Posted on February, 04 2013

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has been approved as an associate member of ISEAL, the global association for sustainability standards. Associate membership reflects a commitment to credibility and facilitates the transition to full membership, where compliance is demonstrated with ISEAL's internationally recognized Codes of Good Practice in standard-setting and impacts. Full compliance with the Impacts Code is required within 2 years of being approved as an associate member.

The RSPO joins associate members from the water, tourism and sugarcane sectors as organisations whose systems meet ISEAL's entry level criteria in terms of scope, governance and practices. ISEAL supports associate members through this process to join the Forest Stewardship Council, Fairtrade International and the Marine Stewardship Council.

“As market demand for food, fibre and fuel increases in the coming decades, so will the impact on our planet’s natural resources. Credible standards and certification systems help to meaningfully reduce impact from commodity production and support the transformation of entire sectors, which is an important element of WWF’s conservation strategy,” said Andrew Murphy, WWF’s Acting Market Transformation Initiative Director. “WWF works with leading global certification systems to ensure continuous improvement. Full ISEAL membership is one of WWF’s minimum requirements for certification systems.”

Secretary General of RSPO, Darrel Webber, commented, “We are very pleased to join the fray of ISEAL as the RSPO continuously seeks to enhance the robustness of our operating philosophy as an international multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated the highest standards of sustainability. We look forward to generating insights and strategies from our alliance with ISEAL in order to be benchmarked against latest innovations and best practices to ultimately achieve our vision of transforming markets to make sustainable palm oil a norm.”

ISEAL Alliance