Global palm oil conference highlights smallholders

Vincent Lingga, The Jakarta Post, Kuala Lumpur | Business | Sat, November 21 2015, 5:34 PM 

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a global body of plantation companies, refiners, consumers and green groups, that promotes the development of socially, environmentally and economically sustainable palm oil, concluded its 13th annual conference here on Thursday by highlighting the role of smallholders. 

Around 800 delegates from 45 countries who attended the three-day RSPO meeting acknowledged the important role of smallholders in Indonesia and Malaysia, who account for around 40 percent of the global palm oil output of 60 million tons.

While the majority of participants were delegates from big plantation companies, green NGOs and civil society organizations, they realized that the campaign for sustainable palm oil would never fully achieve its objective if smallholders were not educated and empowered to meet all the principles and criteria of social and environmental sustainability.

“I have a dream that someday in the future both national and international markets and consumers in general will know that all commodities coming from my regency have been produced by companies and smallholders in a sustainable manner,” Seruyan Regent Sudarsono told the meeting.

Seruyan regency and Sabah state in Malaysia are the first sub-national govenrments to adopt RSPO’s jurisdictional approch to develop sustainable palm oil, a model of rural development that improves the welfare of the rural poor through higher productivity but without damaging the environment.

Indonesia and Malaysia account for around 85 percent of the world’s palm oil production, supplying 40 percent of the global vegetable oil needs, according to the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Indonesia, as the world’s largest producer, has approximately 10.5 million-hectars of oil palm estate, of which 40 percent or 4.6 million ha is currently owned by smallholders.

Sudarsono said that the Seruyan administration, in cooperation with NGO Inobu, an affiliate of the Earth Innovation Institute, is presently conducting a comprehensive census of palm oil farmers, to gather complete data on both land status and the main problems faced in meeting the requirements of sustainability.

“We hope to complete data collection by next year so that we can start addressing such issues as legality, deforestation, land conflict, peat land destruction and eventually advance to sustainability certification programs,” Sudarsono added.

South Sumatra Governor Alex Noerdin, who also attended the meeting, announced that his administration was also finalizing preparations to adopt a jurisdictional approach for oil palm estates in the province.

Different from the previous program of targeting sustainability certification at individual plantations, a jurisdictional approach includes all the players in the industry, from multinational plantation owners down to the smallest of smallholders. 

“When a local government agrees to jurisdictional certification guidelines, local stakeholders are given access to work with regional governments to improve the welfare of smalholders, while encouraging environmental best practices,” RSPO co-chairman Biswaranjan Sen noted.

“The RSPO jurisdictional sustainability approach is not dissimilar to the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil [ISPO] program as both schemes promote the principles of best farming practices, transparency, legal and regulatory compliance, environmental responsibility and local community development,” Sudarsono noted.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of The World Bank, has also paid considerable attention to palm oil farmers through a joint program with the Musim Mas industry group.

IFC and Musim Mas, one of Indonesia’s largest integrated palm oil industries, have started the Indonesian Palm Oil Development for Smallholders (IPODS) in North Sumatra which plans to train 100,000 independent farmers in the production of sustainable palm oil. 

“Of the total, 25,000 will get training in meeting ISPO and RSPO requirements for the certification of their fresh fruit bunches. Our target is for 10,000 smallholders to get certification,” Musim Mas Communications Manager Carolyn Lim said.

Last year, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Agriculture Ministry launched a program called Indonesian Palm Oil Platform (INPOP) designed to enhance the capacity of smallholders in implementing sustainable oil palm farming practices.

Delegates from developed countries, notably the EU, apparently in response to the increasing commitments made to sustainable palm oil production, reaffirmed their pledge to buy or import only certified sustainable palm oil by 2020.

As the most produced and traded vegetable oil in the world, palm oil indeed plays a crucial role in enhancing food security. 

And given its big potential as a major source of renewable fuel, palm oil seems to deserve significant attention, especially in Indonesia where this industry directly employs more than 4.7 million workers and generates more than $20 billion in export earnings. 

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The week in review: The worst forest fires

Vincent Lingga, The Jakarta Post | Editorial | Sun, November 01 2015, 3:13 PM

The forest and peatland fires and smog, billed the worst in Indonesian history, still dominated media headlines this week, with thousands of hot spots covering Sumatra and Kalimantan. 

At least 19 people in Sumatra and Kalimantan have died, and thousands, mostly children, have been hospitalized because of severe respiratory illnesses caused by the haze. According to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), the ongoing haze crisis has resulted in more than 500,000 people in six provinces — Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and South Kalimantan —suffering from acute respiratory infections.

As evidence indicates that most hot spots are related to oil palm and pulp wood plantations, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has instructed the Forestry and Environment Ministry to stop issuing new permits for peatland cultivation for monoculture, restore damaged peatland and review all peatland licenses that have been issued. 

Put bluntly, companies can no longer convert active forests and deep peat or any peat area into monoculture plantations, such as acacia for pulp and oil palm plantations. 

Recent research by forest scientists at the Bogor, West Java-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) found that the main cause of haze in Riau came from dry and deforested peatland, and not just from the slashing-and-burning of forested areas, as commonly thought. The research found that peat swamps in their natural state are resistant to fire because they are wet underground, but they can be highly flammable when they dry out and are degraded.

Research by Greenpeace has discovered that left in its natural waterlogged condition, peatland rarely burns. An untouched tropical rain forest is similarly fire-resistant. However, two decades of forest and peatland destruction by the plantation sector has made parts of Indonesia into giant tinderboxes.

Peatland soil stores a massive amount of carbon. When peatland is cleared and drained for a plantation, it degrades and the carbon it stores starts to be released into the atmosphere as CO2 emissions. If peat soil catches fire, it can smolder below the soil surface and be exceedingly difficult to extinguish. 

 The reason people burn land is quite simple. It is a relatively easy, quick and incredibly effective way to remove unwanted vegetation. Land is cleared almost immediately and the time it takes for the ground and heavier fuels to cool is relatively short.

The fire problem is further exacerbated by a lack of centralized coordination, planning, control, containment or monitoring in the region. An absence of active and coordinated fire management and surveillance is the key reason why people and companies are able to burn as much forested land to remove unwanted vegetation. 

Greenpeace studies show that forest fires are a threat to the health of millions. Smoke from the fires kills an estimated 110,000 people every year across Southeast Asia, mostly as a result of heart and lung problems, and weakens newborn babies.

The impact is even worse during El Niño years such as 2015, which the Australian Bureau of Meteorology estimates is turning out to be the worst El Niño in 20 years .

Indonesia’s annual forest and peatland fires are a man-made crisis, with devastating health impacts for Indonesia and its Southeast Asian neighbors as well as the global climate. Operating under weak and poorly enforced laws, plantation companies and other actors continue their reckless expansion — clearing forests and draining wet, carbon-rich peatland — that lays the foundations for these fires. The unwillingness of the government to put concession maps in the public domain makes it harder to identify those responsible for the fires or the destructive practices that cause them. 

The destruction continues despite commitments from many of the larger traders and producers of Indonesian commodities, such as palm oil and pulp, to end deforestation and peatland degradation and impose strict no fire policies. Indeed, many fires are reportedly burning within the concessions of companies that have “no deforestation” policies.

Ultimately, these fires will continue until plantation companies stop deforestation and start restoring forests and peatland. Commodity traders and their customers must work together to deliver an industry-wide ban on trade with companies that continue to destroy forests and peatland, eliminating the economic incentive for forest clearance. 

Companies that use, trade and produce Indonesian commodities must support massive programs to restore and protect forest and peatland and stop the fires before they start. 

The government must support these initiatives, publish concession maps to allow those responsible for fires to be held to account and reform the plantation sector to halt the destruction and degradation of Indonesia’s forests and peatland.

The heavy haze should be the momentum for the government, the people and the business community to take firm and bold measures to prevent a similar disaster. Failure to do so will embolden the campaign launched in Singapore and Malaysia to encourage consumers to boycott Indonesian products such as pulp, paper and those containing palm oil. We will also become the ugly guy during the climate change summit in Paris in December.

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