RSPO to strengthen elements in key areas
KOTA KINABALU: The Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which has reached the end of its five-year review cycle for its Principles and Criteria (P&C), will be strengthening its existing elements with more specific provisions in areas such as labour, smallholders, peat, no deforestation, legality, grievances and human rights, pesticides and no use of fire.
These resolutions will be put forward for ratification by RSPO members at its 16th annual general assembly to be held here today. The Supply Chain Standard Module will also be revised.
After this month, no new plantings will be allowed on peatland regardless of its depth.
Malaysian peatland currently stands at 650,000ha.
“Not all of these peatlands will be stopped, these are already existing. People live on it, work on it, derive income from it. Not only big players but (also) small players,” said RSPO CEO Darrel Webber on existing peatland.
From a legal perspective, the new P&Cs entail mills having to get assurance of supplier legality through valid planting and trading licence, proof to ownership status or land to right by owners and geo location of fresh fruit bunch origin.
Besides that, there will be strengthening of labour requirements such as no child labour, no forced and trafficked labour as well as prohibition of recruitment fees for migrant workers.
Workers must be paid a decent living wage, including piece rates or quotas, which will be calculated based on the Global Living Wage Coalition.
Besides those mentioned, as measures to curb deforestation, there will be integrated requirements for high conservation values and high carbon stock and strengthening of monitoring and management, among others – especially in countries with high forest cover.
Fire will not be used for land preparation but only for disease control and controlled burning for pests.
Meanwhile, the use of harmful pesticides such as paraquat should not be used unless under certain circumstances and with due diligence process.
Vulnerable groups such as young people, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers will not be allowed to work with pesticides and alternative equivalent work will be offered.
The revision process, dubbed the most comprehensive RSPO P&C process to date, saw two 60-day public consultations, face-toface events in 13 countries and 11,500 individual stakeholder comments in the process of documentation.
A multi-stakeholder P&C Review Task Force was established in April 2017 comprising 24 substantive and 24 alternate members.