol, european federation represent-ing the business of vegetable oils; this link can be interpreted as a membership, since the american colosuss holds sever-al palm oil routes towards the Old conti-nent. Another membership can be found in the two-way connection with RSPO; all other outbound links from the Roundtable

carry the same meaning, i.e. Greenpalm certification.Cargill also relates in a trade affair to Unilever. Connections between produc-ers and consumer goods manufactures are usually rare, as well as unknown to consumers; in this case, its officializa-tion was a chance for Cargill to improve its public image after Greenpeace ap-proved Unilever’s sustainability politics. Surprisingly, relationships towards envi-ronmentalist forces are also present.One comes from RAN (Rainforest Action Network), first-line organization accus-ing Cargill to get supplies from Sinar Mas,

3.Cargill

Companies links Environmentalists links

3.Cargill 3.Cargill

Companies links Science and universities links

Companies links

Other examples

3.Cargill

7.Unilever

38.Ethical

Authorities links

3.Cargill

3.Cargill 3.Cargill

3.Cargill

Social and economical orgsResuming visualization of Cargill’s relations

and to exploit manpower in developing Countries; another one underlies part-nership with WWF, with the purpose of regulating plantations volume and their increase. By the way, Cargill also partners with “Fauna & Flora” to prevent High Con-servation Value Forest from being de-stroyed. Agreements between corpo-rations and environmentalist are fre-quent, and they arguably imply mone-tary relationships.

Cargill doesn’t show direct links to con-sumers, which are very far from produc-ers; the closer connection between the two groups comes from Unilever that is criticised by Ethical.org. This fits the facts in reality, as Unilever is more discussed by media, while Cargill is more distant from the debate area. Still, very few know about their affairs.

Two links are directed to WFP (World Food Program), as Cargill shares a 10-year old partnership with it.The multinational gives donations as mon-ey, food, medicines, as well as supporting school, most of all in Indonesia and India: duties usually under the responsibility of government and authorities.What’s more ironic in our discoveries is that Cargill is accused of helping via WFP the same local workers exploited in its fac-tories and fields.

One link comes from CSP (Centre for Sci-ence in the Public interest).This NGO focuses on nutrition, health and food safety. It carried out an inquiry on palm oil entitled “Cruel oil” where Cargill is quoted with criticism.

Aside the socio-economical informator Soyatech, Cargill also displays inbound connections from Worldwatch in the meaning of criticism.In an article on RSPO policy Warldwatch declare that its restrictions don’t stop de-forestation but only slow it down.

A total of 7 connections are shown in rela-tion to news. We didn’t check the content of the 6 outgoing links to dailies and such because, in all likelihood, press content of that kind shows positive reviews. Contrari-ly, the only incoming means criticism and comes from an ecologist publication.On the map, every incoming link to Cargill from the lower part contains accusations.

We found other interesting links between companies and environmentalists. For example NBPOL (New Britain Palm Oil Limited), which is very close to consumers and producers, has an incoming link from forests4orangutans.org; this may mean a greater tendency by this company to com-municate with the other side of the debate. NBPOL appears as one of the enviromen-tal NGO partner. This connection clearly points out where funds for the association

are coming from. A similar case is Tesco; very low on the map, almost in the area containing pages for the protection of apes. Among its in-bound links, we can find an accuse from FOE (Friends of Earth) and The Ecologist, but also incoming connection from Rain-forestsos.org (meaning partnership). How much can an association be indip-endent from its financers ?

Criticism

Quotation

Membership

Partnership

Supply

Relations

66 67

Resume

05

5.1 Actors resume

While the previous section of the report was focused on each single actor and its relation with the others, we are now aiming to give a global view of the contro-versy.

The visualizations above were built from the network map and aim to displays areas for each group. While the one on the left focuses on the whole spectrum of nodes and their distribution, the other one divides few relevant actors according to their orientation in the debate (e.g., all those favouring palm oil trade, standing in the top peak), summarizing what has emerged so far in our work of document-ing and interpretating connections and positions.

How do actors talk about topics?

Rapresentation of the palm oil websites network and its main “regions”

Every bubble in the visualization rapresent a website of the network.We can notice different areas where gather websites belonging to a specific ator.

Forest protection Some forest area protection

consumer choices debate

Clim

ate change and biofuel debate

Defense of Palm Oil affairs

MPOB

Palm Oil truth foundationMPOC

ADM

Business Times

TheStar

MPOA

RSPOCargill

Reuters

RAN

BBC

GreenPeace

FreeofPalmOil

Forest4Orangutans

WAZA OaklandZoo

WWFAmnesty

FAOWorldBank

FAO

UNEPUN-REDD

FOE

ConservationIUCN

SurvivalImnternational

Mongabay

Realclimate

TheGuardian

Palm oil promoters

ProductionCompanies

Consumer good manufacturers

Malaysian press

Press and media

Science

Science forconservation

Internationalauthorities

Natureconservation

ModerateEnvironmentalists

Activists

Apesprotection

Zoos

Consumer


Press


Zoos


Environmentalists

Consumers

Authorities

The map “regions” with their main websites are very important to study the dynamics of the controversy and its subcontroversies.

Authorities

News

Science & Universities

Environmentalists

Zoos

Consumers

Companies & Certificators

Socio-economic organizations

0%

10%

20%

30%*

Volume of the total actor’s pages

* Of keywords found related to a specific topic

This visualization displays a resume of the semantyc analysis of the websites pages content. For each macro-topic we can see how much is debated and which actor debate it.

5.2 Topics resume

The chart above displays macro-topics, and has been built from the starting Corpus processed with Alchemi API. While the width of the slices is directly proportioned to the relevance of each actor, their radial extension stands for the times keyword related to a topic are quoted.

On a global level, it is possible to make some observations, first of which being the weak represention of both “GHGs” and “deforestation”, which conflicts with the relevance such topics should cover. What sounds more counter-intuitive is that the greatest slice for “sustainability” belongs to producers and certificators. We could hypotize that this is due to the high number of “Corporate responsibility” pages in the first results of the queries trying to build a sensibilized attention to environmental issues. This is likely to lead to a biased compre-hension of the phenomenon if one just attains to the surface of digital data without going deeper.

How do actors talk about topics? Production Biofuel Environment Sustanability

Rspo Food Orangutans Forest

Deforestation Ghg








Zoosz. Zoos

All links coming from a category are of its colour.

a. v.o. p.e.z. h. c.f. i. d.g. k. j. b. w. l.x. n. u.q. y. m. t. s. r.

Links between subcategories

Selflinks

5.3 Links resume

The second visualization displays relations between all the actors and their subgroups. It may be accounted as more deep and somehow “reliable” information than the previous one, since data were obtained from the crawled Corpus and then cut off links with a weight lesser than 3, not enough relevant. Environmentalists emerge as the most active force: they hold the most weightful connections (rendered by the stroke of the archs) of the whole net, “talking” within themselves and with news for the most.Interaction with companies is reduced to a minimum; this confirms what had been already noticed.

An intricacy of connections

This visualization displays a resume of the connection among subcategories of websites, which are represented by every block at the base labelled with a letter. The archs Thickness stands for the links number.

Conclusions

Research done through digital methods has helped us to understand and bring to surface the patterns underneath palm oil.

A first conclusion can be made about RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable palm oil) and its evident contradiction.Although originally born to certify palm oil sustainability and offer guarantees to consumers, in the end it just reveals as a facade of officiality with the purpose of favouring corporational business. In such a way RSPO stands still in the matter of environment despites the increase of ac-cusations and inquires. This already demonstrates how deceptive the information taken on the Web can be if not accompanied with a proper depth of research.

Authorities are not very effective in pre-venting deforestation. Sometimes local government even help commercial ex-pansion (see Malaysia) instead of keep-ing super partes. French “Nutella tax” is the first example of a Government actively doing something. As displayed by Trends chart on the side, it is beginning to gen-erate a lot of mediatic turmoil in these days. Our hope is that this may be a first step towards more valid regulations.

Moreover, notable was the attention given by certain environmentalists associations towards orangutans, the animal most re-sembling human and thus very powerful as a symbol. Their lack of interest in cer-tain aspects of the issue, along with the discovery of frequent partnerships with zoos and corporations, makes us suspi-cious with what may lie beneath.

On the other hand, activist ONGs appear very concerned, directly attacking the supposed responsible for deforestation. Despites their detailed inquiries, we no-ticed that only a small part of the is-

sue gets to the sight of both media and consumers. In fact, they generate a de-bate focused only on charged compa-nies which are the largest and more vis-ible because of their commercial suc-cess. These often stand at the end of the production chain (i.e. the goods manufacturers) but a lot of informa-tion about their suppliers is overlooked. As an example lots of information is given about Nestlé and Unilever, but how many consumers know about Sinar Mas?They are induced into narrowly boycott-ing few brands, without being provided a glimpse of the whole.

Such phenomenon is also a direct con-sequence of the structure of the Web. Although potentially infinite, it tends to mirror society in giving relevance to a little window of “hot” topics while keeping hid-den everything else. Only a few web pag-es really contribute to build the dialogue. The rest works just as an echo for them. This concept fully applies for palm oil. It was also confirmed by an attempt we made to get the proportion between the total extension of the issue on Internet and what is displayed on our map.

We compared the numer of endangered mammal species in Indonesia with those used in campaigns against palm oil, as well as the total number of companies with an RSPO membership in relation to those found in our Google queries. The charts on the right clearly show the dis-proportion.

In a scenario where everyone is talking at his own advantage and available knowl-edge is limited, we question whether the solution should come from authorities or should be left to the personal interest of consumers.

The visible and the not-so-visible on the Web

Latest google Trends

183

1184

2005

20

40

60

80

100

2007 2009 2011

242

Query: “Palm Oil”Date: 08/01/2013

RSPO members in our network map

Indonesian endangered species attracting web attention

Not so visible portion of the controversy

the palm pattern

Documents

palm oil monoculture

palm oil data1

consumers network3

companies network3

zoos network3

press network3

environmentalist network3

universities network3