Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 6, 2023 - February 12, 2023

On Nov 15, 2022, the symbolic eight billionth baby was born, only 12 years after we passed the seven billion population milestone. This baby was born into a world still recovering from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, while facing yet more disruption from the Ukraine war. She was born in the midst of COP27, which asserted the importance of “collective, complementary and collaborative action” to tackle the existential climate emergency. We have all felt the impacts of these intersecting challenges: through rising food and energy prices, disrupted trade patterns and a pervasive sense of insecurity and uncertainty.

Our world of eight billion people faces profound challenges in providing a sustainable future for this child, born somewhere in the global south. How will we ensure her needs for food, clothing, shelter and education are met while protecting the ecosystems and planetary resources she will depend on to thrive?

Over the last 18 years, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has worked to build such a sustainable future for the palm oil industry. By working with stakeholders across the supply chain, we have developed and implemented the world’s most rigorous standards for producing and using certified sustainable palm oil as an essential ingredient for our sustainable future.

What RSPO has achieved since its inception in 2004 is truly remarkable — bringing close to 20% of global production under a rigorous certification standard through a multistakeholder process, showing how sustainability and economic prosperity are not a zero-sum game, and positively impacting the lives and livelihoods of countless workers, smallholders and local communities. The RSPO partnership has demonstrated, with rigour and scale, that it is possible for such a critical crop to be produced according to the highest of sustainability standards.

The recently released RSPO Impact Report highlights progress across a range of sustainability indicators, including:

•     4.5 million hectares of land across the world certified under the RSPO standard, and of this area, over 300,000ha (larger than the Klang Valley) conserved and protected as part of our production landscape;

•     greenhouse gas emissions prevented since 2015 equivalent to nearly 400,000 cars being driven annually;

•     more than US$4 million (RM17 million) of support to thousands of smallholders across 12 countries through the RSPO Smallholder Support Fund; and

•   half a million workers in estates and mills with their rights better protected through RSPO standards.

I have spent my career working on sustainability, so I know how difficult it is to make such an impact. Yet despite these accomplishments, there is much more work to be done. Sustainability is a journey, and while we should applaud the distance we have travelled, we must also prepare ourselves for a challenging road ahead. Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions, trade sanctions and the climate emergency will continue to be facts of life. And the palm oil industry also needs to build a production model that recognises the realities of today’s labour market. One that provides jobs and careers that will attract and retain the people the industry needs for the transition to come.

Over the coming years, the RSPO partnership will continue demonstrating how palm production can be an important contributor to net zero; showing how palm production provides decent, dignified lives and prosperity for millions of rural families across the developing world; and proving that well-managed, regenerative oil palm plantations can be a crucial contributor to species conservation and biodiversity.

Shared responsibility

To realise all this, RSPO needs to extend its impact beyond our members and supporters. While we have helped transform close to 20% of the market, moving the needle on the rest of the 80% is essential if we are to have the impact we aspire to. This is why we will continue to build stronger partnerships — with national schemes such as the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) that are essential to establish sustainability as the norm in producer countries; with traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers and financial institutions to increase demand for sustainable palm products, particularly in emerging markets such as India, China and Indonesia; and with the smallholders, producers, processors and buyers around the world who are not yet part of this sustainability journey.

Not least of all, we will tell the story of sustainable palm oil much better — making consumers and policymakers aware that sustainable oil palm is without doubt the best way to meet the world’s vegetable oil needs today and in the future.

The palm oil industry will become ever more sustainable, year by year, issue by issue, country by country. There is no turning back, or standing still. The companies and organisations around the world that are part of the RSPO family will continue to demonstrate the necessity and inevitability of becoming sustainable because sustainability is inevitable.

The world demands that we continue to improve and do better every day. That we build a supply model that balances environmental, social and economic sustainability. That we provide decent lives and livelihoods for everyone involved in the industry, while protecting our planet and the resources future generations need. Our consumers, regulators and financiers demand it. Our children demand it. And we are committed to deliver.


Joseph D’Cruz is the CEO of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. This column is part of a series coordinated by Climate Governance Malaysia, the national chapter of the World Economic Forum’s Climate Governance Initiative. The CGI is an effort to support boards of directors in discharging their duty of care as long-term stewards of the companies they oversee, specifically to ensure that climate risks and opportunities are adequately addressed.

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