RSPO Jurisdictional Approach for Certification: Certification System Document (Second Draft)


RSPO Jurisdictional Approach to Certification (JA) is an approach to minimize the negative impact of palm oil cultivation on the environment and on communities, at the scale of government administrative areas, through the stepwise certification of the production and processing of sustainable oil palm products. It involves continuously progressing towards (1) achieving implementation no deforestation, no new planting on peat, ensuring safe and decent working conditions, and upholding human rights at landscape level; and (2) the certification of sustainable production and processing of oil palm products, managed and supported through a multi-stakeholder governed entity (referred as Jurisdictional Entity (JE) within the document).

The approach requires government leadership, support, and collaboration in playing a key role in facilitating a multi-stakeholder process, setting up overall governance, regulations and frameworks to bring jurisdictional members to apply RSPO standards progressively. Jurisdictional Certification will follow the RSPO 2018 Principles & Criteria, as well as other RSPO Standards. The challenge, however, is that the RSPO P&Cs have been developed with plantation concessions and estates, or growers and smallholders in mind, and not whole jurisdictions.

The RSPO Jurisdictional Working Group has agreed upon the framework presented in this document, but notes that new Standards and processes may be needed to address new challenges as they arise.

Siak Pelalawan Landscape Programme: How Companies Collaborate and Engage


This case study looks into private sector engagement in the Siak Pelalawan Landscape Programme (SPLP), which currently comprises eight palm oil producers, traders, and downstream buyers, namely namely Cargill, Danone, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), L’Oréal, Musim Mas, Neste, PepsiCo, and Unilever, in the Siak and Pelalawan districts in Riau province, Indonesia. The Coalition has been facilitated by Proforest and Daemeter Consulting, who also implement the programme.

Several key lessons for future private sector engagement in jurisdictional initiatives were identified. First, companies find collaboration on achieving a common goal in general attractive and efficient. The presence of a neutral convener is seen as essential to build trust within the coalitions as well as bridge trust with other stakeholder groups to allow real engagement and collaboration to take place. While SPLP activities are funded and implemented by its members, the mainstreaming of local government’s commitment to sustainable land use into policies is also highlighted as key to ensuring jurisdictionwide impact related to sustainable palm production. Companies interested in jurisdictional initiatives should be ready to commit for an extended period, as building coalitions takes time.

Lessons for Jurisdictional Approaches from Municipal-Level Initiatives to Halt Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon


Jurisdictional approaches have become popular in international forums as promising strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation and to guarantee sustainable commodity supply. Yet, despite their growing popularity, up to now, there is little consensus on how such approaches should move forward in specific jurisdictions.

In this paper the authors examine two contrasting municipal-level case studies in the eastern Amazonian state of Pará where jurisdiction-wide efforts are underway to reduce deforestation. By developing detailed forest governance intervention timelines since 2005, conducting semi-structured interviews with key informants, analyzing municipal deforestation trends, plus extensive examination of project reports, governmental documents and other secondary sources, this paper performs two main analyses. First, it characterizes the processes in each municipality by linking context and forest governance intervention timelines to deforestation trends. Second it provides a systematic comparison of processes based on (1) the role of the government, (2) multi-stakeholder participation and inclusiveness, (3) adaptive management, (4) horizontal and vertical coordination, and (5) alignment of public and private (supply-chain) initiatives. In so doing, this article answers some of the imperative questions on how to implement and improve jurisdictional approaches aimed at halting deforestation in the tropics.