GIVEN the nature of their business, plantation companies are among the earliest in the country to embrace and adopt the best green practices to ensure that palm oil is sustainably produced under well-managed environmental conditions.

In fact, many of these companies are being judged on how they earn their profits based on various green practices and initiatives.

Going green was inevitable. There were constant attacks from Western environmental NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of The Earth criticising oil palm plantation groups as the culprits of climate change, forest destruction, destroying the biodiversity and endangering the habitats of the orang utan and Sumatran rhinos.

Local planters continue to face pressure from major consuming nations like the European Union (EU). The carbon issue is getting serious and challenging, and it is being taken up by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the EU, the US and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change/United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

As local palm oil is heavily dependent on exports, companies had to undergo highly capitalised and rigorous time-taxing certification process under RSPO that supports certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) in order to secure access into the international markets.THE END

Source: The Star