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 The Malaysian Palm Oil Council sponsored the first International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah in April 2008. This Conference was called to highlight new research and developments on environmental issues and to continue the dialogue within the industry on the challenge of complying with the principles and criteria of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which they helped to write.
Speakers at the conference boiled down the RSPO principles and criteria, indicators and guidance statements that make up the 53-page document into this catch phrase: sustainability means people, planet and profit.
In one sense, the RSPO certification process is calling for a system of documentation and auditing analogous to the accounting standards followed by most businesses today, where certified public accountants audit the books. The RSPO expands the concept into new fields of expertise.
Sabarinah Mazurky, certification executive with the Malaysian firm QAS International Sdn Bhd, says the RSPO scheme will likely require an ecologist to verify that the areas of high-conservation value have been properly identified and the management plan is complete. Sociologists may also be needed to evaluate the company’s approach to handling community issues. She described her organization’s approach to setting up a certification system for the RSPO at the sustainability conference.
Other speakers at the conference addressed the challenges of complying with the standards. Many of the plantations participating in the RSPO are 50 to 100 years old and have long incorporated British sensibilities on social issues inherited from the colonial period. Says Joshua Mathew, senior manager of agronomy at the IOI Corporation Bhd.’s research center: “However, these old estates have no documents for environmental and social impact assessments, and action plans to mitigate negative impacts.” He says preparing the required documentation for the RSPO certification process will be a “mammoth task” and believes there should be flexibility in applying the new standards. “One cannot expect perfect procedures to be in place in every aspect of plantation management,” he says. “A minimum benchmark lower than perfect is required, at least at this early stage of the certification process of RSPO oil, followed by continuous improvement programs as stated in principle eight.” Mathews predicts oil palm expansion will be hampered because of the lack of personnel with experience and practical expertise to create the impact assessments required by principle seven.
Over its 150 year history, Sime Darby Bhd. has continually made improvements, says Senior Vice President Syed Mahdhar Syed Hussain. With a recent round of mergers, Sime Darby is the world’s largest palm oil producer employing 102,000 people in its offices and plantations covering 560,000 hectares (1.4 million acres) in Malaysia and Indonesia. Most of the improvements Hussain detailed in his presentation at the sustainability conference dealt with agronomic advances in palm oil production. The palm oil industry has been criticized for its use of burning to clear and replant land, which Hussain admits his company practiced some 30 years ago.
Once the negative impacts became clearer and burning was outlawed in Malaysia, the practice was discontinued. “Now we know,” he says. “The biggest sin is knowing and not doing anything different.” Sustainable practices adopted in recent years at Sime Darby include integrated pest management measures such as encouraging owls for rodent control, water management and effluent treatment to protect water resources and the recycling of mill byproducts for energy or fertilizer. Since June 2007, the company has created conservation areas in each of its plantation estates, setting aside 18,000 hectares (44,000 acres). The company has also established a 400-acre Heritage Park to house a gene bank of the 3,000 tree species found in peninsular Malaysia. Like Sime Darby, Wilmar International Ltd. has set aside 5 percent of its planted area, or about 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) for conservation, according to Simon Siburat, coordinator of RSPO initiatives for Wilmar. Additionally, the company has adopted a zero-burn policy for replanting acres and is utilizing biomass for energy. The company has three Clean Development Mechanism projects in Indonesia registered with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which are generating carbon credits. The projects include biomass energy plants using waste products from palm mills. New projects are in development to trap methane from oil mill effluent pods for power generation.
Corporate social responsibility needs to go far beyond looking after plantation and mill workers’ welfare through the provision of housing and amenities, recreation, and health and safety programs, Siburat says. Wilmar, and other plantation companies, are building schools for the children of migrant workers and providing free education. Wilmar has a pilot project to convert flood-prone land to paddy fields for rice cultivation for local food production. In another project, plantation harvesters can purchase buffalo at subsidized rates to increase their work productivity, and thus their incomes. In the view of Deforestation Watch, as the palm oil industry in Malaysia begins its journey towards full sustainability, the rest of the palm oil industry will be watching to see how the RSPO framework influences the other efforts to define sustainable growing practices worldwide.
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