PALMOILMAGAZINE, JAKARTA – During the Roundtable Conference on Sustainable Palm Oil (RT2023) annual meeting held at Hotel Mulia Senayan Jakarta on November 21, 2023, the District of Seruyan in Central Kalimantan Province, represented by the Regional Secretary and a colleague from the State of Sabah, Malaysia, received recognition from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) for their achievements in the initial phase of the four-stage process toward jurisdiction certification.
The first phase focused on the preliminary establishment of institutions and policies, encompassing the commitment of companies to jurisdiction certification, formulation of plans, development of plans for social and environmental indicators, and the establishment of a multi-party forum at the jurisdictional level.
Since 2015, Seruyan has expressed its intent to participate in jurisdiction certification initiated by RSPO as a strategy to promote large-scale sustainability with broader impacts. The primary objective for Seruyan’s involvement in the program is to facilitate the transition to sustainability for thousands of smallholders in the district. Additionally, the district hopes that every development in palm oil plantations addresses the challenges of sustainability that often hinder palm oil production.
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As part of the journey heading to jurisdiction certification, Seruyan published the relevant regulation within social and environmental indicators, including the identification and cultivation on high conservation value (HCV), map conflict resolution, human rights protection, labors, and children. There have been 9 regulations published about the themes. In the map, hardly six thousand smallholders are put into data in the district within 1.500 of them getting certification or in process to get certification.
Seruyan is doing the best to solve area conflicts which recently blew up. Though the conflicts happened in the past, District of Seruyan keeps developing comprehensive solution strategies, including through prevention, management, and conflict monitoring system. The policy in the district decided to get prevention strategy about area conflicts through PADIATAPA principles (Persetujuan atas Dasar Informasi Awal Tanpa Paksaan) or known as free prior informed consent (FPIC) in international scale.
Meanwhile the conflicts which are happening should be managed by legal scheme, including people’s plantation development and productive economic development. The district also still develops conflict monitoring system so that the public, particularly the parties involved in conflicts, would see the progress in conflict management.
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Head of Agriculture and Food Security Agency District of Seruyan, Albidinnoor said that the district established team from many sectors to get data and management, and team to get people’s data claim in forest regions to be followed up according to the available regulation system.
“Nowadays system would be effective for normal conflicts that involve parties that want to negotiate and be patient. The raising ones that blew up fast, namely involved violence, would be dealt in different mechanism,” Albidinnoor said, as in the official statement to Palmoilmagazine.com, Monday (27/11/2023).
To keep improving the system, the team would cooperate with many parties involved in Kelompok Kerja Sertifikasi Yurisdiksi, particularly by considering the bad case and involving independent mediator to deal with the vulnerable cases fast.
He also took the companies that purchased palm oil to encourage their suppliers to really involve in. The markets have power to encourage producers (growers) to qualify their obligations, such as, developing plasma, paying compensation for the deforestation forests, and protect the rests of HCV. (T2)
