Abstract
At a time when I had only been engaged in the palm oil sector for a few years and had supported the establishment of criteria and certification rules for the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), I thought I could check out any time I liked and move on to a next commodity sector. It was 2007 and I couldn’t have been more wrong; more than ten years later, I feel I can never leave. The involvement of an international social/development perspective in the palm oil sector remains highly needed, despite significant progress made through the voluntary standards approach, which is reaching a fragile but critical mass in the sector. This chapter will argue that in order to achieve positive impacts for both people and sustainable development, there is a need for continued efforts and for better embedding market transformation in wider sector changes and landscapes. There are exciting and encouraging new developments, for example, the financial sector providing an extra push and governments actually taking up their responsibilities.
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- 1.
This text does not go into discussing the various initiatives and standards (e.g. RSB, ISCC) relevant for bio-energy applications of palm oil, although in terms of volume growth this sector has had significant impact.
- 2.
The argument that Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge (IPOP) was not pro-smallholder was used to undermine the frontrunner initiative, eventually leading to the group of growers/traders disbanding (see for example Taylor 2015).
- 3.
Examples include: Golden Agri Resources, Wilmar, Bumitama, IOI, Nestlé.
- 4.
In retrospect, RSPO’s Theory of Change at the time has now been formally documented; see https://rspo.org/about/impacts/theory-of-change/, last accessed 31 January 2019.
- 5.
See a range of impact research reports on http://www.sensorproject.net/, last accessed 31 January 2019.
- 6.
This is well in line with the approach promoted in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights with government duties to protect and company duties to respect. The UNGP framework, by the way, next to these two pillars also promotes a third pillar: the access to remedy. RSPO’s complaints handling applies this in addressing land conflicts and environmental destruction cases.
- 7.
Some observers say the large-scale concession model will become obsolete; see e.g. Kuepper et al. 2016.
- 8.
See also the community of practice for inclusive business Seas of Change: https://www.wur.nl/en/project/seas_of_change2.htm, last accessed 31 January 2019.
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Verburg, J. (2019). What’s Next for Transforming the Palm Oil Sector: More of the Same or Better Embedded?. In: Schmidt, M., Giovannucci, D., Palekhov, D., Hansmann, B. (eds) Sustainable Global Value Chains. Natural Resource Management in Transition, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14877-9_22
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