The certification for palm oil provided by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is one of the food industry’s most prominent sustainability certifications.
According to the RSPO, it had certified around 20% of global crude palm oil production as of 2022.
Such certifications are an important part of reducing the impact of deforestation, which palm oil production has, historically, been linked to. They may also be useful in compliance with the upcoming EUDR.
However, a new study by researchers from the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, suggests that there are downsides to such certifications.
According to the study, RSPO compliance can reduce a plantation’s efficiency, both before and after certification has been achieved.
How is efficiency reduced?
The study used satellite imagery from the European Space Agency (ESA) to analyse the efficiency levels of 144 palm oil plantations in Sabah, Malaysia, both before and after certification. It did this by measuring the plantations’ coverage.
The study found that coverage on the plantations studied had decreased.
Factoring in environmental conditions, such as vegetation health and groundwater availability, as control variables, the researchers came to believe that this loss of coverage was linked to the certification’s requirements.
The certification’s criteria does not “explicitly” mandate a reduction in efficiency, stresses Nina Zachlod, one of the researchers. Nevertheless, “there seem to be hidden costs and … unintended consequences” to the regulation.
For example, she suggests, environmental components such as the replanting procedures, and restrictions on how much one can use pesticides and fertilisers.
Other studies carried out in Indonesia point to related negative externalities, explains researcher Charlotta Sirén.
Not all plantations were equal. Efficiency decreased less, according to Zachlod, on the plantations directly owned by the palm oil companies than the ones that had been outsourced to a third party. These were also certified earlier.
“They apparently are in a better position to mitigate these unintended consequences, probably because they can affect the decisions more clearly,” she explains.
Research has not been done on whether the results seen here would carry over to other markets for palm oil, such as Indonesia, Thailand or Nigeria. Tt therefore cannot be said for certain.
However, where conditions are similar, results are likely to be similar, suggests Sirén.
“It’s important to remember that the RSPO is a universal thing,” she stresses.
The RSPO’s response
However, the RSPO hit back at the findings, arguing the study did not compare RSPO Certified and non-certified concessions. This, the organisation claimed, made it impossible to determine whether the observations are truly linked to RSPO Certification.
The study does not take into account oil palm age, an RSPO spokesperson said. “Oil palms have a productive lifespan of 25 years after which it becomes too tall to harvest efficiently. The research was limited to the state of Sabah, which has the highest area of oil palms above this age in Malaysia.”
The Malaysian Ministry of Plantation and Commodities (KPK) has been urging companies to replant for quite some time to sustain productivity, and such efforts have been ongoing for years, the spokesperson said.
Also, the study did not take into account business decisions affecting oil palm cover. For example, businesses may decide to remove low productivity oil palm on hilly terrain, in order to reduce input levels, the RSPO secretariat said.
“It is highly unlikely that plantation companies would decide to remove mature oil palm cover without a proper reason and compromise overall productivity from a business perspective.”
Researchers shared only an excerpt of the research with the RSPO before publication, rather than the finished piece, the secretariat claimed. The RSPO provided feedback to this with the caveat that excerpts did not provide “sufficient information” to provide comments, as they did not give a complete picture.
Palm oil alternatives
There are two essential facts about palm oil. Firstly, it is used in a wide range of products in both food and cosmetics. Secondly, it is still, despite increasing scrutiny, linked to deforestation.
Certifications such as the RSPO's are one solution. Another is finding alternative ingredients.
One such ingredient is black soldier fly larvae. Recent research from the consultancy Tunley Environmental suggests that an alternative from this source could drastically increase efficiency, and thereby cut down on land use. For example, while an average palm oil plantation, according to the research, might produce 11.7kg per square metres per year using traditional techniques, black soldier fly larvae might produce around 275.9kg per square metres per year when using a 15-story vertical farm.
One downside of this approach is lack of consumer acceptance surrounding food connected with insects, so there are other alternatives. Start-up Sun Bear Biofuture is producing a palm oil alternative through fermentation using agricultural sidestreams as a feedstock. The ingredient, according to its CTO Ben Williams, has a similar composition and functionality to the real thing. According to Williams, certified palm oil, while sustainable, is not viable in the long term because it can't meet growing market demand.
Sourced From: Communications Earth and Environment
‘Sustainable palm oil certification inadvertently affects production efficiency in Malaysia’
Published on: 12 March 2025
Doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02150-2
Authors: N. Zachlod, M. Hudecheck, C. Sirén & G. George