
A Greenpeace investigator surveys an IOI palm oil concession in Ketapang, Indonesia. Photograph: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
If this is what progress looks like, yikes! Thanks to Elle Hunt and the Guardian for coverage of this story:
Greenpeace has suspended its campaign against one of the world’s largest palm oil traders in recognition of its “significant commitment” to address deforestation and exploitation in its supply chain.
One year after its sustainability certificate was suspended, IOI Group announced further commitments to improve its environmental practice in a nine-month progress report released on Friday.
Greenpeace simultaneously confirmed it was suspending its active campaign against IOI to give the Malaysia-based conglomerate time for its changes to take effect.
Kiki Taufik, the global head of Greenpeace’s Indonesian forests campaign, said IOI’s “meaningful steps” could make significant inroads towards eliminating deforestation and exploitation in the palm oil industry.
“IOI has come a long way in the past 12 months … There is still a lot of work to be done to clean up the palm oil industry and we expect other traders to respond with action plans of their own.”
IOI Group is one of the largest plantation owners in the industry, with an operation spanning more than 230,000 hectares in Malaysia and Indonesia, and exports products to more than 85 countries.
It has been on track to improve its environmental performance since its certification with the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil was stripped in March 2016, prompting several major multinationals to drop the company as an approved supplier. IOI Group’s certificate was reinstated five months later in August 2016, coinciding with the company’s launch of a sustainability implementation plan…
Read the whole story here.