Kuala Lumpur, 1 June 2015 – The ISEAL Alliance recently announced that the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has successfully completed the process for becoming an ISEAL full member.
The organisation, formed in 2004 with the objective of promoting the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders, has attained fullmembership status in ISEAL by demonstrating that it has credible and effective systems in place.
Following an independent evaluation against the Code of Good Practice for Setting Social and Environmental Standards (Standard-Setting Code) that demonstrated overall compliance and a recommendation from the ISEAL Membership Committee, the ISEAL Board of Directors made the decision at its May meetings in Berlin.
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil also had to demonstrate concrete progress in implementing the Impacts Code, which was verified through a review by the ISEAL Secretariat.
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oilfirst joined ISEAL as an associate member in 2013. RSPO aims to transform markets to make sustainable palm oil the norm. As a not-for-profit association, the organisation unites stakeholders from the palm oil industry to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil. RSPOcounts over 2000 members globally, representing 40% of the palm oil industry, covering all sectors of this global commodity supply chain.
ISEAL Executive Director, Karin Kreider, said: “the decision to grant RSPO full membership is a testament to the steps that have been taken to ensuring RSPO’s standard system is credible and able to achieve its sustainability goals. We look forward to working with the team as the programme continues to evolve and improve”.
ISEAL full members, which include Fairtrade International, 4C Association and Marine Stewardship Council, Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, Responsible Jewellery Council and many others, represent some of the most influential standards and ecolabels in the world, all with sustainability objectives at their forefront. Membership in ISEAL helps to distinguish their adoption of credible practices and their commitment to delivering and improving positive impacts through standards. The transition from associate to full membership reflects the verified progress that organisations make on implementing ISEAL’s Codes of Good Practice.
“Since the RSPO first joined ISEAL, we have benefited from a network of like-minded standards, generating insights and strategies and enabling us to continue improving against the latest innovations and best practices.”commentedDarrel Webber, RSPO Secretary General ”We firmly believe that being an ISEAL full member will further help us to scale up our impacts inour vision of transforming markets to make sustainable palm oil a norm”
About RSPO
In response to the urgent and pressing global call for sustainably-produced palm oil, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was formed in 2004 with the objective of promoting the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders. The seat of the association is in Zurich, Switzerland, while the secretariat is currently based in Kuala Lumpur with satellite offices in Jakarta, London and Zoetermeer (NL).
RSPO is a not-for-profit association that unites stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry – oil palm producers, palm oil processors or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental or nature conservation NGOs and social or developmental NGOs – to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil.
Such multi-stakeholder representation is mirrored in the governance structure of RSPO such that seats in the Executive Board and project-level Working Groups are fairly allocated to each sector. In this way, RSPO lives out the philosophy of the "roundtable" by giving equal rights to each stakeholder group to bring group-specific agendas to the roundtable, facilitating traditionally adversarial stakeholders and business competitors to work together towards a common objective and make decisions by consensus.
Contacts for RSPO Secretariat:
Stefano Savi
Acting Communications Director
T: +603 2302 1500
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