PALMOILMAGAZINE, JAKARTA – Aceh Singkil Regency, in collaboration with Swisscontact, Koltiva, and other development partners, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Sustainable Palm Oil Governance for 2024 – 2026 on Sunday, July 7, 2024. The Multi-Stakeholder Forum (MSF) Dashboard for Aceh Singkil was launched, with 12 entities joining and signing the agreement.
The Leuser Ecosystem and Rawa Singkil Sanctuary, which encompass Aceh Tenggara, Subulussalam, and Aceh Singkil, will play crucial roles in protecting the environment and conserving nature in Sumatra. However, the Leuser National Park has lost one-fifth of its lowland green areas due to commercial activities over the past five years.
Aceh Singkil Regency has 77,512 hectares of oil palm plantations managed by companies and independent smallholders. These plantations contribute 31.8% to the gross regional domestic product in the agriculture, forestry, and fishery sub-sectors. The regency is home to the Rawa Singkil Sanctuary, the natural habitat for Sumatran tigers, Sumatran elephants, and Sumatran orangutans.
Also Read: Aceh Singkil’s Vision for Sustainable Palm Oil Landscape 2024–2026
The multi-stakeholder initiative would be about to get solution on sustainable plantation issues, escalating plantation productivity, and production volumes up to 30% through intensification during the same period. Every party would be committed to balance sustainable economic development, environmental protection, and socially welfare for the sustainable future for Aceh Singkil. The initiative would need sustainable palm oil action plans to manage palm oil in the regency as one acknowledged commodity in the globe.
The MoU would analyze the frame works to optimize every development in the regency by implementing sustainable development acceleration among four main pillars, such as, sustainable environment, economy, social, and governance. Environmental pillar would focus on forest ecosystem protection and escalate natural conservation. Economic pillar would dedicate to get sustainable area productivity and escalate the producers’ sources of living. Social pillar would emphasize multi-stakeholder’s involvement inclusively to solve inequity and social conflicts. The governance pillar would prioritize the structural support and administration for sustainable palm oil action plans.
Regent in duty of Aceh Singkil, Azmi M.A.P., said the signing of the MoU and the launching of MSF would be the commitment of the regency to make Aceh Singkil as sustainable jurisdiction with the optimal sustainable palm oil production, and maximally protect forest ecosystem, namely, Rawa Singkil Sanctuary.
Swisscontact, as one member of the forum would be committed to create sustainable production landscape where sustainable economic development would be side by side with environmental protection, and would cooperate with Koltiva to develop the dashboard. “The collaboration would harmonize some issues, interests, and resources into one big power with the goal, to get sustainable development in palm oil sector,” Christina Rini, Project Manager Sustainable Landscape LASR, Swisscontact, said.
Multistakeholder Forum (MSF) dashboard would be the significant thing to monitor, report every activity of the stakeholders in the region, effectively facilitate every implementation of the indicator – landscape vision. The platform was developed together by MSB members of Aceh Singkil and would be managed by Koltiva. The main feature of the dashboard would cover report management. The members would monitor performance indicators in every economic, environmental, and social pillars.
CEO and Co-Founder Koltiva, Manfred Borer said that there would be big potential from palm oil plantations and agricultural production in Aceh Singkil. Everything should be the same with its governance to support sustainable practices through multi-stakeholder collaboration. “Muti-Stakeholder Forum which was developed by our traceability platform – KoltiTrace MIS, would deliver easiness for every stakeholder to get data, data supervision about natural resource management and cultivation, and would encourage sustainable palm oil action plan implementation,” he said. (P2)
