Palm Oil

The rapid growth in palm oil production to feed global demands for edible oils and biofuels is causing serious social and environmental problems yet plantations are set to double their extent in the next 20 years. In 2004, the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a multistakeholder and non-profit association and voluntary certification scheme, was established to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil. Since then, at least 46% of the world’s largest oil palm producers and traders have made their own commitments to respect human rights and eliminate deforestation in their supply chains -– often referred to as No Deforestation, No Peat, and No Exploitation (NDPE) commitments.

Why is it relevant to indigenous peoples and forest peoples? 

Despite the operation of RSPO and the existence of corporate policies on human rights and forest protection, indigenous peoples and forest peoples across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America face multiple human rights violations linked to the production of palm oil. These range from forced evictions from their ancestral lands, to health issue related to water and soil pollution and destruction of cultural heritage and traditional livelihoods. 

The standards set by the RSPO’s Principles and Criteria in relation to the land rights of indigenous peoples and other potentially affected communities are strong, including requiring respect for customary land rights and FPIC. This in itself has made a significant contribution towards mainstreaming principles like FPIC into corporate policy and the wider discourse on corporate accountability, has empowered affected communities, and in some cases achieved concrete improvements in practice such as limiting the encroachment of oil palm concessions on community land areas. However, major challenges remain in relation to widespread non-compliance, systemic conflicts of interest in the auditing system, and in the ability of the RSPO’s complaint handling system to hold companies to account when they are alleged to be non-compliant with the high social and environmental standards they have committed to.