“Meaningless certification”

Three-quarters of oil palm concessions in Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) occupy land that was forest and/or wildlife habitat as recently as 30 years ago. A new study on certified oil palm plantations and their links to past deforestation, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, concludes that RSPO’s failure to account for past deforestation means that “every logged area ‘today’ could be certified as a sustainable plantation ‘tomorrow,’ in an infinite loop of meaningless certification.” Read an article from news portal Mongabay (in English) here.