Jakarta, 13 December 2019 – “Too little, too late” said Annisa Rahmawati, Greenpeace Indonesia Senior Forest Campaigner, of the RSPO’s announcement it has published members’ oil palm concession maps for Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak in its own online application.[1]
Pointing to her previous statement released in 2015, which remains applicable to the RSPO’s latest announcement,[2] Annisa went on:
“While it’s progress to get some maps published, it’s too little because the data crucially does not include RSPO members’ third party suppliers, which make up much of production. It’s too little because it doesn’t include complete Indonesian data. It’s too little because the RSPO’s definition of group ownership is not sufficient and is poorly implemented. It’s too little because the data isn’t downloadable as shapefile or other geodata format permitting analysis. And it’s five years too late because the RSPO resolved to do this in 2013, setting a 2014 deadline for publication.[3]”
“The only party that deserves a nod is the Malaysian government for lifting its defacto prohibition on publication of concession maps. Indonesia’s highest legal authority, the Supreme Court, ruled in 2017 that oil palm plantation concession data is public information [4] therefore the RSPO should go ahead and publish a complete set of Indonesian maps immediately,” Annisa said.
Contacts:
Rully Yuliardi Achmad, Media Campaigner, Greenpeace Indonesia. [email protected]; +628118334409
Notes:
[3] Resolution 6g: The 10th General Assembly of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, resolved that: “It is mandatory for grower members to make their existing concession boundaries publicly available in digital format (shapefile) via the RSPO website.” https://www.rspo.org/file/resolutions/GA10-Resolution6g.pdf
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