WWF SCORECARD

WWF Scorecard

WWF Scorecard

Many manufacturers and retailers are not utilising sustainable palm oil as much as they should to stimulate provide and lead to long-term ecological advantages, states a damning report from the WWF (www.standardsusers.org).

Palm oil is utilised in numerous consumer nourishment toiletries products, but its production has had a gigantic environmental influence South Asia, where timber plantations have been unblocked to make way for more plantations. The devastation has replaced both humans and animals that live in forest regions, and makes a large-scale contribution to carbon emissions.

The publication of the scorecard follows an announcement from Nestle this week that it will use only sustainable palm oil by 2015 (www.assets.wwf.ch). UK retailer Marks and Spencer made a similar announcement, pledging to buy GreenCert credentials, which consign compensation to the producers for quantities of sustainable oil even though the genuine palm oil used is not certified.

Oil palms are highly effective producers of high-quality, versatile oils. But they only augment in the tropics, where their cultivation can have negative influences on persons and the environment. Of even more anxiety is the detail that demand for palm oil is forecast to boost, and most of the residual suitable localities for plantations are forests.1 In addition, converting timber plantations to plantations contributes to weather change, since 20% of all human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are initiated by deforestation. The practice of draining and converting peatlands forests is especially damaging, as this “carbon sinks” store more carbon per unit area than any other ecosystem in the world (www.standardsusers.org).

As a founding constituent of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), WWF has worked since 2003 with the palm oil industry to ensure that the RSPO measures comprise robust communal and environmental criteria, including a prohibition on the conversion of precious forests. WWF has played a hardworking function in the development of both the RSPO and Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO), in the identical way that it has been engaged in the development of other certification designs such as FSC for timber and MSC for wild-caught marine fish. WWF supports the adoption and monitoring of RSPO standards by palm oil producers, as well as driving demand for sustainable palm oil amongst retailers and manufacturers (www.assets.wwf.ch).

Working with the RSPO is not the only way that WWF endeavours to mitigate the environmental and communal impacts of palm oil expansion. WWF also works on strategies such as promoting transparent ...