- About RSPO
- News
- Members
- Certification
- Projects & Work Groups
- Resource Centre
History and Development of RSPO P&C
Purpose of the Principles and Criteria or P&C
During the first Rountable Meeting (RT1) on Sustainable Palm Oil that was held in Kuala Lumpur in August 2003, it was agreed that, amongst other things, it would be necessary to establish a credible definition of sustainable palm oil production that would be provided through the development of a set of criteria.
How were the criteria developed?
The first phase of this development process was the production of a report in March 2004, the 'Framework for Drafting Criteria for Sustainable Oil Palm: A discussion paper to begin the process of developing criteria for the Roundtable on Sustainable Oil Palm.' This was produced by a Technical Group convened by the Organising Committee of the Roundtable, and set out the framework for drafting criteria together with a suggested process for developing the final criteria.
The second phase developed a final set of criteria for sustainable palm oil. The Executive Board of RSPO appointed a Criteria Working Group (CWG) to oversee the development of the criteria. The criteria development took approximately 12 months. The process by which they were developed included considerable opportunity for input from any interested person or organisation.
The first meeting of the CWG was held on 4 October 2004 in Jakarta. Topics discussed included the procedures that should be followed by the CWG as well as the content of the criteria themselves.
The CWG held its second meeting over the period 15-18 February 2005 in Malaysia, hosted at the Golden Hope Academy, Carey Island, Selangor, Malaysia. The objective of the meeting was to make substantial progress towards the preparation of Version 2 of the RSPO Draft Criteria for Sustainable Palm Oil. The meeting consisted of:
- Two days of discussions, focusing on the public comments on the Version 1 of the RSPO Draft Criteria for Sustainable Palm Oil
- Two days of field visits to plantations, managed by Golden Hope and United Plantations, to examine issues in the field relating to the RSPO Draft Criteria
The CWG discussions were positive and productive, and consensus was achieved at the meeting on the amendments required to the majority of criteria, including issues that had been the subject of most public comment. It was also decided that a number of issues required further consideration by CWG members after the meeting. These were:
- Guidance on how to apply the criteria to smallholders;
- Requirements relating to use of chemicals;
- Defining the requirements for specific indicators for continual improvement; and
- Defining the requirements for specific documents that should be publicly available
Following further input by the CWG, version 2 was made available for further public comment during the period June - July 2005. Issues relating to verification procedures and national interpretation of the criteria were also discussed. Draft proposals on these issues was included in the next round of public consultation.
| Download | |
| Framework for Drafting Criteria for Sustainable Palm Oil | pdf [189 KB |
Appendices 1-4 | |
| Terms & Reference for the facilitation of the process to develop criteria for sustainable palm oil | pdf [27 KB] |
| Draft criteria for sustainable palm oil (pre-circulation comments by CWG members) | pdf [299 KB] |
| Minutes from the 1st CWG meeting (Jakarta) on 4 October 2004 |  [177 KB] |
| Criteria for sustainable palm oil (Public consultation draft version 1) | pdf [151 KB] |
| Comments from 1st Public Consultation on RSPO P&C | pdf [392 KB] |
| Summary of the 2nd CWG meeting (Carey Island, Malaysia) during 15-18 February 2005 | [19 KB] |
| Criteria for sustainable palm oil (public consultation draft version 2) | pdf [266 KB] |
| Comments from 2nd Public Consultation on RSPO P&C | pdf [225 KB] |
Pilots and final RSPO Principles and Criteria (P&C) for Sustainable Palm Oil
The RSPO Principles and Criteria (P&C) were adopted in November 2005 for an initial pilot implementation period of two years and were reviewed at the end of this period (2007). The objective of the pilot implementation period was to enable field testing of the principles and criteria and associated guidance, and thereby allow the indicators and guidance to be improved, including guidance for application by smallholders. During this initial period, national interpretations and trial implementations were also progressed.
Based on the learnings and experiences over this two-year period, the P&C were reviewed by the RSPO Criteria Working Group (CWG) in October 2007.The review included a public consultation period and physical meeting of the CWG from 8-10 October 2007 at Bogor, Indonesia. Besides public comments, inputs from national interpretations, smallholder taskforce deliberations and pilot field trial results were also taken into consideration.
The revised P&C (and suggested guidelines) were approved by the RSPO Executive Board meeting of 19th November, 2007 and adopted by General Assembly (GA4) meeting of 22 November 2007.
The revised and final RSPO Principles and Criteria document can be downloaded here.
| RSPO Principles & Criteria for Sustainable Palm Oil Production |  282KB |
Who were involved in developing the criteria?
The RSPO regarded it essential that the criteria were developed with wide stakeholder input. This meant that any interested stakeholder could provide input into the criteria. This was facilitated by at least two rounds of public consultation as well as through CWG members contacting key stakeholders and directly asking for feedback. The focal point for information and for providing views and comments was the RSPO website.
What do the criteria cover?
The criteria cover those aspects widely regarded as being essential to sustainable natural resource management, namely: legality of operations; economic viability; best practice in operations and environmental and social responsibility. The criteria cover both the management of existing plantations and the development of new ones.
Published in
