Rotterdam, The Netherlands - As the first certified sustainable palm oil shipment arrives in Europe, WWF is urging major palm oil users to shift to sustainable purchasing and cease doing business with producers persisting with destructive practices .

The shipment, from south-east Asia, is of palm oil certified as compliant with the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Principles and Criteria, a set of standards that ensure that palm oil is produced in a socially and environmentally responsible way.

As a founding member of the RSPO, WWF has worked since 2002 with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that the RSPO standards contain robust social and environmental criteria, including a prohibition on the conversion of valuable forests.

“The arrival of RSPO certified palm oil in Europe is an important milestone,” said Rodney Taylor, Director of WWF International’s Forest Programme. “With the RSPO’s certification system up and running, companies now have the means to buy responsibly.”

The RSPO brings together oil palm growers, oil processors, food companies, retailers, NGOs and investors to help ensure that no rainforest areas are sacrificed for new palm oil plantations, that all plantations minimize their environmental impacts and that basic rights of local peoples and plantation workers are fully respected.

Several European companies, including Unilever, Sainsbury’s and Albert Heijn, have already made strong public commitments to buy certified sustainable palm oil. Many more companies need to do the same. WWF calls on retailers and manufacturers to get behind the RSPO by making concrete, timebound plans to shift their palm oil purchases to 100% certified.

WWF also calls on the RSPO to strengthen its systems as needed to maintain credibility in the market place. RSPO membership is open to producers who are not certified. While its Code of Conduct encourages member producers to pursue certification, the RSPO lacks any real checks on the practices of these uncertified members.

Stakeholders do not always appreciate the distinction between a company’s membership of the RSPO and the certification of individual plantations. This places the RSPO’s credibility at risk, especially given the recent Greenpeace reports alleging that several RSPO members are engaged in practices prohibited by the RSPO criteria for socially and environmentally responsible production of palm oil. WWF will encourage RSPO members to tighten rules on this and other matters at their annual meeting on November 18-20.

The RSPO should fully investigate allegations of misconduct against its members” said Taylor, “ The RSPO can maintain its credibility by refusing to provide any form of cover for a company that violates the RSPO sustainability criteria.”


Notes to Editors:
1. The oil palm tree originated in West Africa but it has been planted successfully in many tropical regions including the world’s largest exporters of palm oil, Indonesia and Malaysia. Over 28 million tonnes of palm oil are produced worldwide and comprise a major food source all over the world. Palm oil is used in a wide variety of foods including margarine, cooking oil, crisps, cakes, biscuits and pastry. Palm oil derivatives are also found in cosmetics, soaps, shampoos and detergents. Sales in Europe have grown recently due to palm oil being an effective substitute for partially hydrogenated soft oils such as soy oil, rapeseed and sunflower thereby eliminating trans-fatty acids from many products.

2. WWF recognizes that palm oil is a basic foodstuff with high consumer demand. Europe imports 2.7 million tons of vegetable oil annually for food and soaps, making it the third biggest market for palm oil in the world, after India and China. Through the subsidizing of biofuels, European governments have increased the demand for palm oil in Europe. In addition, palm oil is increasingly used to replace fossil fuels in the transport and energy sectors of (mainly) developed countries. Taking into account the growing demand for palm oil for bioenergy as well as traditional uses, the FAO estimates that palm oil production will double between 1999/2001 and 2030.

3. Although being entirely GM free and having the highest yield per hectare of any oil or oilseed crop, it is recognized that there are environmental pressures on its expansion to eco-sensitive areas, particularly as oil palm can only be cultivated in tropical areas of Asia, Africa and America. Oil palm plantations have often imposed environmental and social costs due to indiscriminate forest clearing, loss of habitat important to threatened and endangered species such as orangutan, elephants and tigers, uncontrolled burning with related haze, and disregard for the rights and interests of local communities.

4. In addition, forest conversion by plantation companies contributes to climate change, as 20 per cent of all human induced greenhouse gas emissions are caused by deforestation. Deforestation is the primary reason that Indonesia, the world’s biggest palm oil producer, has greenhouse gas emissions that rank as the third highest in the world.

5. The industry practice of draining and converting peatland forests is especially damaging to climate mitigation efforts, as these “carbon sinks” store more carbon per unit area than any other ecosystem in the world. An average of 1.8 billion tonnes of GHG are released by the degradation and burning of Indonesia’s peatlands each year.

6. The RSPO began as an informal cooperation on production and usage of sustainable palm oil among Aarhus United UK Ltd, Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, Migros, Malaysian Palm Oil Association, Sainsbury’s and Unilever together with WWF at the end of 2002. These organizations constituted themselves as an Organizing Committee to organize the first Roundtable meeting in August 2003 in Kuala Lumpur and to prepare the foundation for the organizational and governance structure that resulted in the formation of the RSPO. 40 organizations later signed a Statement of Intent declaring their intention to participate in the RSPO. Subsequently, there have roundtable meetings every year since 2003, and the RSPO has steadily grown to encompass nearly 50% of the global palm oil industry. For more information on the RSPO, visit www.rspo.org


7. WWF works to encourage responsible production and procurement of palm oil, including:
Developing better production practices that reduce the environmental and social impact of palm oil
Identifying areas that should be zoned out of production or protected in some other way due to their high conservation value, while encouraging the establishment of production areas on available degraded lands
Supporting the development of a greenhouse gas accounting system for palm oil to be used for power generation or as a fuel (to determine if palm oil for bioenergy results in a sufficient GHG emissions reduction compared to fossil fuels) Calling for transparent land-use planning processes to achieve an optimal distribution of natural forests, plantations, agricultural areas, urban areas and other land-use
Promoting responsible purchasing and investment policies in the sector


For further information:

Soh Koon Chng, WWF International Forests Team (skchng@wwfint.org, mobile: +41 22 364 9018)
Carrie Svingen, WWF Forest Conversion Programme (csvingen@wallacea.wwf.or.id, mobile: +1 508 298 8037)
www.panda.org/forests (click on Forest Conversion)


About WWF

WWF is one of the world's largest and most respected independent conservation organizations, with almost 5 million supporters and a global network active in over 100 countries. WWF's mission is to stop the degradation of the earth's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world's biological diversity, ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable, and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption.

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