We are pleased that following discussions the RSPO, PT SMART and Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) – the holding company of PT SMART – have jointly agreed a way forward around the corrective actions to be taken by PT SMART/GAR to resolve the issues of RSPO non-compliance. The full statement is available on the RSPO website

We are encouraged PT SMART/GAR have committed to taking corrective actions to strengthening their standard operating procedures and that GAR has committed to becoming a member of the RSPO and to obtaining RSPO certification for its existing palm operations by 2015.

We are encouraging GAR’s management directly that they need to show progress on these measures in the timeframe that has been agreed with the RSPO and we look forward to seeing them move forward with their commitments.

We also welcome GAR’s announcement that it will adopt forest conservation policy on its own palm oil operations and that it will work with The Forest Trust (TFT), the government of Indonesia and other stakeholders to support a sustainable palm oil industry.

We appreciate GAR’s initiative to work with TFT to conduct fieldwork to investigate the ‘no development on high carbon stock’ concept. While the provisional definition of not developing on areas exceeding 35 tonnes of carbon stored per hectare (35tC/ha) is challenging, this fieldwork will provide the first study to enable informed discussion on the approach and feasibility.

We will continue to work with all our suppliers towards our goal of sustainable palm oil and, as we announced in early July, we are working with WWF to assess our palm oil suppliers in Indonesia. GAR will be included in this process and we will work to align our WWF assessment with GAR’s collaboration with TFT.