Latin American members reach 1.5 million metric tonnes milestone

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Secretariat would like to congratulate our Latin American members for reaching 1.5 million metric tonnes (MT) of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO). This milestone was reached this February, as four new grower companies received certification and pushed for the last 160,000 MT of CSPO into the region’s certified output. 

The 1.5 million MT milestone comes from 31 certified growers in the region from Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Mexico with a total of over 420,500 hectares of certified land. This means 30% of the region’s palm oil is RSPO certified, making it the fastest-growing region in terms of certification.

RSPO Chief Executive Officer Beverley Postma stated “It is a testament to the hard work of all of our RSPO staff and members in Latin America – from business and civil society – to achieve this milestone. Their collaboration has created an enabling environment to make the production of sustainable palm oil the norm in the region. Latin America can serve as a blueprint for other newer frontiers of palm oil production in how to balance the competing needs of development with the imperative for environmental and human rights protections.”  

This great milestone is also achieved through the hard work of schemed smallholders in the region. A total of 17% of the Latin America CSPO now comes from schemed smallholders in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras where more than 101,000 hectares are RSPO certified. In turn, we would like to recognise the great effort of these smallholders and also the companies that have accompanied them and included them in their certification process.

“Latin America has once again achieved a new milestone in sustainable palm oil production globally, by reaching 1.5 million tonnes, which is equivalent to about 30% of its total crude palm oil production. It has been an amazing journey to get to this point, one that would not have been possible without a tremendous amount of support.  I congratulate all of those involved in making this important achievement possible. However, we must continue our efforts, while also working on the downstream in the region,” RSPO Technical Director, Francisco Naranjo, comments.

Once again, we are certain that RSPO members will use this milestone as a big stride towards reaching 50% CSPO in Latin America and continue the rapid growth of certification in the region.

To build on the momentum in Latin America, RSPO will be hosting a virtual ‘RT Series’ to discuss ‘Sustainable Growth in Latin America’ on Tuesday 23 March 2021, at 9:00 am (ECT). 

We invite our members and stakeholders to join us for an interactive discussion with our expert panellists comprising Maria Goretti from Solidaridad, Julio Morales from Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Jose Luis Perez from Femexpalma, and Jose Roberto Montenegro from AgroAmerica. 

Register for this dialogue session today at the RT Series 2021 website!