It is the most widely used vegetable oil on the planet. Mars Incorporated, the maker of

Snickers, Skittles, (INAUDIBLE), Lifesavers, Five Gum, says from here on out, it`s only

going to use palm oil that`s obtained without hurting the environment. One way to do that

is by planting oil palm trees and making sure that much of the palm oil they produce goes

to good use.

But there`s another way to get the ingredient. One that`s more harmful for the environment,

one that involves deforestation. What does that matter?

Deforestation is the practice of cutting down forests for various different reasons, but

it`s fundamentally cutting down trees and living behind a vast open wasteland.

Deforestation is most common in countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico, Papua New

Guinea, and Russia.

The main causes of deforestation can be classified into three categories. Basically, industrial

uses, chopping down the forest to build factories or to build residential areas. The second

one is agriculture. So cutting down forest in order to grow, for example palm oil plantations.

Agricultural deforestation can also be caused by non-food crops, for example, paper plantations.

And the third cause is life stock. So, in many places, for example, in Brazil, deforestation

is caused by farmers clearing the land to create pasture land for cows.

Deforestation can happen on a lot of different scales. It can be anything from illegal squatting,

a dozen folks in local village using small rudimentary chainsaws and cutting down the

trees and then, of course, on the other end of the spectrum is massive industrial scale.

Deforestation, when they bring in lots of heavy machinery for advanced technology, and

they can go in and clear forest in a very short amount of time.

Deforestation affects the environment in two main ways: trees, of course, absorb carbon

dioxide and as human beings put more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the more

trees we cut down, the more we hinder the ability of the planet to balance how much

carbon is in the atmosphere.

But another impact of chopping down forests is, of course, reducing the habitat for animals

to live in. Every year over thousand different species go extinct around the world. That

is a conservative estimate, and a big chunk of that happens because of deforestation.