The shipment was greeted  with a welcoming ceremony at the Dutch port of Rotterdam organized by the purchaser, Unilever, 

A refinery in the United Kingdom received the palm oil a few days later, churned it into edible cooking oil, and shipped it to Sainsbury's, a leading UK grocery chain.

Companies and governments, particularly in Europe, are requiring that the palm oil they source meet rigorous sustainability standards. Under a new European Union biofuel policy finalized earlier this month, any palm oil biodiesel imported to the region must, over its full life cycle, demonstrate a 35-percent savings in greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuel diesel, and the feedstock cannot be grown in areas with high biodiversity value or a high stock of carbon.

These demands have led the main global certification body, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), to become a major player in the future of palm oil production.

Nearly 40 million tons of palm oil was produced in 2007, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Indonesia leads global production and is expected to supply more than half the palm oil that the world will demand in the coming years for cooking, cosmetics, and biofuel.

Despite the global recession, the country plans to establish about 1.4 million hectares of new oil palm plantations by 2010 leading to environmental concerns.

In response to these environmental and social concerns, conservation group WWF teamed up with the palm oil industry to launch the RSPO, a multi-stakeholder body, in 2004. One of the body's top mandates has been to define what "sustainable" palm oil production entails, and to develop a credible standard to reflect this. The standard was released in 2005.

To meet the new standard, growers and processors must apply eight principles, containing 39 specific criteria,  to their operations. The principles include a commitment to transparency on environmental, social and legal issues; environmental responsibility with regard to waste, resource use, and climate; and responsible consideration for workers, individuals, and communities affected by palm oil production.

Producers are beginning to implement the RSPO criteria: as of last year, members included 72 firms worldwide, more than half of them from Indonesia. About 1.5 million tons of palm oil was certified last year.

The RSPO plans in upcoming meetings to tighten its rules for how much greenhouse gas a new plantation may release. The maximum amount of gases released by new plantations would be based on the forest's original biomass. Areas with dense, old-growth trees or carbon-rich peat, would rank higher on the biomass standard than new growth forests.

"Defining a ‘high value conservation forest' is a vague process. It's subject to opinion," said Tim Killeen, who represents the environmental group Conservation International on the RSPO. "But a biomass standard is not going to be subject to interpretation."

The RSPO criteria also state that oil palm trees planted before 2005 are exempted. On average, the oil palm requires about seven years to bear fruit, so the "high value conservation forest" requirements do not pertain to the recent palm oil shipments that received RSPO certification.

The potential for oil palm to become an environmentally sustainable, high-income crop is too great to ignore. There is little doubt that a certification system can become a key tool in reducing deforestation across Indonesia.

However, in the view of Deforestation Watch, without a larger share of the market demanding sustainable palm oil, any progress made by the RSPO may not halt the damaging effects of expanded oil palm production. Anything less and the environmental movement loses its legitimacy to pontificate about rainforest destruction and the supposed role of palm oil in deforestation and orangutan habitat destruction.THE END