Seven sectors

Palm Oil has many stakeholders and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil lists seven sectors where most of its members fit in. Stakeholders not listed are governments, consumers, journalists, researchers and competitors. Here are all seven with quotes from some of their members.

Plantation companies

Felda: "Nutritional content is also fixed in the soil via the planting of leguminous cover crops to fix the nitrogen from the air into the soil, thus reducing the need for nitrogenous inorganic fertiliser. For this reason, blanket spraying of weed killer is not practiced on Felda plantations, and spraying, when necessary, is restricted to the immediate circle around the palm tree."

Sime Darby: "The Plantation Division is a major employer in Malaysia and employs a significant number of foreign workers. Through our commitment towards being an employer of choice, we ensure that equal opportunities exist for all and do not tolerate discrimination on any grounds."

Processors and traders

Wilmar: "Recognising that illegal logging and poaching activities continue to threaten these treasured coves, Wilmar works assiduously to protect its tracts of conservation areas. One such effort is our Ranger Programme in certain plantations, where Rangers empowered with full police power and authority undertake daily patrols targeting at illegal logging and hunting activities. We also have biodiversity and conservation managers as well as a primatologist to develop and implement conservation management plans. The management plans serve to maintain and enhance biodiversity values of the protected areas within our oil palm plantations."
AAK (Aarhus): "Due to its position as an intermediary in the palm oil supply chain, AAK is fully dependent on the availability of supply of physical, segregated sustainable palm oil and, to some extent, on demand from customers. Customer requirements define the kind of palm oil delivered by AAK."

Consumer goods manufacturers

Unilever: "We have decided, as part of our 2013 strategic review of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, to play a leading role in helping to drive deforestation out of commodity supply chains. We will do this by leveraging our purchasing scale as the world’s biggest multinational consumer goods buyer of palm oil and our convening capabilities as one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies. Turning our vision into reality relies on the creation of a market for sustainably-cultivated palm oil."
Ferrero: "To Ferrero, traceability is critical to drive change and to deliver strong sustainability targets. It allows us to assess practices on the ground in order to help suppliers make any improvements needed to meet our Charter. On the basis of the traceability achieved through certification, our teams, together with TFT, have worked towards mapping our entire palm oil supply chain, including listing all mills and their supplying plantations we buy from. This work has enabled us to reach 92% traceability to plantation today."

Unilever, WWF, Nutella, Rabobank, ABN AMRO

Retailers

Ahold: "While in the past, we have offset all palm oil used in our own brand products through purchasing GreenPalm certificates, we are now trying to encourage our suppliers to move to segregated certified sustainable palm oil so that we can be assured that the certified oil is actually used in our products. This effort is not yet reflected in this report, as we cannot yet directly link the amount of segregated palm oil to products with 100% accuracy. Currently, therefore, 100% of our estimated palm oil use (in 2013, 4,000 tons) is offset using GreenPalm certificates.
Walmart: "In Walmart U.S., we’ve successfully transitioned 25 percent of our private brands to sustainable palm, and we’re committed to scaling that approach across all private brands where palm oil is an ingredient. To date, 27 percent of palm oil used in our private-label products globally is sustainably sourced, driven largely by the 100 percent RSPO-certified palm secured by our Asda business in the U.K."

Financial institutions

ABN AMRO: "A prospective client recently approached us to open a business account. (...) We made [RSPO] membership a precondition for opening the account. The client agreed and has undertaken to move toward purchasing on a 100% RSPO-certified basis. We will see to it that this actually happens, as we think it is very important that all parties in the palm oil chain live up to their responsibilities."
Rabobank: "We accept that some clients are more advanced than others, as long as clients are able to show significant progress in implementing environmentally and socially responsible management practices and responsible purchasing. If we have reason to believe the client does not comply with the abovementioned conditions or shows insufficient progress in integrating sustainability measures in daily operations, we will engage with the client to achieve the desired improvements within an arranged time frame."

Environmental NGOs

WWF: "A concrete example of challenges faced by the palm oil industry and community is about their ability to share understanding on sustainable palm oil and practices in realising the concept with their fellow medium to relatively small-scale plantation companies and smallholders. The fact is that until now mostly major and/ or big companies that take the lead in embracing RSPO, the concept and better management practices."
RAN: "After a year of negotiations, Kellogg’s joined industry leaders Nestle, Unilever and Ferrero by releasing a strengthened palm oil purchasing commitment. This was followed by announcements by Mars, Nissin Foods, Dunkin Donuts, and Con Agra — all major players in the palm oil marketplace.
Missing from this list is PepsiCo — one of the biggest purchasers of palm oil in the US. But RAN is continuing the fight, with an aggressive social media and “brand jamming” campaign to pressure PepsiCo to do the right thing."

Social NGOs

Oxfam: "High potential for land efficiency exist in the more centralised models where the company holds responsibility for development and management of the plantations and has access to farm inputs (high quality seedlings) and agronomic knowledge. These models, however, take land away from community members and leave them in the role of workers, not enabling them to be active as investors in the improvement and continuity of their farms."
ILO: "ILO Baseline survey found more than 400 children (boys and girls) working in palm oil plantation sector, owned by state as well as private companies in at least four sub districts in Central Lampung District, Lampung. Similar to other children working in plantation, they are exposed to several hazards and most of them are drop out from school."

Planning Q1 - Shoshin

Shoshin
The concept of Shoshin in Zen Buddhism means 'beginner's mind'. 'It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would' (Wikipedia). Even though I am a beginner, it does not come easy for me to have a beginner's mind. When reading about a conspiracy theory involving palm oil, my mind wanted to reject every word that was written. It was difficult to keep an open mind when brainwash attempts were made by repeating arguments and exclamation marks after every other sentence. But maybe I should try harder to keep an open mind. Without abandoning critical thinking.

Stakeholder analysis
The conspiracy theory consists of a compilation of social media postings titled 'Environmental Fraud: How palm oil turned the tables on green groups & their shadowy funders'. The theory claims that green NGO's are paid by the European Commission to attack palm oil in order to protect the EU's own edible oilseed industries. What the theory tells me is that the information I can find online and in books is often subjective. Journalists want to sell a good story, NGO's need to keep their donations going, companies fear for their reputation while trying to make a profit, politicians want to keep their voters happy. Most serious stakeholders present themselves at the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil. But I also want to listen to stakeholders that make outrageous claims and pose the wildest conspiracy theories.

January, February and March
Three online courses will help me get a basic understanding of forests, food, and indigenous people. I have started the first one: 'Forests and Livelihoods in Developing Countries'. So far so good. Two more will follow later this month and will run parallel until March. So before zooming in to palm oil, first let's have a look at the big picture.

	5-1	12-1	19-1	26-1	2-2	9-2	16-2	23-2	2-3	9-3	16-3	23-3	30-3
Forests and Livelihoods in Developing Countries (Edx)	4	4	4	4	3	3
Growing our Future Food: Crops (EdX)				4	5	6	7	8	8
Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education (EdX)				2	2	2	2	2	2
Studium Generale: Back to the Future					3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
Stakeholder analysis	4	4	4							4	4	4	4

Forests and Livelihoods

Growing our Future Food

Expert enough

Malcolm Gladwell showed us that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Unfortunately I only have about 600 hours I can spend this year, so I need to play with numbers a bit. What if it takes me 10,000 hours to become an expert on Sustainable Commodities. But only 4000 hours to become an expert on Sustainable Agro Food Commodities. Maybe 2000 hours for Sustainable Tropical Commodities. And only 1000 hours to reach my goal of becoming a Sustainable Palm Oil Expert.

Expert Enough 

Still more hours than I am probably able to spend without risking my health, my marriage or my day job. So I was happy to find an article written by Corbett Barr from Expert Enough called "5 Simple Principles for Becoming an Expert". Here they are:

1 Realize expert is a relative term

2 Learn from books and experience

3 Focus

4 Get outside help

5 Make mistakes

I will not become the world's leading expert in one year time. But I would be satisfied to become the leading expert at my company, my charities, my political party and my supply chains. If I work hard enough, surely that must be feasible to accomplish by the end of this year? 

Focus

One of my many weaknesses is my lack of focus. I love to start new things, then get distracted and then start something else. My 2014 Jungle Hike was a project where I experimented with focus and I still have a lot to learn. Even when browsing the Internet to find out about becoming an Expert, I got distracted. YouTube offers some interesting interviews with Malcolm Gladwell. I got so distracted that I ordered three of his books. I am amazed how he manages to write all these books and also have a very impressive acting career.

Blink

Bang

Starting up a project: Sustainable Palm Oil Expert

Out of 6500 languages that were spoken at the start of the 21st century, half are expected to be extinct by the year 2100. Languages die when speakers stop transmitting them to the next generation. When parents decide that their children have a better future speaking the dominant language. Language loss goes hand in hand with loss of culture, identity and traditional ecological knowledge.

Deforestation

The speakers of most endangered languages depend on the forest to meet their needs. Tropical forests especially are language hotspots. Ethnologue lists 731 languages for Indonesia, 234 for Brazil, 219 for Congo, 505 for Nigeria and 832 for Papua New Guinea. These are also countries where forest disappears to make room for agriculture, logging and mining. When the forest is gone, and the land privatised, what becomes of the indigenous people? Lose the forest, lose the livelihood, lose the culture? Forced urbanisation and assimilation?

Sustainable agriculture

As the world population increases to 9 billion by 2050, can we feed all these mouths without cutting down more forests? Where and how will we grow soy, rice, cassava and oil palms? Since I visit Malaysia every year, it seems easiest for me to focus on the latter.

My goal for 2015

Starting today, I want to study everything there is to know about sustainable palm oil. Please join me on my learning curve as I collect all the pieces of the puzzle, read all that is written and seek to understand what motivates all stakeholders. I hardly know anything today, but on December 31st 2015 I will be an Expert on sustainable palm oil.