Deforestation Palm Oil Industry, Driver of Deforestation, Colluding with Regulators
Auditors from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry body formed in 2004 that certifies palm oil plantations that produce products without hurting ecosystems and indigenous communities, collude with plantation companies to disguise violations of the RSPO standard, according to a report from the Environmental Investigation Agency.
The report, “Who Watches the Watchmen,” discovered that RSPO auditors produce fraudulent reports and ignore forest destruction, indigenous land rights claims, trafficked laborers being used in the plantations and the habitats of endangered species.
“Many major consumer goods firms now delegate responsibility for their sourcing policies to the RSPO and, by extension, to these auditors,” said EIA Forest Campaigner Tomasz Johnson in a statement. “If the auditors are engaging in box-ticking and even colluding to cover up unsustainable practices, then products will get to the supermarket shelves that are tainted with human trafficking, rights abuses and the destruction of biodiversity.”
Palm oil demand was one of the largest drivers behind deforestation in the tropics in 2014.
