In 2016, I spent three months in the Peruvian Amazon trying to understand how oil palm was expanding in the rich, bio-dense rain-forests outside of a rapidly expanding city called Pucallpa. I traveled via motorbike to various plantation sites to measure carbon stored in biomass between smallholder local farmers and foreign big industry plantations. Later, I used GPS-tracking and satellite imagery to map how where both regimes were expanding, finding an the majority of deforestation for oil palm was largely in the hands of large, profitable companies often at the expense of indigenous territories waiting for official recognition. These practices, often employing illegal slash-and-burn methods, resulted in overwhelmingly higher carbon emissions, breaking a net zero deforestation international commitment Peru signed with Norway and Germany in 2014.
