Proforest attends fifth RSPO European Roundtable

RSPO’s fifth annual European Roundtable is taking place this week at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in London. This year’s event calls for partnerships and innovations between Europe’s industries, governments and NGOs to help deliver the EU target of 100% Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) uptake by 2020.

Through a series of workshops and presentations, the Roundtable brings together stakeholders to focus on three main areas; deforestation, smallholders, and labour and human rights. Proforest members of staff will be among the delegates, providing expertise on these issues and updates on our work towards achieving sustainable palm oil.

Deputy Director of Responsible Sourcing, Veronique Bovee, together with Gary Paoli and Virginia Barreiro from Daemeter, led a workshop to update delegates on the RSPO Smallholder Strategy. Daemeter and Proforest have been assisting in the strategy’s revision and the development of an implementation plan. This was followed by a break-out session in which delegates were given the opportunity to provide feedback on how the EU market and buyers can support the implementation of the strategy, providing capacity-building to improve smallholder livelihoods, simplification of the certification approach for smallholders and developing the business case for various supply chain actors to support smallholders.

Proforest’s International Programmes Director, Bilge Daldeniz, presented the process and timeline of the RSPO Principles and Criteria (P&C) Review. She provided an update on progress and invited members of the P&C Review Taskforce to meet with conference participants to further exchange views on engagement mechanisms and priority topics for the stakeholder groups. Key to the P&C Review process are the public consultation phases, which will begin this autumn, offering stakeholders the opportunity to submit comments and providing a platform for feedback. During these periods, Proforest will organise a series of workshops globally to present the draft revised P&Cs and collect inputs.

 

Follow our activities at this year’s RSPO European Roundtable by following @proforest or #EURT.

Visit the RSPO European Roundtable website for more information.