The Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil meeting is a place for industry players to meet, discuss and find solutions to current sustainable palm oil issues. DAVE BAKEWELL provides an insight into the 7th Roundtable held in November 2009.

Written by Dave Bakewell on 12 Jan 2010 with 0 comments. Be the first!

I attended the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil's 7th Roundtable Meeting (RSPO RT7), held in Kuala Lumpur in early November. For a first-timer just getting to know the inner workings of the palm oil industry, I found that the most amazing thing about it was the growth of industry cluster in palm oil.

There were, it seemed, dozens of exhibitors anxious to help growers get RSPO-certified, offering help on everything from software programmes to help track the certification process, to training in Integrated Pest Management to certificate trading programmes supporting sustainable palm oil.

Biodiversity was one of the main focal points, and there were interesting and informative contributions from the Malaysian government's Department of Natural Resources and Environment, as well as information on work being done in Indonesia by various NGOs and private organisations.

Apart from the exhibitions, it was encouraging to talk to a variety of people involved in different facets of the industry. Most encouraging of all were the inspirational stories of how some plantations are now proactively modifying land management to improve the local environment and enhance biodiversity. We hope to have more news on these innovative pioneer efforts soon.

One thing that became clear was the great diversity of interests represented at RT7 - producers and consumers, MNCs and smallholders, environmentalists and economists, Europeans, Asians and indigenous communities. Nowhere was this more evident than on the 'Democracy Wall' - a large space where everyone was encouraged to write their thoughts, opinions, suggestions and complaints.

Reading the comments there gave a fascinating insight into how people were feeling about RSPO as a whole, as well as some of the different 'players' involved. There were evident concerns from smallholders that they were being overlooked or marginalised, as well as a great deal of suspicion on the part of growers that western nations are seeking to ease the collective burden of guilt at their own environmental wastefulness by making evermore stringent demands for environmental sustainability on producers in less developed countries.

A useful perspective was provided by a senior plantation manager, a veteran of many RSPO Round Table meetings. He said, "Perhaps people attending for the first time are feeling pressured by the demands of the NGOs, but, compared to the first time I attended, actually a lot more of the pressure seems to be coming from within the industry. It's good that more and more initiatives seem to be coming from people within wanting to make a difference, rather than people from the outside telling us what we should be doing."

That insight helped me realize that RSPO is achieving its purpose. Change might not be happening fast enough for some, and perhaps too fast for others, but the sustainability issues being wrestled with are extremely complex, so real progress is likely to be both slow and sometimes painful. At the end of the day, the goal of sustainable palm oil production is worth striving for because the results will benefit everyone, including the generations to come after us.