Posted on 05 November
2009 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Members
of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
this week agreed to consider implementing
voluntary measures to encourage producers
and buyers of palm oil to reduce their greenhouse
gas emissions.
The Roundtable’s 7th
annual conference came to a close Wednesday
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Titled “Moving
Ahead in Challenging Times,” the three-day
conference drew more than 800 people from
inside and outside of the palm oil industry,
including buyers and producers.
After several rounds
of heated discussion this week, the Roundtable’s
Executive Board reached a compromise in
which some emissions reduction requirements
will be directly incorporated in the Roundtable’s
certification standards.
They agreed to further
address the issue and hammer out emissions
measures related to land use change before
the next Roundtable conference in 2010.
To this end, they will develop a voluntary
framework within which companies will work
together to reduce emissions.
This objective received
considerable support by producers from outside
Malaysia and Indonesia who said they will
use this voluntary standard as soon as it
becomes available, while committing to stop
the expansion of plantations on peat lands.
“This is a move in the
right direction,” said Adam Harrison, WWF’s
representative on the RSPO Executive Board.
“We encourage companies to embrace emissions
reduction standards once they become available
and do their part to avoid the catastrophic
effects of climate change.”
The conference also
focused on the frustration by producers
concerning the slow uptake of certified
sustainable palm oil by buyers. The sluggish
market prompted WWF to publish the Palm
Oil Buyers’ Scorecard on Oct. 28, a project
that assessed the performance of 59 European
retailers and manufacturers buying palm
oil.
The Scorecard showed
that the majority of European palm oil buyers
are failing to buy certified sustainable
palm oil, despite its availability and the
previous commitments by many companies to
purchase it.
The Scorecard was presented
and widely discussed at the conference.
It was praised by producers and buyers alike
as a positive vehicle for bringing much
needed transparency to this growing market
and showing companies buying palm oil that
they are expected to do their part in transforming
the palm oil market.
The growing demand for
palm oil is adding to the already severe
pressure on remaining rainforest areas of
the world. The loss of forest in Indonesia
is threatening the survival of species such
as the orang-utan, the Sumatran tiger, rhino
and elephant. Forest loss and the draining
of peatlands for palm oil plantations is
also contributing to climate change and
displacing local people who rely on the
forest for food and shelter. Palm oil is
one of the world’s fastest expanding crops
in Southeast Asia as well as West Africa
and South America.
It is because of threats
like this that WWF worked with other NGOs
and the palm oil industry to set up the
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
in 2003. Since then WWF has worked with
the industry to ensure that the RSPO standards
contain robust social and environmental
criteria, including a prohibition on the
conversion of valuable forests. Certified
Sustainable Palm Oil has been available
since November 2008 and provides assurance
that valuable tropical forests have not
been cleared and that environmental and
social safeguards have been met during the
production of the palm oil.
WWF opted to grade palm
oil buyers after releasing figures in May
showing that only a small percentage of
the sustainable palm oil available on the
market had been bought. Since then, the
situation is starting to improve. Over the
last year, RSPO certified plantations have
produced over 1,000,000 tonnes of certified
sustainable palm oil (CSPO), and over 250,000
tonnes have been sold to date. While this
still represents only 22 percent of the
available supply on average, the RSPO has
reported that CSPO sales have been growing
in recent months.
