COPOPA: The Coalition Of Palm Oil Production Awareness.

By: Vanessa Steah, Shannon Quinlan, Keirsten Glendenning and Natalie Makenna

COPOPA stands for Coalition Of Palm Oil Production Awareness and we are a Florida based
advocacy group that is dedicated to informing the public in regard to palm oil production, a market
industry that costs many plants, animals, and people their homes and even lives. COPOPA wishes
to inform and entice people into taking action and use their voice so that we may come together to
expose the harmful actions that large corporations are committing. COPOPA also works to connect
the public with Florida representatives that can make a difference by enacting legislation that is
capable of holding the corporations that are most at fault, accountable.

Environmental Communication Concepts:
Throughout our website, we utilized the Industrial Apocalyptic rhetoric which means we purposefully
had text or visuals that “...constitute the imminent demise of a particular industry, economic, or political
system and the catastrophic ramification associated with that loss” (Pezzullo, 2018). We did this by
writing about the harmful impacts such as erosion, pollution, depletion, and death. These impacts
negatively affected the forests, animals, and humans.
We used exigency by providing images and animals that were first-hand victims and visuals to take the
viewers to the location of the problem so they can see it for themselves instead of just reading about it.
This resulted in having the viewers’ minds start to think about how horrible the industry really is while
simultaneously evoking emotion and the desire for change to take place.
We utilized the color green which is often associated with the environment. There are many
high-resolution photos of palm oil so allowing our audience to tie in the severity of this issue with
environmental degradation.



These are some of the first-hand victims we depicted and included short descriptions about them
as well as source links to learn more.






By using landscape analysis, this helped us to think of what questions we wanted to be answered.
Some of the questions we wanted to answer on our website included what the various uses of
palm oil are in addition to the impacts displayed upon the environment resulting from the palm oil
industry. Some different strategies we wanted to employ included demonstrating this issue as
something that impacts everybody, not just the people and animals living in the areas where palm
oil is produced. We showed that unsustainable palm oil production impacts everybody by outlining
the various manners in which this industry contributes to climate change; thus showing that in the
end, we are all in this struggle together. 
Landscape analysis also allowed our group to determine what our overarching goal was in the creation of
the website and how we wanted to apply it to both our letter and our website.
Backward planning helped us to keep track of our progress such as:
    • When and what to finish.
    • When to where to share on social media.
    • The backbone of our campaign to get across.
The class textbook Environmental communication and the Public Sphere helped us employ various
strategies and techniques for planning for the greatest outcome of clear communication for our campaign.
  • Chapter 9: The Advocacy Campaign and Message Construction chapter helped us to focus on the importance of constructing campaign messages that resonate with the values of our campaign audience members.
  • Chapter 13: The Environmental Conflict Management and Collaboration chapter ensured that we use the appropriate communication practices when addressing our environmental issue. 

Info-graphics help effectively and easily convey the process of production:
Logos were used so people could easily associate everyday products to their personal life:

Website Breakdown:
Website: 
  • We chose to make a website because we felt as though this was the most efficient way to
    • include the important information.

 Design
  • Tabs
  • In order to understand the unsustainable production of palm oil and what our campaign address we included multiple tabs to break it down
  • Each tab represents an important piece of the negative impacts of production except for the how you can help tab.
  • The how you can help tab introduces ways the audience can get involved to help prevent such issues from occurring.
  • Form letter
    • Shows individuals are interested
    • Personal notes
    • Person feels involved
  • Social media
  • By posting on various platforms we would be able to reach a variety of audiences
     and a greater amount of people. 

 Goals and objectives

      • Target Palm Oil producers and brand companies
      • Define environmental corruption, deforestation
      • Create pressure to integrate better management and regulations
      • Protect animals, habitats, and communities.
      • Contribute to change and awareness with a print-ready forum to be mailed to local officials.
      • Create awareness on The Real Cost of Palm Oil
      • Encode the need for change
      • Provide an opportunity to make a change with a print-ready forum letter
      • Educate on -The Real Cost of Palm Oil
Outcome
  • Change in direction
  • Because politicians are harder to persuade on their merit we thought it would be a
     better idea to send letters directly to the companies
  • While we had some trouble at first putting the form letter and addresses on the website we ultimately figured it out.  
Public engagement:
To conclude, our website got 200+  views and had successful communication through social
media. We had a better response to the website than we thought and are proud of the work we
have completed. We hope that our project encourages people to jump on the bandwagon in
helping to create a more sustainable future for all.
THANK YOU! :)

 REFERENCES

https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spott.org%2Fpalm-oil-resource-archive%2Fsourcing%2F&sa=D

https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fengagethechain.org%2Fpalm-oil&sa=D 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/palm-oil-impacts_n_55a4c391e4b0b8145f737dd5?guce
_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHG7
bqhIBco1ssjoO2hO7g4jWZQoSs0zTLILqAA989aeckJcABfkYs9IUvU8syiATtuZdSJwFVUIIXloPEPvIwYCVov6utkZng0IPq3btgUyV1oR1fbFHWSzc-MdSATVGnwEqj47B_
&guccounter=2

https://fightforrhinos.com/tag/palm-oil/

https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/sleeping-orangutans-tells-sad-story-of-palm-
oil-victims/

Das, Krishna N. Malaysian Palm Giant Bars Supplier, Identifies Risky Ones amid Deforestation 
Pezzullo, P. C., & Cox, J. R. (2018). Environmental communication and the public sphere.
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Xie, Dan. “Campaign Developing.” Youtube, Google, 2020, 
Xie, Dan. “Backwards Planning.” Google, Google, 2020, 

Army, B. (2020). Companies Using Unsustainable Palm Oil. Retrieved May 12, 2020,
from http://www.bunnyarmy.org/articles/list-palm-oil-unsustainable-companies.html 
Ceres. (2019, August 27). Palm Oil. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://engagethechain.org/palm-oil 
DeGrauwe, J. (2014). Deforestation Education. Retrieved May 12, 2020,
from http://www.deforestationeducation.com/products-that-contain-palm-oil.php 
Greenpeace International. (2020, April 23). World's biggest brands still linked to
rainforest destruction in Indonesia. Retrieved May 12, 2020,
from https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/18485/greenpeace-investigation-wilmar
-brands-palm-oil-deforestation-indonesia/ 
Mailonline, J. P. F. (2018, November 13). Palm oil from 12 companies driving orangutans to
'brink of extinction'. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-
6383997/Palm-oil-TWELVE-companies-driving-orangutans-brink-extinction.html 
Palm, G. (2016). Where is palm oil grown? Retrieved May 12, 2020,
from https://greenpalm.org/about-palm-oil/where-is-palm-oil-grown-2 
Society, Z. (2019, August 27). Palm Oil. Retrieved May 12, 2020,
from https://engagethechain.org/palm-oil 
Sustainable Brands. (2018, December 11). World's Largest Palm Oil Trader Gives Forest Destroyers
Nowhere to Hide. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://sustainablebrands.com/read/supply-
hain/world-s-largest-palm-oil-trader-gives-forest-destroyers-nowhere-to-hide 










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