Sustainable palm oil and deforestation: Double Standards
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is currently revising the standards it requires oil palm growers to meet to be certified as “sustainable”
- Forests:
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is currently revising the standards it requires oil palm growers to meet to be certified as “sustainable”
To meet its pledge to halt deforestation, the European Union needs to act to reduce the deforestation footprint of the commodities it imports, including palm oil. Existing methods to alleviate the impacts of palm oil, have failed to stop deforestation sufficiently to qualify as ‘sustainability’
Illegal and unsustainable rosewood logging is the major threat to Thailand’s limited remaining forests, particularly in the north-east regions. Unprecedented demand for luxury ‘Hongmu’, or ‘redwood’, furniture in China is driving this logging
The extraction of timber from Myanmar’s forests is controlled by the Central Government, with many different actors reaping the profits.
The US Lacey Act and The European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR). In this briefing, we explore the previously unrealised fact that both laws can work together, with the Lacey Act prohibiting timber sold in violation of the EUTR, as a ’foreign law‘
This report reveals how a palm oil plantation established and developed illegally in 2013 and 2014 has since continued to clear forests illegally with impunity. Worse, the timber it has illegally cut is certified legal under Indonesia’s flagship Timber Legality Assurance System