Strengthening of commitments to sustainable palm oil by stakeholders at close of worlds largest palm oil meeting

MEDAN, 14 NOVEMBER 2013 – The 11th Annual Roundtable Meeting on Sustainable Palm Oil (RT11), the world’s largest sustainable palm oil meeting, concluded today in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia. The meeting, presented by international multi-stakeholder organization the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), confirmed the strong commitment from palm oil stakeholders worldwide towards Sustainable Palm Oil.
 
Seven hundred and eighty four (784) delegates from 30 countries around the world participated in RT11, representing all stakeholders working on palm oil issues, 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. 
 
The theme for this year’s Roundtable Meeting was “RSPO Standard 2013: Understand. Apply. Embrace”, aimed to communicate to RSPO members the organization’s newly revised Principles & Criteria (P&C), which are revised every five years. This year’s new, open space format at the Roundtable Meeting allowed participants to freely explore the issues and challenges faced by the palm oil industry as well as share good practices and develop innovative practices and commitments to action related to various aspects of the 2013 revised P&C, to further strengthen ongoing efforts towards transforming the market. 
 
Remarkable achievements were marked at RT11, with the presentation of RSPO Certificate to AMANAH Independent Smallholders Association from Indonesia and the Wild Asia Smallholders Group from Malaysia, who recently attained RSPO certification, becoming Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s first independent smallholders to achieve this notable milestone. Solidaridad, a Netherlands-based NGO, was also awarded as the first receiver of RSPO Smallholders Support Fund (RSSF) and Neste Oil received the first RSPO Reductions Emissions Directive (RSPO RED) supply chain certificate for its biofuels supply into the E.U.
 
Several announcements made during RT11 also demonstrate positive progress in the uptake of RSPO certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) , with the announcement by Unilever of its commitment to purchase the GreenPalm certificates of AMANAH Independent Smallholders Association until 2018. This will allow the smallholders to further increase their sustainable practices and thus drive positive environmental, economic and social impact. Global confectioner Ferrero which uses about 150,000 tonnes of palm oil annually, has also indicated it was on track to 100% segregated RSPO certified palm oil by end of 2014, a year ahead of their target.  
 
The United Kingdom also made an announcement this week that significant progress had been made in the UK imports of RSPO Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO), from 155,000 metric tonnes in 2009 to 277,961 metric tonnes in 2012, which covers 52-60% of the market (depending on baseline data used), and that most of this growth is on segregated and mass balance CSPO.
 
The 10th Annual General Assembly (GA10)
 
Following the conclusion of RT11, the RSPO held its 10th General Assembly (G10) this afternoon in Medan. The GA is held annually in accordance with the RSPO Statues and by-laws to discuss ongoing resolutions that need to be deliberated and decided by all of the RSPO ordinary members.
 
A total of 222 RSPO members registered to vote at the General Assembly representing all stakeholder groups.
 
Today, the attending members at GA10 (including via proxies) passed 4 resolutions and voted against 1 resolution. 
 
Notably the RSPO members voted for resolution 6g, making it mandatory for grower members to make information on plantation concession boundaries publically available via the RSPO website. 
 
For more information about RT11, please log on to http://www.rt11.rspo.org.
 
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About RT11
Positioned as the world’s largest sustainable palm oil conference and held since 2003, the annual roundtable or RT is a platform to exchange views and experiences among various stakeholders in developed and developing countries; to strengthen their co-operation and support in promoting sustainable palm oil.  The annual roundtable is positioned as an industry event organized to seek participation from players within the palm oil sector from all around the world. Last year, the event attracted over 800 delegates from 37 countries representing various stakeholder groups in the palm oil supply chain.
 
This year, RT11 will be held from November 12 – November 14 2013 in Santika Premiere Dyandra Hotel & Convention, Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia. RT11 will be organized over 3 days comprising presentation papers, workshops, breakout sessions, and dialogue.  More information about the RT11 is available at http://rt11.rspo.org. 
 
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 a satellite office in Jakarta.
 
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.
 
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