Sustainable production

Taking steps towards sustainable palm oil

Posted on 17/12/2009

The global demand for palm oil is rising. At the same time the need for palm oil production land is growing in Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s biggest palm oil producers. Many local farmers have already been driven off their land for this. And forests are being cut down, which has a disastrous effect on biodiversity.

In 2004, local NGOs decided it was time to stop palm oil production from putting even more pressure on land rights and ecosystems. They set up the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Sustainable palm oil

RSPO is an international association linking stakeholders from several sectors of the palm oil industry: palm oil producers, processors and traders, producers of consumer goods, retailers, banks and investors, and NGOs. Together they work to assure the ecological production of sustainable palm oil and palm oil products – by developing standards for social, ecological and economic sustainability.

Smallholders

A number of partners of Hivos are members of the Roundtable. NGO Sawit Watch, for example, is on the executive board. And partner organisation Yayasan Setara Jambi (Setara) has joined. ‘Setara helps small-scale palm oil producers in Jambi, on Sumatra, to produce sustainably’, says Panca Pramudya of the Hivos regional office in Jakarta. The RSPO standards focus on large-scale palm oil producers. Together Setara and Hivos have formulated the RSPO standards in a way that smallholders can also understand them and use them.

Competitive position

The smallholders are given training in how to apply the standards properly. Hivos and Setara also show them how they can best form associations. Collectively, the farmers have a stronger competitive position towards the large-scale palm oil producers.

Click here
for more information on RSPO.

Written by schrijf-schrijf

Photo: Stock.chng

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