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Our News
Cooperative to Make Sustainable Palm Oil Certification Accessible to All
Tawau: Koperasi Landskap Kelapa Sawit Sabah held its first ever AGM today to mark the establishment of a Cooperative in its efforts to achieve group certification under the MSPO and RSPO standards. Through this Cooperative, certification will be accessible to both small and medium sized oil palm growers.
Certification involves a variety of processes including internal and external audits, assessments, and GPS mappings – all of which are costly to businesses and become a deterrent to certification. However, these high costs can be overcome as the Cooperative allows the cost to be shared among its members.
The initiative is an effort by palm oil industry players, with support from WWF-Malaysia, to work towards stopping deforestation and ensuring no exploitation of people in their production of sustainable palm oil. This is in line with the recent government mandate that all palm oil production in Malaysia should be certified as MSPO (Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil), and lays the groundwork for RSPO certification in the future.
MSPO and RSPO certification require oil palm plantations to adhere to the existing rules and regulations of keeping riparian reserves intact, ensuring no development at steep slopes, and no encroachment of protected areas.
The newly formed Cooperative serves as a platform to support certification of all of its members, through a sharing of costs and industry best practices.
The ultimate goal of the Cooperative is to allow independent oil palm growers in the Tawau landscape to come together and combine efforts to achieve group certification under the MSPO and RSPO standards.
WWF-Malaysia aims to integrate this initiative in order to improve the sustainable production of palm oil through a wider landscape approach. Through a landscape approach, sustainable palm oil production in Sabah is linked with the protection of the State’s forests and the restoration of its key ecological corridors, ultimately resulting in a living landscape. This is in line with the State government’s commitment to 30% Totally Protected Areas, and 100% RSPO certification of palm oil by 2025 as part of a jurisdictional approach to sustainable development.
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For more information, please contact:
Mary Anne K. Baltazar
Tel: +6088-262420 Ext. 117
Email: mbaltazar@wwf.org.my