Can companies trust palm oil audits?

Ahead of our next forum on how business can tackle deforestation, we held a webinar addressing audit integrity in the palm oil industry.

In their recent report “Who watches the watchmen”, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and its research partner Grassroots, highlight third party auditors that are carrying out methodologically flawed fieldwork and producing substandard, biased reports that fail to identify and mitigate unsustainable practices by oil palm companies.

The report argues that a lack of clear, mandatory, and enforceable guidelines has allowed auditors to omit or disguise serious flaws in the operations of plantation companies and in some cases even to collude with plantation companies to disguise violations of the RSPO standard.

In response to the report, the RSPO has established a task force to ensure full implementation of “quality, oversight and credibility of RSPO assessments”.

Our webinar will debate the need for reform of the RSPO system, to provide palm oil growers and auditors with clear, mandatory, and enforceable guidelines that will help auditors to do a better job. 

Speaking are:

• Jago Wadley, senior forest campaigner, Environmental Investigation Agency
• Scott Poynton, founder, TFT
• Paul Wolvekamp, deputy director, Both ENDS, board member of RSPO
• Andrew Ng, founder, Grassroots

Moderator: Ian Welsh, publishing director, Innovation Forum