Author: Pierre Bois d’Enghien

RSPO GA Preview The RSPO Roundtable and General Assembly takes place this week in Kota Kinabalu. Although much of the outreach and public activity takes place at the Roundtable meeting, the General Assembly is where the more substantial decisions are made via proposed resolutions. The revised Principles and Criteria are the most significant item on […]

The Amsterdam Declaration’s Subtle Shift The recent European Palm Oil Alliance meeting in Spain brought the Amsterdam Declaration back into the spotlight. The Amsterdam Declaration was set with great fanfare in 2015. The target set under the non-binding ‘agreement’ back then was for 100 per cent imports of certified sustainable palm oil, i.e. all palm […]

African Farmers and RED Gain Attention Our colleague Thompson Ayodele from the Initiative for Public Policy Analysis in Nigeria has highlighted the EU’s attitude towards palm oil and the new ‘risk’ framework they’re attempting to impose on palm oil. His view is in line with ours; the ‘risk’ approach is not about compliance with specific […]

Nestle: Who Needs Greenpeace? Greenpeace’s action against Wilmar and other firms has highlighted the work being undertaken by Nestle and The Forest Trust in conjunction with Airbus. The ‘Starling’ program that the three entities have put together relies on decades of historical satellite imaging and new monitoring data. Theoretically, in combination with better palm oil […]

The first two blogs in this series looked at how the ‘high carbon stock’ idea has been introduced into both European regulation (under the Renewable Energy Directive) and into private sector (the High Carbon Stock Approach and the Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto). This piece will look at how and whether the various approaches to HCS […]

Has the EU Predetermined ‘High Risk’ Biofuels? The EU’s Ambassador to Indonesia, Vincent Guérend, has raised eyebrows in the region by stating that the EU will phase out palm-oil based biofuels by 2030, according to comments reported in the Jakarta Post. The problem with his comments is simple: the compromise text for the revised Renewable […]

Indonesia Tries Another Moratorium The Indonesian government has said that it has put in place a presidential instruction that halts new palm oil developments for three years. Various environmental groups have welcomed the announcement, but it should be viewed with a degree of scepticism. First, it’s a presidential instruction or ‘inpres’. This means it is […]

In our last piece we analysed High Carbon Stock as it is understood by two key stakeholders in the palm oil debate: the European Commission, and NGOs such as Greenpeace. This week we examine the alternative approach to HCS that was backed by a large number of industry players, particularly from Malaysia. After the High […]

COMMENTARY: Is the GAR spat putting the HCS Group at risk? The Golden-Agri Resources-Greenpeace spat has escalated since we wrote about it briefly last week. To recap, GAR appeared to be losing patience with anti-palm oil campaigners, particularly in Europe. This anti-palm sentiment was underlined by Greenpeace’s overtly anti-palm oil ‘Rang Tan’ video. Since then, […]