Sustainable practices in the palm-oil industry

Malaysian agricultural groups, ranging from Sime Darby to Wilmar International Ltd, have adopted practices that would ensure sustainability in their industries.

At Sime Darby Plantation, the focus was placed on trees. It plans to burn no old trees from as far back as 1985, when it instituted a zero-burning policy; instead, the company fells trees that have reached the end of their life cycle.

Tang Men Kon, the company’s head of plantation sustainability and quality management, explained that oil-palm trees aged over 25 years are cut down and chipped to make way for replanting. The chips are left in situ to allow the plant tissue to be recycled back into the soil, thereby improving soil fertility.

“We also practice zero deforestation of primary and virgin forests and ensure that there is no new developments of peatland where Sime Darby is concerned.

“Also, none of our plantations are on state forest lands.

“As a founding member of the RSPO [Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil], we achieved our certification in 2008. 

“Today, we are the largest [global] producer of certified sustainable palm oil, as our strategic operating units in Malaysia are 100-per-cent certified while in Indonesia, we are 92 per cent certified,” Tang said. He added that other certifications, like the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification and the RSPO Supply Chain Certification Systems, came in 2010.

Sime Darby Plantation produces 2.4 million tonnes of crude palm oil annually, with some two-thirds certified as sustainable.

Other green efforts that the company undertakes include sustainable land use and management; this includes preserving natural forest and wetland areas as well as river and riparian boundaries within their estates.

During replanting, slopes with gradients of more than 25 degrees are left as they are, with their forest cover intact.

“In 2008, we also committed to planting a million indigenous and endangered forest tree species on our estates – over 320,000 have been planted thus far,” Tang added. “Proper irrigation, drainage, water gates and flood pumps are helping to maintain an optimal water table for the trees. In addition, we also constructed bunds in coastal estates to prevent any influx of floodwater during heavy rainfalls.

“Piloting composting is also something we have been doing as a mill waste management initiative for our mill waste since 2007. Empty fruit bunches and palm-oil mill effluent, or POME, can be combined into compost mix to replace inorganic fertiliser – we have four open-system composting plants and another 22 closed composting plants to do that.

“At the same time, empty fruit bunches are recycled back into the soil as mulch, while POME is treated to bring its biological oxygen demand [which refers to the amount of oxygen required by microorganisms to break down organic matter] down to a permissible level before it is returned to the land,” Tang continued.

The aim of the company, he said, is to have carbon emissions slashed by 25 per cent by 2016 and 40 per cent by 2020. So far, 11 biogas plants are in various stages of implementation, which can eventually be used as power generation or combustion in preventing the release of methane into the air.

Agribusiness group Wilmar International’s latest effort involved setting up a policy of “no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation” that was launched last December.

Under this policy, “no deforestation” entails no development of high carbon-stock forests and high conservation-value areas as well as no burning; “no peat” means that there will be no future development on peatland, while best-management practices are adopted for existing plantations on peat.

Seven months after the policy was launched, 17 manufacturers and retailers and 12 growers, processors and traders that are Wilmar business partners pledged a commitment to “no deforestation”.

The final component, “no exploitation”, involves communities that Wilmar operates within and calls for the respect of land-tenure rights; maintaining the rights of indigenous and local peoples; obtaining free, prior and informed consent to operate on lands to which these communities hold legal, communal or customary rights; and resolving complaints and conflicts in a transparent and consultative process.

Cases in point include Saremas, Sarawak, where Wilmar’s plantations co-exist with five longhouses; 588 hectares of land within its land title has been set aside to support the communities’ traditional way of life. 

In Sugut, Sabah, where Wilmar plantations include four small clusters of communities, 57ha of land have been reserved for the same purpose.

At the conference, the company’s general manager for group sustainability, Simon Siburat, said that Wilmar has committed to conserving 6,288ha of high conservation-value areas, restoring 1,453ha of riparian (river bank) buffers and 382ha of wildlife corridors that had been previously established.

“We also planted 49,800 trees, which works out to approximately 130 trees per hectare. The trees are 19 species of mostly food plants to provide for proboscis monkeys and silver langurs,” Siburat said.

At the Ulu Segama River, where the riparian area runs for a stretch of 47km, some 20 groups of proboscis monkeys and seven groups of silver langurs have been identified.

Planting the food trees is done with inter-cropping, explained Siburat: “Inter-cropping is done between the forest trees and the oil palms, so that once the trees are mature, they will gradually thin out the oil palms.”

Wilmar’s conservation works have also been extended to its Sarawak plantations, where a contiguous area of 1,300ha of high conservation-value forest was first identified in 2008.