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."