In the fifth P&C Review Taskforce (TF) meeting, held in Kuala Lumpur between the 14th and 16th May 2018, the TF collated the progress work from their subgroups and achieved consensus on several items, including:
Proposal for a Restructuring of the P&Cs: During the first round of public consultation, stakeholders requested to make the P&C more logical and clearer to apply and less repetitive. To achieve this and in order to align the P&C with RSPO's new Theory of Change the TF restructured the P&C.
Proposal for a new No Deforestation Requirement: The draft P&C contain new proposed requirements on deforestation. The new criterion (7.13) integrates requirements for the identification, maintenance and enhancement of High Conservation Values (HCV) with the protection of forests. The High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA) toolkit and HCV-HCSA Assessment manual will be used in fragmented forest landscapes to identify areas of high carbon stock forest and HCV which should be maintained and enhanced.
RSPO recognises that countries with high forest cover (HFC) also frequently have high levels of rural poverty, and that exclusion of such areas from RSPO certification is unlikely to discourage business as usual deforestation trajectories. The P&C therefore propose an exception for eligible local communities in specified countries to achieve certification if they conduct limited oil palm development in accordance with the RSPO High Forest Cover procedure. Further, it is proposed that in these specified countries and landscapes, eligible ‘legacy’ cases will be reviewed for limited development on an exceptional basis.
A formal RSPO No Deforestation Working Group will be constituted to oversee the development and implementation of the RSPO High Forest Cover procedure and guide the implementation of C7.13. The impacts of implementation of C7.13 will be monitored during the 2-year period following endorsement of the P&C, with the potential to amend the HFC procedure thereafter.
Proposal to integrate the mill modules of the RSPO Supply Chain Certification Standard (SCCS): In order to consolidate into one standard for production level for ease of implementation by growers and millers. Please note the text for this was directly taken from the RSPO SCC standard to illustrate what this would look like and not revised.
You can download the draft2 text here:
and access the online survey here to submit your comments.
 ENGLISH |
SPANISH |
BAHASA INDONESIA |
| FRENCH |
THAI |
PORTUGUESE |
Additionally, a series of public consultation workshops will be held around the globe, for which pre-registration is required. See below for full list and contact details of organizers:
Background: The Principles and Criteria (P&C) Review process started in April 2017, in line with the 5-year review cycle as required by ISEAL. A dedicated multi-stakeholder P&C Review Taskforce (TF) was established in April 2017. Under the oversight of a multi-stakeholder Steering Group (SG), the TF was tasked with the review of the 2013 RSPO P&C, and the alignment of the new P&C with the RSPO Theory of Change (ToC), which was still under development at the time.
To date, the TF has had five physical meetings with an initial focus on reviewing the content of the P&C. A first draft was presented for a 60-day public consultation in September/October 2017. Comments from the public were collected online and in physical consultation workshops around the world, together reaching more than 10,000 stakeholders. Further details on the first consultation can be found here: P&C Review Public Consultation I.
