Malaysia is currently one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of palm oil. Its palm oil industry is also one of the most highly organised sectors of any national agriculture systems in the world today. The industry has had a natural head start in fulfilling sustainability indicators due to oil palm’s physiology of high productivity and sustainable plantation practices. For the Malaysian palm oil industry, sustainability is a continuous journey.
Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, for example, which owns and runs the oil palm estate where the advertisement was filmed, is one of the founding members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and contributed to the development of the Sustainable Palm Oil Management Systems Manual (SPOMS). An assessment by SIRIM QAS found that Golden Hope Plantations (Sabah) has implemented the requirements of the ‘RSPO Principles and Criteria for SPO Production – Guidance Document’.
Complaint 1: The ad misleadingly implied that palm oil plantations were as bio-diverse and sustainable as the native rainforests they replaced.
The advertisements do not imply that oil palm plantations are “as biodiverse and sustainable as the native rainforests they replaced.”
The complaint subjectively infers that oil palm plantations typically replace native rainforests, and this is an inference that we refute. Over the last 50 years, oil palm expansion in Malaysia has largely used land zoned for agriculture and converted from former rubber, cocoa and coconut cultivation. Moreover, no new forest areas have been allocated for planting oil palm since 1990. Indeed, less than 20% of the total land area of Malaysia is allocated to agriculture compared to typically 70% in the developed countries. Despite its century-old palm oil industry, Malaysia still retains about 64% of its land under forest cover.
We submit that oil palm plantations can be, and often are in Malaysia, biodiverse and sustainable. Clearly this is a matter of interpretation. We would point out that the voiceover and text draw no comparison between oil palm plantations and native rainforests. The ad says that palm oil plantations support a great deal of biodiversity and have a long tradition of sustainability, both of which we consider to be the case.
1,2 Yusof Basiron (2007), Palm Oil Production through Sustainable Plantations, European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology, Vol 109, p. 289-295.
FAO (2006), Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005: Progress towards Sustainable Forest Management. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome, p.190-195 (http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/008/a0400e/a0400e00.htm)
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