This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 19, 2015.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an international grouping tasked with promoting the growth and use of certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO), is targeting a take-up of 50% CSPO by the industry in Malaysia and Indonesia by 2020, as part of its initiative to create greater awareness of sustainable palm oil.

RSPO secretary-general Datuk Darrel Webber said European companies are leading the charge internationally, with a target to achieve 100% CSPO take-up by 2020, while that of India is 30% and 10% in China.

“The Chinese government is starting to talk about policies on sustainable palm oil for companies that want to invest in plantations and how they should operate there,” he told a news conference after the opening of the RSPO’s 13th annual round-table meeting yesterday.

“[The] RSPO is one of the benchmarks that they refer to, and our challenge is to get more Chinese companies to be aware of sustainable palm oil,” he said.

He added that the United Kingdom, for example, had declared that more than 90% of its imported palm oil is now certified as sustainable.

RSPO co-chairperson Datuk Carl Bek-Nielson, who is also United Plantations Bhd’s non-independent vice-chairman, said in order to make the sustainable palm oil agenda a success, there needs to be participation of various segments of the society.

“The last 11 years of work has pushed it towards this direction, and it is important [for us] not to lose that momentum,” Nielson added.

The three-day conference discusses the road map for the industry and realignment of plans to achieve a globally shared vision of market transformation towards sustainable palm oil.