Washington Dialogue on Sustainable Palm Oil – NGOs Fail to Sabotage Event

Recently, the Malaysian and Indonesian Ministers in charge of the palm oil industry had a roundtable dialogue with US NGOs, government officials and other food and non-food customers to discuss palm oil sustainability issues. Both the Malaysian and Indonesian delegation members were keen to hear green NGOs views and were prepared to provide counter viewpoints explaining how palm oil is produced sustainably in their respective countries.

What I have noticed lately is that the ultra green NGOs often fail to attend these dialogues. They prefer instead to raise their same old issues not in a face to face manner, but via their media channels on the internet, where they can repeat their infamous allegations on oil palm linking it to deforestation. This time, they broadcasted their counter views through the internet just a few days after the dialogue ended when the Ministers had returned home to their respective countries. In fact, our organizers informed us that the NGOs were so paranoid about the dialogue being held that they sent out emails twice unethically informing all invitees that the dialogue had been cancelled! The unscrupulous attempt to sabotage the meeting did not work and merit our condemnation. More than 50 important stakeholders including friendly NGOs attended the meeting. Nevertheless, we have to take this threat seriously. Next time around, the sabotage could be life threatening.

Sustainability: New Market for Certified Sustainable Oils and Fats?

Confusion reigns over certified and uncertified oils

In recent years, the Western Environmental NGOs (WENGOs) together with producers and buyers of palm oil have attempted to promote the development and market for certified sustainable oils and fats products in addition to existing non-certified products. This has resulted in two types of market for oils and fats: the certified sustainable oil market and the market for normal oils that are not certified. The most desirable and ideal market is of course one where the oils and fats products are proven to be sustainably produced. The proof is via a certification and auditing process where the oils or fats which are found to comply with a set of sustainability principles and criteria will be issued certificates attesting to their sustainable production and processing. These products are supposed to be marketed at a premium to meet the needs of sophisticated markets especially in the EU. In the case of palm oil, such products are referred to as Certified Sustainable Palm Oil in general or Certified RSPO palm oil (CSPO) if the RSPO system is used as the basis for auditing and certification. In contrast, the main market is still mostly for non-certified normal palm oil. Such products cannot be marketed as sustainable as the WENGOs will protest that there is no proof of sustainability. Neither can it be labeled as unsustainable palm oil as there is no proof for that either.Unfortunately, Certified RSPO palm oil has received limited acceptance thus far. The available capacity in Malaysia of about 1 million tonnes of CSPO palm oil has not been fully taken up. Only 30 % of the potentially available RSPO palm oil has been exported to the EU. The main excuse is the lack of willingness of the importers to pay a premium to offset the initial cost of certification. To make matters worse, some of the WENGOs are casting doubts on the ability of RSPO members to supply sustainable palm oil.