Episode 1 - Sustainable Palm Oil: The Past, The Present and Beyond

Welcome to the first episode of The Palm Pod, hosted by Fara Rom and brought to you by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

 In this episode, we take a look back at the journey of sustainable palm oil—how it started, where we are today, and what lies ahead. Joining us is Hun Sung Yen (HS), Director of Standards & Sustainability at RSPO, who shares key insights into the progress, challenges, and the future direction of sustainable palm oil.

Learn more about sustainable palm oil at www.rspo.org.

*The views and opinions expressed on The Palm Pod are solely those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of The Palm Pod or the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Transcript

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hi I'm Fara Rom and you're tuning into the very first episode of The Palm Pod. Listen in for engaging discussions expert insights and industry updates on sustainable palm oil, guiding consumers and businesses to make better choices for the planet. In this episode we will dive into the past, the present and beyond touching on the current affairs of sustainable palm oil and exploring what's next. The year 2024, marks the 20th anniversary of RSPO's formation in pursuit of making palm oil sourcing more ethical and more sustainable So today, we have a special guest speaker the one and only Yen Han Sung, or HS for short, The Head of Standards and Impacts and Monitoring Evaluation and Learning from RSPO. Welcome, HS. hello hi HS uh Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your role in RSPO yeah sure hi everyone my name is HS Yen I am Malaysian, and I joined the RSPO in 2018 focusing on data and I've been with the organisation since uh pick up a few more responsibilities along the way I currently lead the standards development and the impacts monitoring evaluation and learning functions within the RSPO. So, we create standards because we want to create positive impacts. and to report on positive impacts, we need strong standards. So, combination of these two functions within the RSPO allows us to link these two crucial elements together and result in stronger standards that create stronger positive impacts for our three impact pillars, which is People, Planet and Prosperity, When I'm not being a geek behind a computer, I like to be outdoors I like to go diving, Go mountaineering, when I can I do volunteer for environments and social causes, but really, the last few years have been very much focusing on getting the making the RSPO a stronger organisation thanks for that that's a really vast description of yourself I feel like your weekends are very packed every week haha okay so we can, start with, the past, So, let's begin with a little bit of history of palm oil because I feel like it's important for our listeners to get a more complete picture of the palm oil industry the good and bad definitely and from this, how sustainable palm oil plays a significant role in changing the industry for the better in the last two decades. So, HS, can you give us a a brief history of palm oil production and its global significance okay, well this could take a while but I'll try to give a quick history lesson about palm oil um palm oil as we know it comes from the oil palm. That's a species of palm that originates from West Africa around the Guinea, Nigeria, Ghana region / area. And it's been there for the longest time. Some recorded history dates it back to 5,000 years but certainly it's be part of the landscape and is also part of the culture. The same way that gula Melaka is intrinsic to Malaysian culture, or ghee is to Indian culture, or maze is to Central American cultures, palm oil is a part of the West African culture. I was in Africa recently and we heard a lot of stories there are entire recipe books that are built around palm oil and back in the day when we didn't have electricity some used to use oil, to light street lamps in West Africa, they use palm oil. So, when the rest of the world was out hunting whales, for the oil necessary to power fires, West Africa was using palm was using palm oil so it's been part of the landscape it's been used in farming it's been used in food systems for a long time throughout recorded and unrecorded history. But what changed? How did palm oil become the commodity that we know it today? Simply put, the agricultural and the industrial revolutions that started in Europe and then moved to across the world that really moved entire societies from subsistence farming to large scale agriculture and then lead to urbanization and industrialization building of factories so on and so forth. Modern society and modern economies as we know it today, are built on this foundation. So this shift, meant that most of the population was no longer producing food on their own farms for themselves. They were producing large scale crops to be exported and a lot of these new innovations in production technologies meant that manual labor could be dealt away with and there were a lot of people that needed jobs they moved to the cities to work in factories. That's a huge increase in population there's a huge increase in population that needs food to eat and is also an increase in machines and all other associated methods of production. So, things being the way it was back then with the colonial powers, what the colonial powers such as England, France, Netherlands needed to do was to actually find areas that could produce the raw materials necessary for the industries and palm oil was one of that. So, if you think about the history of commerce, a lot of what we use today is rooted back in those histories. The British came to Malaya to look for tin that became tin goods. They brought rubber from the Amazon to Malaysia in Indonesia to produce tires. cotton was widespread across the world, is needed to produce clothes and palm oil was needed to make food, it was used as a cooking oil was also used to make soaps. One of the oldest soap brands in the world that you probably know the name of'Palm Olive' comes from the word palm and that meant an increase in hygiene, people were living longer. But they live longer they need to eat more, and they need to do more things in terms of work. And so, palm oil was also used as lubricants in machines. All the machines in the factories are made of metal and if they aren't lubricated and oiled, they will break down. So, palm oil became this essential cash crop that powered a lot of the industrialization that happened since the 17th century. Now in the post colonial era after World War 2, A lot of the colonies inherited this export oriented commodity crops certainly Malaysia and Indonesia did and that meant that the palm that was planted during the pre colonial years were carried over and that meant that palms footprints in the modern trade economy was maintained and became even larger. And that's largely due to two things 1 it's a very versatile product it's present in over 50% of any supermarkets products and also it's very very productive in comparison to other vegetable oil such as sunflower,soybean oil, rape seed oil, coconut oil, palm has about four times the amount of yield in volume per hectare and in some cases even 10 times the yield then other comparable vegetable crops and that's also because palm is a fruit and it's not a seed. Other vegetable oils tend to come from seeds. But palm is a fruit and you get a lot more oil from that fleshy part of the fruit. So, each of these vegetables has its own niches has its own pros and cons and markets, substitution and blending does happen. That's usually happens when prices fluctuate. But that has also resulted through history, productivity and versatility the large footprint of palm oil in the modern economy and that's a lot larger than you might think. So, in essence, that's how we got up to today, where palm is part of everyday life whether you know it or not and I hope this concludes the history lesson. and I hope that was educational to everyone that's more than amazing I feel like it's it's such a it's such a great overview to see the shift from the origins where palm tree comes from and to this day and how significant it is in our, the people's lives all over the world. So with that, I think we can shift a little bit of the discussion towards including sustainable palm oil in the discussion because I think not many people hear this especially I think especially for me like before this I've never heard of the term sustainable palm oil so can you help describe in the simplest manner if possible the difference between sustainable palm oil and conventional palm oil. Okay well, I'll try to make this as simple as possible but it is a complex question to answer but in essence, the commodity itself is the same it's annoying it has the same properties um and it says chemical chemically biologically the difference between sustainable palm oil and conventional palm oil would be the practices in which it is produced. So, with any agricultural commodity unless it's not just about palm oil but other crops such as say coffee or chocolates so coffee or cocoa, you need land that land takes the place of perhaps a degraded forest or perhaps it could be pristine forest. You need workers to go into the land and harvest and do all the necessary industrial processes to turn it from a raw material into a commodity. This is where the practices come in there are I suppose sustainable ways of practices that you can put in place to ensure that the palm oil that's produced is considered sustainable that isn't to say that um conventional is a negative connotation either, it just means that it doesn't have the rules of sustainable production that are inherent in a say the RSPO standard which which has a defined level of criteria indicator and requirements that have to be met to be in order for palm oil to be considered sustainable. So, if you want an analogy, think of the River Thames in London 2 hundred years ago it was polluted because there were factories upstream that were releasing way straight into the water. There was no control in terms of open burning or furnaces which resulted in smog in London for the longest time, and basically a dead river. No fish lived there over 200 years. they've managed to clean it up and by that's by putting in practices in terms of sustainable production and sustainable management of the river and now the Thames is clean there was a seal that was found there I think two years ago, and the air quality in London is a lot better. So, that's the difference. It's a difference not in the product itself, but in the practice of production, but the positive impacts of putting those practices in place, can actually be huge. I think also it's really important to note out there in the products and all that like they don't really specify conventional palm oil so people are not really aware of you know the existence of even sustainable palm oil. So maybe, we can say sustainable palm oil the sustainable word is the responsible processes that took place in producing palm oil. am I correct Yes, that's that's entirely true. and that doesn't mean to say that conventional palm oil is irresponsible maybe it is produced using responsible practices it's just not necessarily according to the full rule book that the RSPO produces. So there generally isn't a distinguishing wording between conventional and sustainable palm oil in an ingredients list but the RSPO does have a Trademark that can be used in products to denote that that product contain sustainable palm oil, or at least sustainable palm oil as defined by the RSPO. I think um it's a bit interesting when when you said sustainable practices so,what does it really means? What does it entails? What are the key principles that defines sustainable palm oil? Well, sustainability means different things to different people but in the Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), it is about balance and the balance that we're talking about here is the balance between our three impact pillars. The three areas that the RSPO wants to have a positive impact on the world and that's People Planets and Prosperity. So the whole ecosystem of RSPO Standards, systems and procedures is about protecting the environment ensuring that workers labour and communities and land are protected, socially responsible and at the same time allowing for economic development and businesses to be viable. So, the challenge here is that we can't have one or the other we have to have all three in balance and proof of that is that you can be sustainable and profitable at the same time. You can practice sustainable practices and not be a drag on the viability of the industry or your livelihood or even your company. So together, that's what constitute sustainability in an RSPO context. Is it difficult, when we say sustainable practices to produce certain commodities such as palm oil what are the biggest challenges that you see, when we want to ensure the sustainability of the commoditie um which in this topic today that we talk about sustainable pump oil. So, the first thing to realize that sustainable doesn't have doesn't happen overnight. It is a long long race and it has a lot of elements some of which can be put into place fairly quickly, but some may take years to actually put in place. So the rules and the general themes around sustainability are quite common place. They are permeated through various aspects of everyday life including ESG reporting, corporate sustainability directors, due diligence, so and so forth but you have the rules. People still need to be aware of those rules and be able to apply that and apply that consistently. So, the current status I suppose of RSPO is that the awareness is there. It's about scale and penetration. We've managed to certify 20% of palm oil production globally as sustainable. In the 20 years the RSPO has been in existence and that's a considerable amount considering that that's one fifth of the world's palm oil supply. Now, the other part of this is you can produce it but someone still has to buy it for for markets to work. So on the downstream side, we do also see the need for global markets and this include private actors such as companies but also international organizations of governments to prioritize sustainable sourcing to increase the demand of sustainable products and I say products because it's not just palm oil, but sustainably produce products in general such as coffee or sugar, because at the end of the day we are all economic actors and it was down to supply and demand. If someone has it and I want it I will buy it and the more people want to buy it the more supply will come in. so it's more of awareness of the people to increase the demand for sustainable palm oil. Yes I think that's the uh challenges that we need how do we get people more aware and once they're aware how do we get them to be more engaged and participate in a sustainable economy. okay so, like you mentioned in the past, the overview of palm oil in general we can see there's an increasing demand year by year for palm oil and I believe there's a lot of negative sentiments especially in the Global North, where there's a narrative that says palm oil has been linked to deforestation and loss of biodiversity. How does RSPO mitigate that? Well, his is rooted in where palm oil is produced but also why it has been produced in an increasing scale over the years. But to answer the first part, palm oil grows around the equatorial region between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, so that covers the Amazon and the other areas in Latin America, covers the Congo Basin in West Africa, it covers the very ancient virgin rainforest in Borneo, and Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and so on and so forth. These are the most biodiverse areas in the world and some of the largest carbon sinks in the world as well you know most of the world's intact rainforest and also valuable ecosystems are in this region. Now the other part of that is, this is also the region in the world where over 3 billion people live and that population is growing. The UN projects that we will be hitting 10 billion people within the next 50 years most of the those 10 billion people will be living in the Equatorial regions so they have needs too. They need to develop. The governments need to develop the economies, the people need to have jobs, food to eat and they turn to what's available to them. So deforestation has been an issue because and biodiversity is an aspect of that because these are the most biodiverse regions in the world. We can't stop economic developments altogether and that would be unrealistic to do you can't tell a country you can't clear any of your forest because you know essentially that means, you're saying "Oh, we don't want you to develop" but how can they develop in a responsible way. so RSPO does have a lot of mechanisms within our standards, within our membership on identification assessment for land that could be economically developed or has to be conserved because it's valuable. We also have other procedures such as our Remediation and Compensation Procedure the RaCP, where companies that go for certification have to remediate for historical deforestation through projects. So in that sense, we do address that situation and conserve areas that need to be conserved, especially areas where biodiversity is highest and what we call RTE - rare, threatening, and endangered species live but still allow for economies to develop. And palm oil to be cultivated for the economic well-being of the people that actually live In relation to the conversation of the environment, there's an increasing talk about the concerns of carbon emissions, can you explain a little bit of what is the connection between palm oil plantations and carbon emissions and how would this be addressed. oh you ask such simple such simple questions Fara. First of all, the issue of climate change and its association with carbon emissions has many different dimensions. Let's talk about the oil palm itself. The oil palm is a perennial crop, it is not an annual crop. Which means that you plant it and it stays there for about 25 years. Which is the productive life cycle of the palm. Annual crops, such as soybean or wheats, you plant it, you harvest it and then you till the land and you plant it again. so it's planted annually. That's a crucial distinguishing factor between palm and other vegetable oils because once you plant plant a palm and it grows, it stores carbon in its trunks, in its leaves so on and so forth. so that's one thing to note. The oil palm is a plant and it in itself is a store of carbon what we're concerned with when it comes to the production and cultivation of palm oil is how much carbon will be released when you develop the land that you're going to plant the oil palm on and what about your ongoing operational emissions when it comes to operating your mill, your factory your vehicles so and so forth. So, there's two aspects to that. one is emissions reduction. So, any industrial processes, it's not just power oil, involves some level of emissions release, You turn on your stove, you're releasing carbon. You start your car you're releasing. but the idea is, how do you offset that or at least mitigate that by reducing that amount to a level where it is not completely irresponsible, but can be mitigated and can always be reduced further. In terms of emissions reductions, we have aspects in the standards that asks our certified members to assess what the areas of carbon emission risk are and take steps to reduce mitigate uh and minimize those emissions and these can be things such as the treatment of waste, how you throw away biological waste which generates methane, and methane is a greenhouse gas it is also reduction of fossil fuels. We encourage that certified units reduce their uses of fossil fuels in favour of, say, batteries or renewables, so you reduce the amount of fuel that you're using. And also things such as fertilizer, instead of getting fertilizer from 6,000 miles away in Russia you could use local alternatives or practice. or gather or certain level of or recycling on nutrients from organic material around and these are sustainable practices that will ultimately also lead to lower emissions in operational sense. And then there's emissions avoidance. This is trying to avoid releasing any carbon that is stored in the first place. The palm oil itself sorry, the oil palm itself stores carbon, but land contains carbon. When you are developing land, you would be releasing carbon, and we have seen that in the charts of research conducted under carbon release of oil palms, there's always a spike at initial start where land is being cleared or land has is been repurposed for a new generation of palm oil, and then the emission starts to drop because once it has been planted, it starts to store carbon. Now, this is quite crucial. This is where it ties into deforestation in the from the previous question, the more you conserve the more carbon is not released. And this is particularly true on tropical peatlands, which are huge store of carbon we saw in Malaysia, Indonesia and all parts of the world in Southeast Asia. Hase every year, there's always the risk of haze. People are scared around the summer of the year, what's gonna happen, a lot of that is rooted in the unsustainable practice of open burning in critically high carbon secretion areas such as peatlands and peatlands are the swamps that contain billions of years of organic material, and it's been decaying and if you leave it there, the carbon will stay there. But if you burn it and if you clear it, the carbon is released. So, that's how we try to avoid the release of emissions in the first place. and it's quite crucial because the largest tropical peatland in the world is actually in West Africa. It's the Cuvette Centrale in the Congo Basin. And if we can put sustainable practices in at this point before that area has been become full skill development, we could very well be preventing a disaster from happening in the future. And that's essentially it. How do we address climate change to carbon emissions through what an oil palm plantation can do, and that's through mitigating its emissions and avoiding the release of emissions itself. That being said, this is also rooted in supply and demand. One of the reasons why palm oil production has increased quite significantly over the past few years, is because of climate change again. There was a concerted effort certainly in the EU to tackle the use of fossil fuels, which are major contributor contributed to climate change by switching to biofuels and at that point, one of the favorite biofuels was palm oil. Now, that perception has now shifted and you know palm oil that used to be seen as a better alternative to fossil fuel is now in itself, be seen as an issue for climate change so the perceptions will evolve, but what our mission is in RSPO is still the same. We want to mitigate and minimize emissions and where we can we want to avoid the release of stock carbon at all, if possible. From a lot of the things that you shared, Sustainable practices doesn't have to like be a vast like a big step there's always something like you mention, getting fertilisers locally and not from abroad, So there's a lot of different I feel it's really interesting to see like especially in agricultural practices that we can shift towards a sustainable future and it's possible even though it's difficult isn't it yeah I think yeah there's always a first step and you know if you take the first step then you can take another step and another step and another step cause ultimately sustainability is a Marathon it's a very very long race. What we want is everyone to be aware of is that it is a race but you have to take that first step and you know if more enough people in the race it gets easier and easier, but you also hope that we don't make sustainability so lofty or onerous, that people drop out of the rate of the race itself. We have to balance that, but the ultimate goal is still the same. The ultimate goal is far off. You have to take the first step and take this the next few steps and those might be the easier parts. but there are ways and there are a lot of assistance mechanisms within the RSPO, within governments, inculcating sustainable practices in terms of production. So, we've touched somehow a lot of a lot of the points and I think our lessons also can understand a bit further of what sustainable palm oil is and what is happening now and what are we facing, and as for RSPO in your point of view, where is our RSPO, which stage is RSPO in now, and where would you like to see the palm oil industry headed over the coming decade. Well I mean, I can only speak for myself because uh different people have different metrics for where RSPO is but we look statistically, RSPO represents 20% of global palm oil production, in terms of influence we're actually about 40% because the RSPO members collectively produce about 40% of the world's palm oil other the remaining 20% uh is actually in the process of certification and certification does take a a while to achieve sometimes. So, in terms of influence is wider than the 40% and in terms of actual awareness I think RSPO settling in this 20 years has managed to make the world aware that sustainability is a priority in in palm oil production and the various mechanisms of sustainability that should be practiced in terms of say, human rights environmental protection, climate change, even to things such as women safety, or gender empowerment. Last but not least, I feel like you've touched a little bit of this as well but uh I think it's good to kind of finish up our conversation with this because I feel like it's an important point every time we discuss about the palm oil industry, because like you mentioned it always boils down to supply and demand on how we can shift conventional palm oil practices towards sustainable palm oil. So, can you give a few tips on how can consumers or individuals like myself to get involved or contribute to the global movement for sustainable palm oil. so I'm gonna kind of like rejig that question as well and just not focus on sustainable palm oil but sustainable products in general, because focusing on just palm doesn't mean mean ignores the rest other sustainable production produce commodities out there and it's all rooted in same thing, which is awareness. So, RSPO as our central tenets we want to certify, we want to collaborate, and we want to communicate about sustainability. So, we work together with our members with our partners and convene together to create change. Certification is an avenue and step towards that and we would like to communicate on the positive impacts that certification can bring. Now, that means we have to reach a wide audience in order to have transformative scale. We've got to 20% of the world's production in 20 years. How do we get further? how do we reach the people that perhaps haven't heard that message? or uh I'm not perhaps not in a position or to understand how they do it and that's where awareness comes in, and again it's not just through palm oil, there are many sustainability standards out there, that cover other products that are in your that are in your everyday life. Sugar is represented by the Bonsucro standard for example, paper products by FSC, seafood by MSC, cotton the shirts that you buy from Uniqlo that's BCI, coffee, cocoa Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade There's a whole ecosystem of organisations like RSPO working towards sustainable production, because all these products are still rooted in the same aspects of sustainability, reducing deforestation, protecting human rights, while ensuring that economic viability So, once you know that these things are out there, and you're aware that they exist, you should look up for them. We have trademarks, a lot of the other standards have trademarks as well, and you make an economic choice as an individual person to choose sustainability and that would mean looking out for information on what products using sustainable commodities, and making that choice to buy that. Because that sends a signal. You are creating demand for that particular product, and if enough people demand for that, the supply will follow. And myself, I think, I'm hyper aware of what I consume as an individual since I joined the RSPO cause Fara, I was like you when I first started I didn't know what was going on but I look up label these days, I look up for trademark these days, and I make an economic choice , like, I'm gonna buy this might cost a little little more but I'm saving the planets and I'm ensuring that every worker involved in it has a fair and equal chance of work without discrimination and all the other tenets of sustainability. So individually, I might be a drop but if enough people have drops then becomes a ripple and if they're enough ripples, then that whole thing becomes a tidal wave, and that could really really change things but you have to start from somewhere and only thing that everyone really has in their control is themselves. So if you make choice, then hopefully everyone else makes the same choice by communicating and collaborating the movement becomes bigger and bigger and the demand becomes bigger and bigger and supply will have to follow. I feel like that's a great way to summarize our discussion for today, the first episode of The Palm Pod - Sustainable Palm Oil the past, the present and beyond. Thank you so much HS for your time. I think I've learned a lot from today's episode. Do you have two or three words to close our session. Just thank you very much for inviting me to be the first participant in The Palm Pod stay tuned for more Palm Pods We'll have a lot of interesting topics coming up. Sustainability is a complex issue and it will be fascinating to dive in and hear from all our very learned colleagues and collaborators on the different aspects of sustainability. Thank you so much. I was speaking to our guests, HS, the head of Standards and Impacts and Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (IMEL) from RSPO I am Fara Rom and this is the Palm Pod by RSPO - A global partnership to make palm oil sustainable