About This Course

Students will figure out that palm oil is derived from the oil palm trees that grow near the equator, and that these trees are both land-efficient and provide stable income for farmers, factors that make finding a solution to the palm oil problem more challenging. Students will establish the need for a better design for oil palm farms, which will support both orangutans and farmers. This design serves as a launching point as students investigate what orangutans need to survive. Students figure out that orangutans compete for resources and, when less forest space is available to them, those resources are more limited. Students then investigate how oil palm farming impacts other populations of animals and how rainforests and oil palm systems differ in terms of resources and their resilience to disruptions. The final set of lessons engage students in investigations of alternative approaches to growing food compared to large-scale monocrop farms. Students figure out that some of these alternative methods are less harmful for orangutans and other living things and provide farmers with the income and ecosystem services they rely upon, but are only realistic for some stakeholders.