Palm Oil standard struggles for credibility

The recent revelation that most certification bodies (CBs) assessing the performance of palm oil plantations are failing to uphold the standard of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) came as a shock to many major brands, which rely on the RSPO to guarantee the credentials of the palm oil they source.

The revelation was made by Accreditation Services International (ASI), the body meant to ensure CBs are qualified for their auditing role, at the 14th Roundtable meeting of the RSPO held in Bangkok in November. At the same forum, FPP also strongly criticised the sluggish performance of the RSPO Secretariat which had been charged by the membership at the previous meeting, a whole year earlier, to take urgent steps to improve the quality of assessments and audits in order to make sure the standard was being credibly enforced. Shocked by the delay and new findings, the Board of Governors of RSPO apologised and reprimanded the Secretariat for its poor performance.

The annual roundtable also reviewed progress of the RSPO’s complaints process led by the complaints panel, by which communities and NGOs are meant to be able to hold companies to account when they fail to comply with the RSPO standard. The Indonesian palm oil giant Golden Agri Resources (GAR) is making very slow progress to make remedy to the communities whose lands it took over without their informed consent. Although the complaints panel had ruled that in one of GAR’s subsidiaries, PT Kartika Prima Cipta, it must provide 460 ha more smallholdings to the affected communities in Kapuas Hulu, in West Kalimantan, none have yet been provided two years after the complaint was filed. GAR has refused to release lands from its core estate to contribute. Instead of sanctioning GAR for its tardiness, the panel seems content to sit on its hands.

However, the Complaints Panel did recently rule in favour of the Minangkabau Kapa community, in West Sumatra, which had complained to the RSPO more than two years ago that the palm oil giant Wilmar, through its subsidiary PT PHP1, was trying to get a lease over its lands without consent. Subsequent to the complaint, RSPO and Wilmar staff met with Kapa community representatives to explore solutions and the company promised to examine legal alternatives to getting a lease that would not extinguish community rights, but then went ahead and acquired the lease anyway. A clearer case of violation of the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent is hard to imagine. Now, two years later, the panel has ruled that Wilmar has violated the RSPO standard and must restore the Kapa community’s land rights.

NGOs have had to struggle to ensure basic transparency requirements are not sidestepped by RSPO staff. A complaint against oil palm expansion in Papua by PT Nabire Baru, a subsidiary of Indonesian palm oil major, Goodhope, was entered into the complaints process and is now being addressed through bilateral discussions, but until January information about the case was still being withheld from RSPO’s case tracker. The lesson from these experiences is that persistence pays off, but a more responsive RSPO would save a lot of grief.  

By Marcus Colchester