The Norwegian Alliance for Sustainable Palm Oil has agreed criteria to promote sustainable palm oil in Norway and contribute to the prevention of deforestation. The Alliance, which consists of most major food & drink producers and retailers in Norway, has committed to using only sustainably produced and certified palm oil that meets the RSPO Principles & Criteria, by the end of 2015. As of today, the signatories include:
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Coop Norge SA
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Findus Norge AS
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Hennig-Olsen Is AS
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Ica Norge AS
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Mills DA
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Mondelēz Norge AS
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Nestlé Norge AS
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Nordic Choice Hotels AS
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NorgesGruppen ASA
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Orkla ASA
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Umoe Restaurants AS
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Unilever Norge AS
They also commit that by 2018 they will either phase out palm oil or switch to segregated or traceable CSPO, and publish their progress reports annually. Norway is the eighth European country to officially launch a National Initiative, a commitment by the main industrial actors to source only certified sustainable palm oil. Similar national platforms already exist in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark.
The full text of the Norwegian pledge can be found here (in Norwegian).
NOTES TO EDITORS
- 18% of world's palm oil production is RSPO-certified as of October 2014.
- The current estimated annual production capacity of RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil is 11.1 million metric tons, approximately 18% of global crude palm oil. Spread over 1.98 million hectares of certified production area, about 49.6% of the world's current RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil production capacity comes from Indonesia, followed by 40.6% from Malaysia, 5.6% from Papua New Guinea and the remaining 4.2% from Solomon Islands, Ivory Coast, Thailand, Guatemala, Ecuador, Brazil, Cambodia and Colombia.
About the RSPO
In response to the urgent and pressing global call for sustainably-produced palm oil, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was formed in 2004 with the objective of promoting the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders. The seat of the association is in Zurich, Switzerland, while the secretariat is currently based in Kuala Lumpur with satellite offices in Jakarta and London.
RSPO is a not-for-profit association that unites stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry - oil palm producers, palm oil processors or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental or nature conservation NGOs and social or developmental NGOs - to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil.
Such multi-stakeholder representation is mirrored in the governance structure of RSPO such that seats in the Executive Board and project-level Working Groups are fairly allocated to each sector. In this way, RSPO lives out the philosophy of the "roundtable" by giving equal rights to each stakeholder group to bring group-specific agendas to the roundtable, facilitating traditionally adversarial stakeholders and business competitors to work together towards a common objective and make decisions by consensus.
