palm oils Archives - Resilient Landscapes

Komitmen nol-deforestasi di Indonesia: Tantangan tata kelola

Topik utama

Komitmen nol-deforestasi di Indonesia muncul dan menguat dengan cepat. Komitmen ini telah menjangkau sebagian besar produksi minyak kelapa sawit mentah dan hampir seluruh sektor bubur kertas dan kertas (pulp and paper). Umumnya, komitmen tersebut terwujud dalam kebijakan “nol-deforestasi, bebas-eksploitasi (sosial) dan bebas-gambut”.
Komitmen tersebut bergantung pada definisi ‘hutan’ dalam identifikasi dan konservasinya, dan mengandalkan metodologi seperti Nilai Konservasi Tinggi (High Conservation Value) dan Nilai Karbon Tinggi (High Carbon Stock)
Pada tahap awal implementasi terungkap bahwa sektor kelapa sawit menghadapi sejumlah tantangan terkait tata kelola dalam mewujudkan komitmen ini. Tantangan tersebut antara lain kurangnya dukungan peraturan perundangan terhadap implementasi komitmen, dan adanya perbedaan visi berkelanjutan. Perlu dicatat bahwa untuk sektor kertas dan bubur kertas tampak lebih maju dalam menjalankan komitmen.
Integrasi petani ke dalam rantai pasok berkelanjutan memberikan tantangan lain bagi sektor kelapa sawit, yaitu keterlacakan, performa lingkungan lebih baik dan peningkatan hasil panen, yang membutuhkan tindakan segera untuk mengatasinya. Menyelesaikan aspek legalisasi kebun petani menjadi penting dan berada di luar jangkauan komitmen. Kejelasan legalitas bagi petani akan meningkatkan akses mereka terhadap permodalan dan sertifikasi.
Agar efektif, komitmen nol-deforestasi menuntut adanya keselarasan antara tata kelola sektor publik dan swasta. Ini perlu kesepakatan tentang visi berkelanjutan yang didukung oleh kebijakan publik; kemajuan dalam penyelesaian tenurial lahan; penegakan peraturan perundang-undangan di tingkat pusat dan daerah; serta implementasi kebijakan untuk merasionalisasi perluasan perkebunan kelapa sawit yang dikelola petani kecil dan menengah.
Isu pewarisan juga harus diselesaikan oleh grup perusahaan kelapa sawit dan P&P, yaitu melalui restitusi lahan secara legal, dukungan pada petani dan investasi untuk restorasi lahan.

Review of the diversity of palm oil production systems in Indonesia: Case study of two provinces: Riau and Jambi

This paper proposes an overview of the development of oil palm production in Indonesia combining two levels: (i) a national and historical perspective of the development of the sector; (ii) a regional approach considering two contrasting provinces, Riau and Jambi. Starting with colonial times, the national approach deals first with the main periods that punctuate the development of oil palm plantations up to the contemporary period, marked by the liberalization of the economy. It emphasizes several factors that played a strategic role in the development of palm oil production, such as the role of the State and migration. After presenting the different models that structure the relationships among stakeholders and how these relationships have evolved, the role of small family planters is analyzed. This section ends with a review of some controversial issues: livelihood improvement, land tenure and customary rights, inclusion versus exclusion, market risks, forest and environmental threats and governance. The regional approach gives context to the development of palm oil production within two territories that have different historical backgrounds, with Jambi entering into production relatively recently. In each of the two provinces, the themes and issues involved in palm oil development identified at national level are analyzed, with specific emphasis on stakeholders’ strategic behaviours. The paper concludes with a comparative perspective on both provinces.

The public and private regime complex for governing palm oil supply: what scope for building connections and enhancing complementarities?

Key messages

The global palm oil value chain has grown in complexity over time as have the public and private regulations governing the sector. This influences stakeholder decisions along the palm oil supply chain and the territories where it is produced.
Weak alignment between the many regulatory initiatives has given rise to a ‘transnational regime complex’ that is struggling to resolve effectively many structural performance issues that have long plagued the palm oil sector.
Key performance issues facing the palm oil sector relate to pervasive land conflict and informality, yield differences between companies and smallholders, and a high carbon debt linked to emissions arising from deforestation and peatlands conversion.
Different disconnects, complementarities and antagonisms characterize current governance. Building connections and enhancing complementarities are important ways to gradually reduce antagonisms.
Complementarities have emerged among instruments with global reach, whereas disconnects persist especially within public regulations, between regulations and private standards, and between standards operating across different territorial scales.
Several connections can be built by better linking existing regulations, and public regulations and private standards at different levels. These could arise by embracing approaches that look at both supply chain and territorial management.
The main policy targets to achieve sustainability and inclusivity are: 1) limiting the expansion of palm oil in high-carbon forests and peatlands; 2) adopting mechanisms to enhance transparency and accountabilities; 3) creating conditional incentives to intensify palm oil supply, mainly of smallholder farmers; 4) adopting new approaches to facilitate the upgrade of smallholder production systems; and 5) legalizing tenure claims under different types of rights recognition schemes.

Commerce: Help bigger palm oil yields to save land

Technological innovation in oil-palm farming could help both to boost yields of palm oil and to reduce deforestation, but only if higher productivity causes palm-oil prices to drop sufficiently to discourage additional cultivation. If prices stay high, the demand for land is likely to go up in the push for ever-larger profits.

Sustainable Palm Oil Production project synthesis: Understanding and anticipating global challenges

Key messages

Several sustainability certification schemes have been developed for palm oil; however, the field impacts of these schemes remain highly uncertain. The Sustainable Palm Oil Production (SPOP) project, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), was aimed at consolidating and deepening the scientific basis of these schemes.
SPOP field work undertaken in Indonesia and Cameroon highlighted the large variability in practices and impacts of oil palm systems. Our main results related to the uncovering of the multiplicity of growers and their trajectories, and identifying room for improvement and the need for recommendations adapted to the various grower contexts and strategies.
The SPOP project made it explicit that visions of sustainability and global challenges vary greatly among growers and other stakeholders involved in the palm oil sector. These diverging conceptions are most likely to induce bottlenecks in the definition and implementation of good practices and should be accounted for in the refinement of sustainability criteria.
Within the SPOP project, we investigated possible futures for oil palm using participatory prospective analyses and multi-agent-based modeling work. Our research work showed that capacity development and the organizational capacity of smallholders, fair partnerships and combined forms of governance are key drivers in ensuring the uptake of good practices and sustainable development at the landscape scale.

The palm oil global value chain: Implications for economic growth and socialand environmental sustainability

There is abundant literature focusing on the palm oil sector, which has grown into a vigorous sector with production originating mainly from Malaysia and Indonesia, and on increased palm oil consumption in many countries around the globe, particularly European Union states, China and India. This sector expansion has become quite controversial, because while it has negative social and environmental impacts, it also leads to positive benefits in generating fiscal earnings for producing countries and regular income streams for a large number of large- and small-scale growers involved in palm oil production. This document reviews how the social, ecological, and environmental dynamics and associated implications of the global palm oil sector have grown in complexity over time, and examines the policy and institutional factors affecting the sector’s development at the global and national levels.

This work examines the geographies of production, consumption and trade of palm oil and its derivatives, and describes the structure of the global palm oil value chain, with special emphasis on Malaysia and Indonesia. In addition, this work reviews the main socioenvironmental impacts and trade-offs associated with the palm oil sector’s expansion, with a primary focus on Indonesia. The main interest is on the social impacts this has on local populations, smallholders and workers, as well as the environmental impacts on deforestation and their associated effects on carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. Finally, the growing complexity of the global oil palm value chain has also driven diverse types of developments in the complex oil palm policy regime governing the sector’s expansion. This work assesses the main features of this emerging policy regime involving public and private actors, with emphasis on Indonesia.

There are multiple efforts supporting the transition to a more sustainable palm oil production; yet the lack of a coordinated public policy, effective incentives and consistent enforcement is clear and obvious. The emergence of numerous privately driven initiatives with greater involvement of civil society organizations brings new opportunities for enhancing the sector’s governance; yet the uptake of voluntary standards remains slow, and any push for the adoption of more stringent standards may only widen the gap between large corporations and medium- and smallscale growers. Greater harmonization between voluntary and mandatory standards, as well as among private initiatives is required. Commitments to deforestation-free supply chains have the potential to reduce undesired environmental impacts from oil palm expansion, and while this risks excluding smallholders from the supply chains, such commitments may function to leverage the upgrading of smallholder production systems. Their success, however, will require greater public and private sector collaboration.

Stay ahead of the curve