Sabah 100% Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) by 2025.
Forest, Water & Soil
Livelihood, Tourism & Enterprise
Food, Agriculture & Fisheries
Sabah 100% Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) by 2025
CSPO
Project summary
In October 2015, the Sabah State Cabinet passed a policy that all palm oil production in Sabah will achieve Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification by 2025. Forever Sabah embarked on a process to engage and organize independent smallholders in twenty villages in the pilot districts of Telupid, Tongod, Beluran, and Kinabatangan (TTBK) to assess their readiness for the certification process. Besides promoting productivity while reducing negative environmental and social impacts in the state of Sabah, the key needs identified are Good Management Practices (GMP), training and support, as well as access to the local and international markets.
Our team has been supporting the communities since 2015 to address the challenges faced by independent small farmers by providing the necessary technical assistance, various training, capacity building, and learning exchange opportunities to increase the productivity and profitability of the local community towards reaching local and national standards such as MSPO and RSPO. Through the Good Management Practices (GMP) training, small farmers received direct training and support on best agricultural practices, improved farm management practices, health and safety as well as environmental and social impact management.
Besides narrowing the gaps between smallholder practices in RSPO standards and better oil palm yield through GMP, our team found that smallholders in Sabah face accumulated severe land tenure issues deserving significant attention, whereby lack of secure tenure and inability to solve land conflicts eventually leads to more problem for farmers and the environment. Non-legality and insecurity of land tenure are also not acceptable under MSPO and RSPO standards. Therefore, our team is keen to explore various trial community pilot projects and bridge government bodies to come up with a trial solution to one of many complexities of land issues, namely those who have planted oil palm in Forest Reserve, Riparian Reserve, with Land Application (LA) status, and etc on land they consider customarily theirs.
The goal is for Sabah to produce palm oil that will be compliant with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards by 2021.
PRIORITY ACTIVITIES IN THE WORK:
Provide training to that focuses on improving smallholder’s livelihood and sustainable farming practices