RSPO slammed for delays tightening up certification procedures

Indonesia: Forest Peoples Programme’s local partner Pusaka, Greenpeace, EIA and FPP have jointly protested to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil about the posting of substandard assessments on its website. The defective assessments were certified as acceptable by an accredited auditor even though they disguise the facts that the company, a subsidiary of Goodhope Asia Holdings, has cleared primary forests and has unresolved land disputes with the local indigenous people in Papua.

Similar sloppy oversight of RSPO audits and assessments was criticised by NGOs in 2015 and led the whole RSPO membership to pass a Resolution calling for the RSPO Secretariat to tighten up their oversight mechanisms within a year. The NGOs have called on the Board of the RSPO to sanction this poor performance noting that these continuing failures threaten RSPO credibility.

Supporting documents:

Letter to RSPO Board of Governors, April 7th, 2017

Review of documents submitted by Goodhope Asia Holdings Ltd as part of the RSPO NPP for PT Nabire Baru, Nabire district, Papua province, Indonesia (including summaries of AMDAL, HCV, and HCS assessments), (April 7th, 2017)

Comments on new planting notice for Goodhope Asia Holdings/PT Nabire Baru submitted jointly by Pusaka, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) and Greenpeace (April 5th, 2017)