The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil marked a special milestone at its Annual Roundtable conference (RT2023), themed “Partners for the Next 20,” to reflect on nearly two decades of impact made possible through the collaborative efforts of RSPO’s Members and partners.
RT2023 presented an opportunity to take unified action on the core challenges facing the sustainable palm oil industry, including mitigating climate change, increasing uptake of certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO), protecting labour rights, and facilitating greater smallholder inclusion in green supply chains through compliance with emerging international regulations.
For nearly 20 years, the RSPO has facilitated global change to make the production and consumption of palm oil sustainable. Starting from 200 members from 16 countries in 2004, RSPO now counts more than 5700 members in more than 100 countries and territories spanning the globe.
In his opening remarks, RSPO CEO, Joseph D’Cruz (pictured), said: “Through nearly two decades of voluntary action, RSPO Members have banded together to raise the bars of sustainability within the industry."
"The impact we have collectively achieved is increasingly being acknowledged by stakeholders outside our industry, and we are seeing a definite shift in the sustainable palm oil narrative in our favour."
"As a global partnership to make palm oil sustainable, we must ride this trajectory and continue to evolve and pursue new territory. There is room now for us to move beyond a standard and certification system and develop tools that would enable the industry to demonstrate sustainability in the way that markets, regulators and customers demand today.”
Charting new territory, RSPO’s Certification, Trade and Traceability System (CTTS), launched recently in October 2023 with the formation of the tripartite consortium of global agri-tech experts, exemplifies how the organisation is advancing and digitising its tracking and traceability systems into an end-to-end digital infrastructure.
This is rooted by best-in-class solutions that will be able to meet current demands and anticipate the future needs of a sector that is rapidly evolving to meet tightening global regulations, starting with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and is actively engaging with the European Commission for knowledge-sharing on this topic with all relevant parties.
Anne Rosenbarger and José Roberto Montenegro, Chairs of the RSPO Board of Governors, together called for the successes of the past 20 years to be leveraged and scaled further through collective action and innovative approaches.
“RSPO is strategically evolving to meet current and forthcoming challenges, including shifting regulatory and market expectations, by improving the auditability and implementability of our current standards and assurance systems to be ready to connect to the broader industry’s sustainability platforms,” said Anne Rosenbarger.
Following a comprehensive and highly consultative review of its current 2018 RSPO Principles and Criteria and 2019 RSPO Independent Smallholder Standard, a technical revision process is under way to produce a revised set of standards in 2024.