Addressing environmental impacts of oil palm expansion in Liberia/Africa

油棕是潮湿热带地区最有价值的作物之一，主导着全球植物油市场，并提供生物燃料。油棕种植对全球粮食安全至关重要，并为数百万农民提供了就业机会和收入，但大规模将雨林转变为油棕单一栽培也造成了严重的环境退化，并改变了温室气体（GHGs）一氧化二氮、甲烷和二氧化碳的排放，从而影响了全球气候。确定油棕种植和管理的环境后果，并测试减轻任何影响的策略，对于维持油棕的粮食安全和生计效益，同时减少生产的环境足迹至关重要。油棕主要生长在印度尼西亚和马来西亚，在那里它是一种引进物种，通常在大规模的工业种植园中种植。然而，油棕也生长在热带的其他地方，通常覆盖数十万公顷的土地。油棕生产对环境的影响很可能在不同的生长区域有所不同，但在许多生产区域几乎没有可用的数据。由于东南亚劳动力成本上升、土地可用性减少以及环境立法不断加强，大型油棕公司越来越多地寻找替代生长地点。迫切需要研究确定油棕种植和管理在非东南亚产区的环境影响。西非是油棕的故乡，已被确定为未来油棕生产的热点。扩大种植是由当地居民和大型工业公司共同推动的，他们在低地雨林地区采用传统的方法采摘野生油棕。由于该地区的人口增长和人均国内生产总值的增加，以及全球对棕榈油的需求增加，预计种植面积将增加。例如，在西非森林最茂密的国家利比里亚，油棕种植面积在过去二十年中大幅扩大，但只有一个项目正在调查增加种植对环境的影响，该项目是剑桥大学（UoC）和全国最大的油棕生产商Golden Veroleum Liberia （GVL）最近开展的一项大规模实地研究。虽然该项目正在收集广泛的生物数据，但温室气体排放量尚未得到测量。拟议的项目将在英国生态与水文学中心（UKCEH）、利比里亚大学（UoL）和GVL之间建立一个新的长期研究伙伴关系，以量化油棕种植对利比里亚温室气体排放的影响，包括种植园和雨林生态系统。利用由UoC和GVL领导的既定实地研究，我们将使用静态室来测量和比较利比里亚东南部三个土地利用系统的温室气体通量。这些包括雨林、种植野生油棕的小农农场和工业油棕种植园。我们将把我们的温室气体通量数据与土壤物理和化学特性、作物产量以及项目合作伙伴UoC以前收集的现有生物多样性和生态系统功能数据结合起来，全面了解利比里亚土地利用变化如何影响生态条件和作物生产。我们将与西非各地的合作者网络合作，举办一次研讨会，传播以前在东南亚进行的可持续油棕研究的成果，包括吸取的经验教训。根据研讨会期间举行的对话，我们将发布一份议程，为整个热带非洲，特别是西非的土地管理研究的未来方向提供信息。成果将促进未来的合作研究计划。

Oil palm is one of the most valuable crops in the humid tropics, dominating the global vegetable fat market and providing biofuel. Oil palm cultivation is essential to global food security and provides jobs and income to millions of farmers, but large-scale conversion of rainforest to oil palm monoculture has also caused substantial environmental degradation and altered the emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide, which in turn affects the global climate. Identifying the environmental consequences of oil palm establishment and management, and testing strategies to mitigate any impacts, is essential to maintaining oil palm's food security and livelihoods benefits while reducing the environmental footprints of production.Oil palm is principally grown in Indonesia and Malaysia, where it is an introduced species and commonly cultivated in large-scale industrial plantations. However, oil palm is also grown elsewhere in the tropics, often covering hundreds of thousands of hectares of land. It is likely that the environmental impacts of oil palm production differ across growth regions, yet few data are available in many producing regions. Owing to rising labour costs, reduced land availability, and increasing environmental legislation in Southeast Asia, large-scale oil palm corporations are increasingly looking for alternative growth locations. Research is urgently needed to identify the environmental impacts of oil palm establishment and management in non-Southeast Asia producing regions.West Africa, oil palm's native home, has been identified as a future hotspot for oil palm production. Expanded cultivation is driven by both local people, who practice traditional methods of harvesting wild-growing oil palms from areas of lowland rainforest, and large-scale industrial corporations. The cultivated area is predicted to increase owing to population growth and increases in per capita GDP in the region, and heightened demand for palm oil globally. For instance, in Liberia, the most densely-forested country in West Africa, oil palm expansion has increased substantially over the last twenty years, yet only one project, a recent large-scale field study between the University of Cambridge (UoC) and Golden Veroleum Liberia ('GVL', the largest oil palm producer nationwide), is investigating the environmental impacts of increased cultivation. While the project is collecting a wide range of biological data, GHG emissions have yet to be measured.The proposed project will establish a new, long-term research partnership between the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), University of Liberia (UoL), and GVL to quantify the impacts of oil palm cultivation on GHG emissions in Liberia including plantations and rainforest ecosystems. Capitalising on the established field study led by UoC and GVL, we will use static chambers to measure and compare GHG fluxes across three land-use systems in Southeast Liberia. These include rainforest, smallholder farms with wild-growing oil palms, and industrial oil palm plantations. We will couple our GHG flux data with measurements of soil physical and chemical properties, crop yields, and existing biodiversity and ecosystem function data collected previously by project partner UoC, to provide a holistic understanding of how land-use change affects ecological conditions and crop production in Liberia. Working with a network of collaborators based across West Africa, we will host a workshop to disseminate results from previous sustainable oil palm research in Southeast Asia, including lessons learnt. Informed by conversations held during our workshop, we will publish an agenda for future directions for land management research across tropical Africa, and West Africa specifically. Outcomes will facilitate future collaborative research initiatives.