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View all search resultsRSPO integrity tested as wildfires hit orangutan habitat
Independent monitoring and analyses found thousands of land inside oil palm concessions operated by companies certified by the global certifier group have been burned, with some fires threatening habitats of local biodiversity such as the Bornean orangutan.
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Smoke billows from burning oil palm and areca palm plantations on Aug. 25 in East Tanjung Jabung regency, Jambi. (Antara/Wahdi Septiawan)
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idespread forest and peatland fires in the country have posed scrutiny against the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), with blazes allegedly found inside concessions of member companies that also threaten a local orangutan population.
The RSPO is a nonprofit multistakeholder organization that certifies the whole business chain of the commodity. The group has issued the widely recognized “green label” required for industry players to enter the global market since its inception in 2004.
The body mandates its industry members, which currently represent around 20 percent of the global palm oil market, to comply with a score of environmental requirements, including a strict ban on using fires to clear the land for the plantations.
But fire hot spots and burned lands were recorded inside multiple holdings controlled by RSPO members throughout this year’s dry season in Indonesia.
Between early August and mid-September, fires ravaged a large portion of RSPO-certified concession owned by palm oil company PT Kayung Agro Lestari in Ketapang, West Kalimantan. The company is a subsidiary of Singaporean agricultural giant First Resources, a member of RSPO since 2008.
The fire also burned parts of around 4,000 hectares of high conservation value (HCV) forests, where social and biodiversity values are detected inside the concession. In Kayung Agro Lestari’s case, the concession includes a monitoring site for the critically endangered Bornean orangutan.
A major fire that broke out in early August along a canal at the edge of the plantation drifted into the home of the orangutans.
