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Executive Column: Long way to go to promote sustainable palm oil: RSPO
Darrel WebberMany environmental and social NGOs have criticized the Kuala Lumpur-based Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a nonprofit, multistakeholder organization to promote sustainable palm oil, for allegedly allowing itself to be used by oil palm estates and processing companies to greenwash their social and environmental damage
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Darrel Webber
Many environmental and social NGOs have criticized the Kuala Lumpur-based Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a nonprofit, multistakeholder organization to promote sustainable palm oil, for allegedly allowing itself to be used by oil palm estates and processing companies to greenwash their social and environmental damage.
On the other hand, many in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, which together account for 90 percent of the world’s palm oil output of over 70 million tons annually, have attacked RSPO as a tool of European and American vegetable oil producers to protect their market from highly-competitive palm oil.
The Indonesian Oil Palm Association (GAPKI) quit RSPO in 2011 over different views on sustainability standards and the Indonesian government has introduced its own sustainability certification system. But since the European and United States markets accept only RSPO certificates, most major Indonesian plantation firms remain loyal members of RSPO.
According to RSPO chief executive officer Darrel Webber, the only multi-stakeholder body in the world now boasts almost 4,400 members, including 100 in Indonesia, comprising oil palm plantation firms, social and environmental NGOs, processors, traders and banks in 90 countries. Its sustainability certification system has been the most widely recognized across the world.
Webber talked to Vincent Lingga of The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the 17th RSPO conference in Bangkok early this month about how the organization enforces its standards and maintains the credibility of its sustainability certifications. As an independent promoter of sustainable palm oil that represents the whole spectrum of the industry, RSPO’s fundamental asset is its credibility in the perception of producers and consumers. Below are excerpts from the interview.
Question: How does RSPO maintain the credibility of its sustainability-certification system as its certificates are the most widely accepted across the world?
Answer: The global market recognizes our standards of sustainability as the best and toughest in the world. But without proper enforcement they are meaningless. So right from the outset we have set up a multi-layer system to maintain the credibility and independence of our certification system.
First of all, RSPO does not employ the certification agencies, so we don’t have a conflict of interest. We use third-party accreditation system Assurance Services International (ASI) to oversee the performance of the certification bodies. We manage the most robust complaints system and our whistleblowing system allows plantation workers to file complaints directly to RSPO through a technology-based platform run by service provider Ulala.
On top of that, we also operate GeoRSPO, a tool based on the Global Forest Watch Map Builder which displays the maps and locations of all our oil palm grower members. This transparency enables us to monitor hotspots. And we are proud to find that that there was virtually zero fire even among our certified smallholder estates during the recent wave of massive fires.
How could the annual RSPO forum in Europe help enlighten the general public and make them understand the complexity of implementing sustainability standards in the developing countries as Indonesia?
Our annual forum is not with the general public but with “our ambassadors” or opinion leaders, who understand and support our mission. We provide them with the broad perspective of sustainability, thereby enabling them to better explain our mission to the people in Europe.
We find that it is the people, not the government, who have opinions about palm oil. The government in Europe does not have any opinion about palm oil. In United Kingdom, for example, 70 percent of people have bad opinion about palm oil. So it is futile for you to lobby the government. You should have opinion leaders who can talk to and convince the local people in Europe about your sustainability efforts. Denying and hiding do not help.
But I’m delighted to observe that our campaign has so far built up a better understanding and positive opinion among many civil society organizations about palm oil sustainability. During our meeting here, 47 NGOs from around the world issued a joint statement saying, “Don’t boycott palm oil, but buy sustainable palm oil because boycott would not resolve the basic problems”.
How is the promotion of sustainable palm oil progressing?
About 92 percent of palm oil traded globally is produced by RSPO grower members. But still, much less than 20 percent of the global output has been certified as sustainable based on RSPO standards. We have set the target of sustainable palm oil at 14 million tons or 20 percent of global supply by 2020.
To accelerate the inclusion of smallholders in the sustainable palm oil supply chain, RSPO launched a new shared responsibility scheme this year to help independent smallholders have their estates certified with assistance from big companies as processors, manufacturers and traders.
An RSPO smallholder trainer academy will open soon to train farmer group leaders to teach their members to implement social and environmental standards of sustainability. In Indonesia, for example, only about 16,400 of the estimated two million independent smallholders have been RSPO certified. So we need more trainers to disseminate sustainability standards through smallholder groups in Kalimantan and Sumatra.
