Tag: oil palm


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  • Four decades of forest degradation: Fire And oil palm expansion in Borneo

Four decades of forest degradation: Fire And oil palm expansion in Borneo

30 September, 2016

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  • Towards more sustainable and productive independent oil palm smallholders in Indonesia: Insights from the development of a smallholder typology

Towards more sustainable and productive independent oil palm smallholders in Indonesia: Insights from the development of a smallholder typology

22 September, 2016

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Working Paper 47 pid=2893
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The rapid expansion of Indonesia’s independent smallholder oil palm sector is posing important productivity, sustainability and legality challenges. As a result, the need to better regulate independent oil palm smallholders is increasingly being acknowledged by Indonesian polity. Because the sub-sector is comprised of highly diverse stakeholder groups that face and pose distinct challenges, a targeted and stakeholder-disaggregated approach to sector regulation is required. Efforts to that effect have, however, been frustrated by an inadequate understanding of independent oil palm smallholder characteristics and associated challenges. This paper aims to contribute to this knowledge gap by developing a typology of independent oil palm smallholders. Through a hierarchical cluster analysis employing field data collected on 1840 smallholders in one of Sumatra’s largest oil palm producing districts, Rokan Hulu, six sub-groups are identified, which are differentiated here on the basis social, economic, and geographic characteristics. Drawing on these results, the paper identifies a number of specific intervention priorities for each of the sub-groups

Source: CIFOR publications

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  • Company-community conflict in Indonesia’s industrial plantation sector

Company-community conflict in Indonesia’s industrial plantation sector

18 July, 2016

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Authors: Persch-Orth, M.; Mwangi, E.

Key messages

  • Competing land claims are the primary cause of conflict between communities and companies in most industrial tree plantation conflicts.
  • Conflicts manifest in different ways. Communities often conduct physical protests and media campaigns, whereas companies frequently avoid dialogue and enlist the services of security forces to suppress conflict.
  • The involvement of security forces should be regulated. Conflicts where external security personnel were involved had fatalities in 32% of the cases, versus none of the cases where external security personnel were not involved. In cases where violence occurred, the violence was mostly conducted by or directed against security personnel, army and police forces. However, we cannot differentiate between whether they were involved in a conflict already about to escalate, or whether their involvement escalated the conflict into violence.
  • Mediation is widely misinterpreted and poorly implemented. However, efforts are being made by government and non-governmental actors to build capacity in principles and practices of mediation.
  • More effort should be made to support communication between parties in conflict and to offer professional mediation services at an early stage of conflict. For the many conflicts that have already escalated to levels of physical violence, efforts to transform how the conflict is expressed or external intervention to enforce a solution may be most appropriate.
  • While communication between conflicting parties may be supported by government, it should not be mediated by government, as government is in itself an actor in most of the conflicts (as it issues the permits to the land). Ideally, mediation services can be provided by professional mediators who are part of the Impartial Mediators Network or registered under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) or the Chamber of Commerce.
  • Concrete actions that signal the parties’ commitment to ending or de-escalating the conflict are critical.
  • Local activists and community members report that companies that are RSPO members are more easily held accountable. They also respond faster to complaints, even without direct intervention of the RSPO. Most conflicts with fatalities (67%) occurred on plantations that were not associated with an international sustainability initiative such as RSPO or FSC.

CIFOR Infobrief no. 143

Published 2016 at Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia

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  • How can the financial services sector strengthen the sustainability and inclusivity of smallholder farming in the supply of global commodity crops?

How can the financial services sector strengthen the sustainability and inclusivity of smallholder farming in the supply of global commodity crops?

02 June, 2016

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Also read White Paper
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White Paper for The Global Landscapes Forum: The Investment Case, London, 6 June 2016, related to the discussion forum Smallholder finance – evidence from the tropics, organized by Pablo Pacheco, coordinator of Flagship 5 of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.

Authors: Noemi Perez, FAST International; Jan Willem van Gelder, Profundo; Hans Smit, SNV; Pablo Pacheco and Sophia Gnych, CIFOR

Smallholder farmers play a key role in the production of agricultural crops for local, national and, increasingly, international markets, including high-value tree crops.1 As commercial-scale agriculture has expanded and markets have seen greater integration, smallholders are forced to compete with agribusiness to meet a rising demand for food, fiber and fuel. But smallholders remain disenfranchised, often facing economic, financial and institutional constraints that make the adoption of more efficient practices and technologies more difficult and limit productivity and local livelihoods.

A good example of this are oil palm smallholders in Indonesia, whose participation in the sector is growing rapidly. Despite their important contribution to national production, oil palm smallholders risk exclusion from global markets as agricultural standards evolve, and they struggle to adopt improved production practices.4 Finance has the potential to play a significant role in supporting the upgrading of production systems and delivering more effective resource management5 , as well as helping to fulfill a growing demand for agricultural and tree-crops that meet sustainability standards.

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  • Action on zero deforestation pledges: The challenge of aligning public and private sustainability goals

Action on zero deforestation pledges: The challenge of aligning public and private sustainability goals

04 April, 2016

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Presentation by Pablo Pacheco at the discussion forum of the same title, at the Global Landscapes Forum 2015, in Paris, France alongside COP21. Pablo Pacheco, Senior Scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), is the coordinator of the Flagship on Global governance, trade and investment of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.

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  • The political economy of fire and haze root causes

The political economy of fire and haze root causes

22 March, 2016

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  • Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia: Governance challenges

Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia: Governance challenges

30 November, 2015

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Highlights

  • Zero-deforestation commitments are emerging rapidly in Indonesia. They already encompass a large portion of crude palm oil production and almost all the pulp and paper (P&P) sector; typically, they reflect the values of the “no-deforestation, no-exploitation (social) and no-peat” policies.
  • These commitments depend on definitions of ‘forests’ for their identification and conservation, which in turn rely on methodologies such as High Conservation Value and High Carbon Stock.
  • Early implementation has revealed that the palm oil sector is facing a number of governance challenges to achieve commitments: the legal framework is not systematically supportive of the pledges, and the government promotes a different vision of sustainability. Of note is the fact that the P&P sector is more advanced.
  • Integration of smallholders into sustainable value chains poses another challenge for the palm oil sector: traceability, better environmental performance and improved yields require urgent action. Legalization of smallholder operations is critical and goes beyond commitments, because it determines access to financing and certification, among others.
  • To be effective, zero-deforestation commitments must align public and private governance arrangements. This requires an agreement on visions of sustainability supported by public policies; progress on land tenure; enforcement of progressive regulations at national and regional levels; and the implementation of strong policies to rationalize the expansion of small and medium holdings of oil palm.
  • Legacy issues must also be addressed for the main palm oil and P&P groups: land restitution through due processes, support to smallholders and investments in land restoration are some promising avenues worth pursuing.

Source: CIFOR publications

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  • Governing Oil Palm Landscapes for Sustainability (GOLS)

Governing Oil Palm Landscapes for Sustainability (GOLS)

26 November, 2015

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Key messages

  • An increasing number of private sector companies are making space for sustainability in their corporate governance processes and attempting to embed environmental and social best practices into their operations.
  • The role of the private sector in land-use change and deforestation has been highlighted in recent years as some of the world’s largest retailers, manufacturers and traders have made commitments to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. These efforts were catalyzed in December 2014 when civil society organizations, private sector companies and governments joined together to sign the New York Declaration on Forests.
  • These commitments have the potential to dramatically benefit the global environment, as well as the livelihoods of millions of rural people. But it is the way in which these commitments are implemented that will determine whether the desired environmental and social benefits are fully realized.
  • The CIFOR/USAID Governing Oil Palm Landscapes for Sustainability (GOLS) program will support effective and equitable implementation of these commitments by helping to align public and private policies and actions, and by delivering targeted, research-based evidence to key stakeholders and practitioners.

Source: CIFOR publications

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  • Efficacy of oil palm intercropping by smallholders: Case study in South-West Cameroon

Efficacy of oil palm intercropping by smallholders: Case study in South-West Cameroon

02 November, 2015

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cifor

Intercropping oil palm during its immature stage with food crops is usually blamed for its negative impact on the growth and future yields of palms. Agro-industries unanimously condemn such practice. For smallholders on the contrary, intercropping presents numerous advantages as it not only covers the weeding cost but also provides food and revenue while waiting for the palms to come into production. While such trade-off may be of little interest to an agro-industry, it appears as determining for many smallholders. The study was carried out in seven communities in the Bamuso Sub-division of the South–West Region of Cameroon and seeks to understand how smallholder oil palm farmers (small, medium and large scale) use the intercropping technique during the early stages of oil palm development as a means to improve on their livelihood. Results indicated that, a mean annual wage of 705,000 FCFA (€1075) was obtained per hectare per household for smallholders practicing intercropping. In addition to income gained, intercropping significantly reduced the cost of weeding. The study therefore, suggests the need for pre-emptive measures—such as food crop choice, planting density amongst others—to be taken into consideration when intercropping annual food crops with oil palm so as not to jeopardize the yield of oil palm at production stage. The finding is of significance for sustainable agriculture in that intercropping encourages poverty reduction for marginalized people especially women with no access to land, maximises land use by farmers, food security in households, stability in yield and profit in smallholders’ oil palm plantations.

Source: CIFOR publications

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