Territorializing effects of global standards: What is at stake in the case of ‘sustainable’ palm oil?

Ruysschaert, Denis; Carter, Caitríona; Cheyns, Emmanuelle

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.05.009

Cited by 20 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Territorialization appears through the strategic and operational processes linked to the construction and application of procedural rules and regulations. Territorialization also occurs via the rules and policy-making processes that involve socio-technological processes linked to the spirit of the managerial approaches to sustainability [45].…”

Section: Territorialization Effect Of Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Oil Palm Governance: Challenges of Sustainability Policy in Indonesia

et al. 2022

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Nowadays, Indonesian palm oil faces agrarian, environmental, and social issues and has been subject to sharp criticism from the international community for many years. To answer this problem, the Indonesian government implemented a strategy through certification which ensured the achievement of sustainability standards, especially on the upstream side of the palm oil supply chain. The implementation of Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) was an ultimate instrument that applied in particular to smallholders oriented towards managing land legal issues, plantation business licenses, plant seeds, and environmental management and to farmer organizations at the local level. However, this process faced quite complex challenges in the form of structural barriers that are very constraining. This study revealed the occurrence of the phenomenon of hollow governance when regulations are absent or collide with each other. The study also revealed institutional power and multi-level governance that made the governance process ineffective or counterproductive. With a qualitative approach to research conducted in three important palm oil provinces of Indonesia, this article aims to look at the issues of oil palm governance a bit more comprehensively. The study conceptualized what was referred to as low-functioning governance to describe how weak the institutions, organizations, actors, and resources are that support ISPO implementation, especially at the regional and local levels. This paper suggests improving and strengthening the ISPO oil palm governance if Indonesian palm oil companies and smallholders want to gain better credibility on sustainability abroad.

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Section: Territorialization Effect Of Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Oil Palm Governance: Challenges of Sustainability Policy in Indonesia

et al. 2022

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“…Figure 2 presents an example of the RSPO segregated palm oil supply chain model compared to a conventional palm oil supply chain Despite the certification being widely accepted and recognised in the European region, there has been criticism against the sustainability scheme. Concerns such as lack of legitimacy and balance in its membership, unfair distribution of costs and benefits between downstream sectors and upstream sectors, operational barriers and financial constraint of certification among smallholders, lack of validity and respect toward national regulatory and sovereignty, complexity in the traceability and transparency of sourcing sustainable palm oil in the supply chain, and conflicting priorities for sustainable development between palm oilconsuming countries and palm oil-producing countries have created resistance towards the TSC initiative (Aziz et al, 2021;Gassler and Spiller, 2018;Rival et al, 2016;Ruysschaert et al, 2019;Vogelpohl, 2021). In fact, there appears to be inconsistency in benchmarking standards among the TSC, particularly on biodiversity protection and conservation (Englund and Berndes, 2015).…”

Section: Sustainability Certificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Environmental and Health Sustainability Challenges of Malaysian Palm Oil in the European Union

NAIDU¹

2022

JOPR

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The palm oil industry in Malaysia is an essential source of export revenue for the nation. As demand for palm oil grows in the international market, the industry has been experiencing mounting pressure to ensure sustainable development. The necessity for sustainable palm oil is amplified with European Union's requirement for certified and sustainably produced palm oil to enter its market. The commodity is also inundated with anti-palm oil campaigns, which emphasise allegations of unsustainable practices.Collectively, these challenges pose a formidable impact on the palm oil trade. However, there are insufficient studies that review the existing literature on the challenges related to palm oil sustainability. Hence, this article presents a review on the environmental and health sustainability concerns the Malaysian palm oil sector faces when trading in the European market. The findings of the article suggest the development of strategies by multi-stakeholders to improve commodity competitiveness in the international market. One strategy proposed in this article is to engage the media and Non-Governmental Organisations in developing effective communication mechanisms to disseminate a more balanced perspective of the commodity.A positive voice on the existing sustainability measures could help shape an unbiased public opinion on palm oil production, trade, and consumption.

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“…For example, in the case of palm oil, the legitimacy of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has been questioned, as particularly smallholders and indigenous peoples have not been sufficiently represented and involved. In general, there is a lack of balance regarding the membership of and influence on the RSPO between upstream actors (producers, processors) and downstream actors (manufacturers, retailers) of the palm oil value chain [see, e.g., 41,44,46,49,59,60]. On these grounds and especially among these upstream actor groups, the story line of a lack of legitimacy of the RSPO emerged, according to which the "RSPO is skewed in favour of the manufacturers and retailers, whilst the bulk of the certification costs sit with the growers" [61, p. 178].…”

Section: Story Lines Of Sovereignty and Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnational sustainability certification for the bioeconomy? Patterns and discourse coalitions of resistance and alternatives in biomass exporting regions

Vogelpohl

2021

Energ Sustain Soc

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The bioeconomy is nowadays widely proclaimed by governments and corporations around the world as a new paradigm for a sustainable economy. Essentially, it broadly denotes the promotion, development and establishment of the use of biogenic resources in diverse kinds of industrial technologies, production processes and products. Yet, in order for the bioeconomy to be sustainable, it has to be assured that these biogenic resources are sourced sustainably. In the last 30 years, transnational sustainability certification (TSC) has established itself as a popular instrument in this context, for example in the case of European biofuels sustainability regulation. In the last decade or so, however, TSC initiatives in several biomass production sectors like palm oil, soy, fruits, aquaculture or fisheries—mostly initiated by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations from the Global North—are increasingly met with resistance from actors from the resource-producing countries, mostly located in the Global South. Issues brought up in this context concern their lack of legitimacy and respect for national regulatory sovereignty and conflicting priorities in terms of sustainable development. Consequently, governmental and corporate actors from the resource-producing countries have developed sustainability standards that now at least partly compete with TSC. Against this background, this contribution investigates this apparent dilemma of biomass certification by taking stock of existing TSC initiatives and territorial responses to them in several sectors of the bioeconomy in order to discover general patterns and dynamics of transnational biomass sustainability certification. This analysis is based on a review of existing empirical studies on these issues as well as on conceptual literature on discourse coalitions and transnational hybrid governance for the classification of the different aspects and developments in the individual sectors. Results show that TSC is indeed challenged in all sectors around story lines of sovereignty and sustainability, employed by closely associated state and industry actors in the specific context of the prevalent state-industry relations and the practices and institutions of the respective international political economies. Beyond this general pattern, these alternative systems take on different shapes and complex relations between transnational and territorial sustainability governance emerge that are not always antagonistic, but also exist in parallel or even complementarily and involve various hybrid configurations of public and private actors. Overall, this casts some doubt on the potential of TSC as an instrument to safeguard the sustainability of the bioeconomy and shows one of its potential pitfalls, which is reflected upon in the conclusion.

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Territorializing effects of global standards: What is at stake in the case of ‘sustainable’ palm oil?

Cited by 20 publications

References 49 publications

The Oil Palm Governance: Challenges of Sustainability Policy in Indonesia

The Oil Palm Governance: Challenges of Sustainability Policy in Indonesia

The Environmental and Health Sustainability Challenges of Malaysian Palm Oil in the European Union

Transnational sustainability certification for the bioeconomy? Patterns and discourse coalitions of resistance and alternatives in biomass exporting regions

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