Is the palm oil industry going up in smoke as market forces and environmental concerns collide?

The setting should have been one of pure, unadulterated, luxury – walking down from my poolside room at one of my favourite hotels, the Goodwood Park in Singapore, dropping my towel and slipping into the pool to swim lazy laps surrounded by tropical plants. Instead, the air was thick with a smoky haze and the hotel was deserted. This was June 2013, when millions of hectares of Sumatran forest were ablaze in the annual “slash and burn” to clear land for palm oil plantations.In Singapore,…