RSPO temporarily suspends certification of Agropalma

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has suspended its certification of Brazilian palm oil producer Agropalma, Mongabay reported on 29 March.

In place since February, the suspension followed Mongabay’s publication in December of its investigation into land-grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon. Its report claimed that more than half of the 107,000ha of land registered by Agropalma in northern Pará state derived from fraudulent land titles and a fake land registration bureau.

Part of the area overlaps ancestral land claimed by indigenous peoples and Quilombolas – descendants of Afro-Brazilian runaway slaves –including two cemeteries, which is at the centre of a seven-year legal battle led by state prosecutors and public defenders, the report said.

Following the report’s publication, RSPO representatives contacted leaders in the Quilombolas community and conducted audits in all affected areas. Latin American certifier IBD Certifications subseqently suspended Agropal- ma’s RSPO certification, Mongabay wrote.

“Agropalma will be required to address the non-conformities and provide proposed corrective actions to which the IBD will further verify implementation of agreed actions,” RSPO wrote, without disclosing the inconsistencies which led to the suspension. “To lift the suspension, the non-conformities must be corrected and closed.”

In an e-mailed statement, Agropalma said IBD had “temporarily suspended” the RSPO certification of its plantations but it had appealed as it disagreed with the points flagged in the certifier’s report.

Agropalma – which claims to be the largest sustainable palm oil producer of the Americas – said the RSPO certificates for its refineries in Pará’s capital, Belém, and in Limeira in São Paulo state “remain valid and there is no impact on the delivery of orders”, adding that “since our first certification in 2011, we have demonstrated total commitment and solid evidence of compliance with the RSPO principles and criteria”.