Sustainable Palm Oil Governance

A Case Study Of Sustainable Palm Oil Certification In Indonesia

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-086-2_44How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Sustainable; Governance; Certification; Palm oil

Abstract

In response to the unsustainable practice of palm oil plantation, several NGOs, palm oil companies and investors established the Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2004. This organization introduced a voluntary Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) brand through a series of auditing processes of sustainable principle and criteria application in palm oil industry. Based on that backdrop, this study aims to examine how RSPO as private governance emerged, particularly in the Indonesian context. It also provides the explanation about RSPO characteristics as well as the advantages and its limitations. In addition. this study addresses how the Indonesian government relates to RSPO. The methodology of this study is qualitative which is based on secondary sources of data. It uses information such as from public and private reports as well as other sources of information including report from civil society organizations that involve in environmental and social issues within the palm oil sector. The findings of this research suggest that there are three explanations with regard to the RSPO emergence. First, it has been driven by government’s low performance in handling issues concerning social and environmental impacts of palm oil industry in Indonesia. Second, the controversy about palm oil commodity advantage and disadvantage at international level has also stimulated RSPO establishment. Finally, the RSPO is enhanced by the cooperation between transnational corporations and NGO certification initiative. In terms of its advantages, RSPO brings a positive image for palm oil companies. However, RSPO also has several limitations. First, the RSPO has lack of accountability. Second, the RSPO is a costly mechanism. Third, RSPO has lack of legitimacy from the national stakeholder such as the Indonesian government and palm oil companies association.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shulby Yozar Ariadhy
AU  - Darol Arkum
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/28
TI  - Sustainable Palm Oil Governance
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Sustainable Environment, Agriculture and Tourism (ICOSEAT 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 334
EP  - 343
SN  - 2468-5747
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-086-2_44
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-086-2_44
ID  - Ariadhy2022
ER  -