Scaling Up Palm Oil Certification: Gaps and Options for More Sustainable Production
Abstract
Palm oil production is a rapidly growing commodity industry leading to rampant deforestation
and land use change due to its lucrative financial returns. Palm oil plantation expansion
has significant impacts on ecosystem services, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas
balances through extensive logging activities and unsustainable land use change.
Greater certification and sustainable production is necessary in order to not only
lessen environmental impacts but also to ensure longer-term and more sustainable economic
growth for producing regions.
This report focuses on some of the fundamental economic aspects driving production
processes and analyzes ways to implement more sustainable means of production and
improve certification transparency throughout the supply chain. Improving field management
and productive yields alongside expansion onto degraded land are two components of
the scaling up of sustainable oil palm production. Viable mechanisms and incentives
must address the profitability and opportunity costs of sustainable management practices
and the cost of certification that oil palm producers face.
The findings here illustrate the current gaps in incentivizing producers to undertake
more sustainable processes. GreenPalm, Malua BioBank, tiered certification, payments
for ecosystem services (PES) programs, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest
Degradation (REDD) activities, and higher price premiums for certified environmental
goods are all potential ways to address the costs of certification and ensure more
sustainable production. A combination of such innovative approaches with more robust
governance and regulatory measures are critical catalysts that can help drive such
change. Without sufficiently addressing opportunity costs, business-as-usual approaches
will only continue, increasing environmental impacts and limiting the welfare of future
generations in these regions.
Type
Master's projectPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2183Citation
Zuehlke, Robert T. (2010). Scaling Up Palm Oil Certification: Gaps and Options for More Sustainable Production.
Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2183.Collections
More Info
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Rights for Collection: Nicholas School of the Environment
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info