Delivering win-wins for conservation and production in oil palm plantations: Determining links between habitat restoration, biodiversity, and yield

Oil palm is currently grown across more than 18 million hectares of the tropics. It has the highest yield per hectare of all vegetable oil crops, and therefore forms a critical component of global food security. However, the expansion of the industry has driven large-scale loss of tropical forest, and associated declines in biodiversity and increases in carbon emissions. To minimise the environmental impacts and maximise the food security benefits of palm oil production, plantation management needs to maximise yield per hectare, but minimise negative impacts on the environment. An essential requirement for long term sustainability is to find options for ecological intensification - supporying biodiversity that delivers yield benefits within plantations. Within this, finding ways to manage plantations to maximise delivery of pest control, pollination, and healthy soil dynamics is likely to be key. Although agronomic approaches for delivering these functions are well developed by the oil palm industry, there has been little investigation of the role that biodiversity plays in these, or ways that oil palm landscapes can be managed to support ecosystem services and yield.
Based within an established research programme in industrial oil palm plantations in Riau, Indonesia (the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function in Tropical Agriculture (BEFTA) Programme), this project will consider the effect of plantation management practices on delivery of key yield-supporting ecosystem functions. Working in close collaboration with oil palm industry scientists from the Sinar
Mas Agro Resources and Technology Research Institute (SMARTRI), the student will travel to Indonesia to collect field-based data from a series of well-established experimental sites in which large-scale manipulations of understory vegetation complexity and tree planting have been conducted. Data collection by the student could include a range of management options, taxa, and ecosystem functions, depending on the interests of the student. As well as offering a variety of options for new field-based data collection, the well-established field sites also offer an exciting opportunity to link with >8 years of existing data sets. Available data include information on environmental conditions, biodiversity, rates of ecosystem functions, and yield. Through this highly collaborative, fieldwork- and data-based approach, the student will develop skills in tropical ecology, agronomy, experimental design, data collection, and statistical analyses, as well as developing awareness and understanding of the oil palm industry.
Results from this project will give valuable new insights into landscape-scale management options for delivery of ecosystem functions and maximising yield in oil palm systems. This will not only provide novel insights into the ecological dynamics of human-modified systems, but also bring substantial sustainability and food security benefits. Through our strong existing collaborations with SMARTRI and IPB University, and oil palm sustainability organisations such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), findings from the project will be shared directly with growers and policy makers, to deliver important bioscience evidence for increased sustainability of agriculture and food security