RSPO Plans to Stay Relevant for Sustainable Palm Oil
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is in the midst of reviewing its impact as the certification body for palm oil celebrates a milestone this year.
- The RSPO’s key achievements over the last two decades, including the increase in global certified area from just 125,000 hectares in 2008 to 4.9 million hectares across 23 countries in 2023 and others can be read here.
Critics of the premier brand for sustainable palm oil have rained on the milestone moment.
While Western NGOs “expressed shock” that it took the RSPO five years to address and dismiss accusations of deforestation by RSPO members.
TuK Indonesia, an Indonesian NGO that failed to make its case an RSPO member, has been especially critical of the RSPO, in labeling the RSPO as:
“no longer relevant as a sustainability tool, as it has become a legitimizing tool for the palm oil industry, which carries out environmental destruction, human rights abuses and land-grabbing.”
Protracted disputes aside, there is an obvious need for the RSPO to change how things are done, if the certification body is to remain relevant in these days where the sustainability of palm oil, is being reframed by national certification schemes in the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) and Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) schemes.
RSPO the next twenty years?
In his opening remarks at RT2023, RSPO CEO Joseph D’Cruz said,
“Through nearly two decades of voluntary action, RSPO Members have banded together to raise the bars of sustainability within the industry. As a global partnership to make palm oil sustainable, we must ride this trajectory and continue to evolve and pursue new territory. There is room now for us to move beyond a standard and certification system and develop tools that would enable the industry to demonstrate sustainability in the way that markets, regulators and customers demand today.”
RSPO Chief, Joseph D'Cruz at RT2023
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Sustainability is multi-dimensional. Within the RSPO fraternity which includes growers, buyers, NGOs and collaboration with national schemes like ISPO, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. |
D’Cruz added that the RSPO needs to demonstrate sustainability beyond certification. He elaborated that while the RSPO’s standards and certifications are the most credible instruments for demonstrating sustainability in the palm industry today, markets, regulators and consumers are no longer willing to accept a certificate as full and final proof of sustainability.
In his vision, a more flexible, modular and adaptive system that provides more “fine-grained and tailored information” to those who demand it would enable the RSPO to continue leading the pack on certified sustainable palm oil.
Talk of a flexible, modular system was greeted with alarm by Gemma Tillack from the Rainforest Action Network of America who was quoted by Eco Business as saying:
That was the one thing I heard from (D’Cruz’s) speech that made me go: ‘What? This is going to be a disaster,’” RAN policy director Gemma Tillack told Eco-Business. She worried that this approach would make the standards appear like an “opt-in process, where companies can just pick which bit they are going to comply with.”
It should be mentioned here that for RSPO members to “pick which bit they are going to comply with” is not a new issue. This 2022 report by WWF-ZSL identified key shortfalls by RSPO members from grower members to buyers, who have always picked bits of their operations for certification.
No watering down or dilution of policies, says RSPO Chief
The Rainforest Action Network is not a member of the RSPO and therefore, not privy to the internal discussions taking place in the review. D’Cruz, was puzzled by how the Rainforest Action Network, read the goals to be more flexible and adaptive, as a watering down of policies.
“If anyone is not clear on the RSPO’s visions or its future plans, they should contact us for verification instead of drawing their own conclusions on what the words meant.”
D’Cruz emphasized that the standards of the RSPO will not be changed.
So why the need for a flexible, modular, adaptive approach?
According to D’Cruz, RSPO standards for sustainable palm oil are the highest standards governing any commodity in the world. The standards worked well when deforestation was the main problem that had to be addressed. Other challenges to sustainable production in land and labour rights were addressed with guidelines for Free, Prior, Informed Consent (FPIC) and Living Wages as these were issues were highlighted.
In its visions for the future of the certification body, the RSPO sees its standards evolving into a more adaptive system. The intention is to help members provide more “fine-grained and tailored” information to those who demand it, with RSPO acting as a vehicle for palm oil producers and buyers to connect with the various sustainability frameworks and platforms.
“Sustainability is multi-dimensional. Within the RSPO fraternity which includes growers, buyers, NGOs and collaboration with national schemes like ISPO, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work.
We know what sustainable palm oil means to the different stakeholders within the fraternity. Finding a balance between stakeholders with different views on sustainability overall, will be challenging but we have to work together to find agreement on sustainable palm oil.”
Thus, the reason for creating a flexible, modular approach to work with markets that have very different aspirations for sustainable development.
This makes sense for the global certification group as its members come from the poorest to the richest nations. Impoverished nations with ambitions to develop their palm oil industry sustainably should not remain poor because they cannot cut down their forests.
On the other extreme, there are RSPO members who have invested heavily into quantifying and reducing their carbon emissions. Their initiatives could help to solidify buyers claims on Scope 3 emissions but D’Cruz explained that supporting claims on Scope 3 emissions may not be for every buyer and thus, should not be included in the core standards. He added that water consumption may become a new subset of RSPO standards as water, becomes a new concern for sustainability in some regions but yet again, water consumption is not an issue for all its members.
CSPO Watch thanks RSPO Chief, Joseph D’Cruz, for sharing his thoughts here.
Published February 2024, CSPO Watch
In his vision, a more flexible, modular and adaptive system that provides more “fine-grained and tailored information” to those who demand it would enable the RSPO to continue leading the pack on certified sustainable palm oil.
Talk of a flexible, modular system was greeted with alarm by Gemma Tillack from the Rainforest Action Network of America who was quoted by Eco Business as saying:
That was the one thing I heard from (D’Cruz’s) speech that made me go: ‘What? This is going to be a disaster,’” RAN policy director Gemma Tillack told Eco-Business. She worried that this approach would make the standards appear like an “opt-in process, where companies can just pick which bit they are going to comply with.”
It should be mentioned here that for RSPO members to “pick which bit they are going to comply with” is not a new issue. This 2022 report by WWF-ZSL identified key shortfalls by RSPO members from grower members to buyers, who have always picked bits of their operations for certification.
No watering down or dilution of policies, says RSPO Chief
The Rainforest Action Network is not a member of the RSPO and therefore, not privy to the internal discussions taking place in the review. D’Cruz, was puzzled by how the Rainforest Action Network, read the goals to be more flexible and adaptive, as a watering down of policies.
“If anyone is not clear on the RSPO’s visions or its future plans, they should contact us for verification instead of drawing their own conclusions on what the words meant.”
D’Cruz emphasized that the standards of the RSPO will not be changed.
So why the need for a flexible, modular, adaptive approach?
According to D’Cruz, RSPO standards for sustainable palm oil are the highest standards governing any commodity in the world. The standards worked well when deforestation was the main problem that had to be addressed. Other challenges to sustainable production in land and labour rights were addressed with guidelines for Free, Prior, Informed Consent (FPIC) and Living Wages as these were issues were highlighted.
In its visions for the future of the certification body, the RSPO sees its standards evolving into a more adaptive system. The intention is to help members provide more “fine-grained and tailored” information to those who demand it, with RSPO acting as a vehicle for palm oil producers and buyers to connect with the various sustainability frameworks and platforms.
“Sustainability is multi-dimensional. Within the RSPO fraternity which includes growers, buyers, NGOs and collaboration with national schemes like ISPO, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work.
We know what sustainable palm oil means to the different stakeholders within the fraternity. Finding a balance between stakeholders with different views on sustainability overall, will be challenging but we have to work together to find agreement on sustainable palm oil.”
Thus, the reason for creating a flexible, modular approach to work with markets that have very different aspirations for sustainable development.
This makes sense for the global certification group as its members come from the poorest to the richest nations. Impoverished nations with ambitions to develop their palm oil industry sustainably should not remain poor because they cannot cut down their forests.
On the other extreme, there are RSPO members who have invested heavily into quantifying and reducing their carbon emissions. Their initiatives could help to solidify buyers claims on Scope 3 emissions but D’Cruz explained that supporting claims on Scope 3 emissions may not be for every buyer and thus, should not be included in the core standards. He added that water consumption may become a new subset of RSPO standards as water, becomes a new concern for sustainability in some regions but yet again, water consumption is not an issue for all its members.
CSPO Watch thanks RSPO Chief, Joseph D’Cruz, for sharing his thoughts here.
Published February 2024, CSPO Watch
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