A group of 32 non-government organisations has issued an open letter to the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), calling on the standards body for the palm oil trade to block Indonesia’s second largest palm oil producer, Astra Agro Lestari (AAL), from attaining membership.
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AAL, which is owned by Hong Kong-based conglomerate Jardine Matheson, announced its application for membership of RSPO on 11 July, less than a fortnight after the firm was called out for land-grabbing and growing palm oil inside a forest estate by environmental groups.
An investigation led by Friends of the Earth (FOE), an international network of grassroots environmental organisation, its Indonesian affiliate WALHI and others, found AAL subsidiaries operating without required permits and intimidating local communities defending their land.
The investigation findings, published in June, followed a report in March that found evidence of land grabbing and environmental degradation linked to AAL’s operations in Sulawesi.
In the open letter, co-signed by NGOs from Europe, Asia and Africa, campaigners called on RSPO to withhold AAL’s membership until land disputes between AAL and local communities in Sulawesi are resolved and grievances remedied.
AAL’s alleged violations contravene RSPO’s rules for what constitutes sustainable palm oil cultivation, particularly the principle of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), the NGOs said.
AAL has been accused of failing to obtain FPIC from communities before converting their land into palm oil plantations in Central and West Sulawesi.
Consumer goods companies including Hershey’s, Danone, Kellogg, L’Oreal, Mondelez, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble – all of which are RSPO members – have suspended AAL as a supplier in light of the findings.
AAL has denied any wrongdoing, citing inadequate data used in the investigations and disputing the claim that it has been operating without the necessary permits.
The company said that it operates according to local laws in Indonesia, and it has not undertaken any expansion or new land clearing since 2015, when it launched its sustainability policy.
RSPO has welcomed AAL’s application, and has praised the company for its “dedication to sustainability goals” and its progress towards joining the organisation.
The organisation clarified that there is a significant difference between being an RSPO member and certified member. To become an RSPO member, companies must get assessed on how they plan to remediate past actions. Only once membership is approved will AAL be able to start the certification process for each of their plantations and mills, it told Eco-Business.
FOE United States senior forests and lands campaigner Gaurav Madan told Eco-Business that RSPO’s support of AAL’s membership is indicative of the organisation’s historical “accountability gap”.
He charged that RSPO has certified companies with “well-documented evidence of abuses” for years and called its complaints system “dysfunctional”. “It takes years for cases to be investigated and for recommendations to be provided,” he said. Madan did not provide specific examples.
Madan called for RSPO to publicly state that AAL’s membership will be withheld until conflicts in Sulawesi are resolved, including the return of land taken without consent.
The open letter said that granting AAL membership to the RSPO would undermine impacted communities’ calls for remedy and redress, and undermine the RSPO as a standards body.
The letter emerges six months after NGO Rainforest Action Network expressed concern that RSPO was set to dilute its standards after announcing that it was mulling a “flexible, modular approach” to its certification scheme. RSPO has maintained that its standards, which include the hallmark no-deforestation principle, will not be watered down.
