RSPO Shared Responsibility Task Force Recommendations

Public Consultation, 14 days, 3 October – 16 October 2019

The concept of shared responsibility has been discussed and agreed upon for a number of year across RSPO membership and supported through several General Assembly (GA) resolutions (Resolution 6m at GA8, Resolution 6d at GA9 and Resolution 6b at GA13). All RSPO members share the responsibility to achieve the vision to “transform markets and make sustainable palm oil the norm”.

There is a need to define more explicitly what this means in terms of accountability – to each other and to all stakeholders who support RSPO. Members have different roles in contributing to the shared vision of making sustainable Palm oil the norm. The proposed process and Terms of Reference (ToR) for the Shared Responsibility Taskforce (SRTF) were endorsed by the Board of Governors (BoG) in September 2018.

The SRTF was established in early 2019, with representation across all member categories to define shared responsibility and recommend strategies for collecting, reporting, monitoring and evaluating, including a mechanism for incentives and sanctions. 

The SRTF recommendations are based on initial thinking from the restructure subgroup of the P&C Review Taskforce, review of existing RSPO systems (current and planned), organisational documents, RSPO Secretariat input, 75 interviews and surveys with stakeholders from all sectors, six SRTF teleconferences, an in-person SRTF workshop, and a public consultation. The public consultation included an online survey and two physical consultation workshops in Utrecht (NL) and Chicago (USA).

Having completed thus the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the SRTF, the document was submitted to the RSPO BoG for endorsement. Acknowledging that despite the ToR having been completed and all outlined participation and process requirements therein having been met, the RSPO BoG had further comments, mostly on the strategic content of the document, linked chiefly to newly available data on the uptake of CSPO. The board also requested an additional public consultation take place, as the original document had changed substantially from their perspective, due to the inputs received in the June/July public consultation, which had been duly analysed, discussed, and addressed by the SRTF.

The SRTF Recommendations Narrative document is now open for a second round of public consultation. This is a further opportunity to provide feedback on the SRTF recommendations, enabling all members to align and multiply efforts for collective action and to drive impact.

Please download the SRTF documents HERE and submit your feedback through this online survey.

The public consultation will last for 14 days from 3 October 2019 to 16 October 2019, 23:59 KL time. 

For more on the background and work to date, please visit

https://rspo.org/about/supporting-bodies#shared-responsibility-task-force