Social and Environmental Correlates of Palm Oil Certification in Indonesia
Abstract
Indonesia is losing more of its forests and, in Kalimantan, palm oil is contributing
to increasing rates of forest loss. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
is a conservation scheme that harnesses market-based principles to internalize negative
social and environmental externalities associated with palm oil production, through
forest certification. To date, few studies use quantitative data to examine these
certification schemes. This paper makes use of concession data and village-level environmental,
economic, legal, and social data to identify correlates of RSPO in Kalimantan. Significant
variables include: forest cover, total village carbon, average slope, proximity to
markets, village protected areas, population density, and malnutrition. I find that
RSPO concessions are generally correlated with suitable oil palm cultivation characteristics.
However, RSPO concessions are somewhat correlated with higher total village carbon
and negatively correlated with malnutrition, suggesting reduced potential for social
and environmental co-benefits. The analysis reported here can be viewed as an important
first stage in more targeted evaluations of RSPO and other certification schemes.
Type
Master's projectDepartment
The Sanford School of Public PolicyPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12035Citation
Borden, Matthew G. (2016). Social and Environmental Correlates of Palm Oil Certification in Indonesia. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12035.More Info
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