In Indonesia, oil palm, a productive source of cooking oil and biodiesel, offers the biggest reason to clear.
Between 2000 and 2006 Indonesia planted roughly half a million hectares of oil palm a year, mostly on recently deforested land.
The oil palm is an efficient crop, yielding up to ten times more oil per hectare than soyabeans, rapeseed or sunflowers.
That immense forest is pockmarked in places by isolated lighter-green squares, where the trees have been felled and oil palm planted.
China, which has agreed to build and renovate 6, 000km of roads in Congo, reportedly wants to cultivate oil palm there on a massive scale.
They would be "jobs in the long term for the planting of the oil palm, and then its maintenance and ongoing harvesting, " Greg Sheppard says.
In Peru's Huallaga valley over the past two decades the authorities have helped thousands of farmers to replace 81, 000 hectares of coca with alternatives such as coffee, cacao, rubber and oil palm.
Land-use planning for oil palm, for example, might involve not only the ministry of forestry but also those of agriculture, finance, energy and infrastructure as well as the army and the police.
In 2010, he prodded the Sara Lee Corporation to commit to purchasing palm oil from suppliers that are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm (RSPO), an international organization of producers, distributors, conservationists and other stakeholders, formed in 2004 to promote the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products.
Last year a Dutch study found that draining Indonesian swamps to make way for oil-palm plantations resulted in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions for each tonne of palm oil produced, by speeding up the decomposition of the peaty soil.
For years, worries about palm oil have been contained within an organisation called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
Additionally, the government is set to implement the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil certification (ISPO) which, unlike the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil certification, will be mandatory.
Bakrie-controlled companies cover the breadth of Indonesia's economy, including mining, oil and gas, palm oil, property, telecommunications and finance.
Those who specialize in commodities such as oil, palm and timber strongly benefited from rising demand.
Yet these tracts "give way to rubber and oil-palm plantations owned by untouchable companies, " just as the Kapuas river teems with logs felled by similarly connected operators.
Agricultural commodities such as rubber, timber and palm oil are the biggest source of fortunes.
In Malaysia, exporters have stopped selling palm oil to Iran, because they cannot get paid.
Analysts, though, point to strong profit growth from Genting's palm oil plantations and oil-and-gas-production business.
An all-party scrutiny committee agreed new payments for renewable energy - including palm oil.
They decouple the physical flow of palm oil from the sustainability of the farms.
Nestle was targeted for using Sinar Mas, the offending producer and supplier of palm oil in Indonesia.
FORBES: How social media is changing the nature of green campaigns
Examples discussed included export restrictions in China on rare earth metals and in Indonesia on palm oil.
As a result, palm oil uses significantly less land to generate the same amount of usable energy.
Yet burning a tonne of palm oil instead of fossil fuel saves only three tonnes of emissions.
The Awa started to fight the takeover of their territories for palm oil plantations 16 years ago.
Mr Neath added that because palm oil had so many uses, not even Unilever had much leverage.
There is, however, a potentially bigger environmental cost in the producing bags from cornstarch or palm oil.
Commodity markets have been kind to Indonesia with its abundant reserves of coal, copper, palm oil and gold.
FORBES: Bailing Out Indonesia's Bakrie: Commodity Brokers To The Rescue?
Unilever then buys a certificate from the Green Palm Programme for every ton of palm oil they purchase.
Unilever keeps buying its palm oil the same old way: sometimes without any clue where it came from.
应用推荐