To live up to their commitments, conservation scientist Eric Meijaard says these leading producers have to address the fire crisis in a tangible way.
“With these fires all the burn scars need to be mapped and any oil that is subsequently grown on these burnt lands should just stay out of the responsible market,” Meijaard told the Guardian, “They have to somehow develop the tracing systems that allow them to confidently say that none of this came from lands that were burned in 2015.”
But in the complicated web that forms the Indonesian palm oil sector, palm oil giants operate their own plantations and mills, but also source a sizeable amount of oil palm from independent smallholders, in some cases up to 40%.
The problem is that, with brokers and middlemen and an estimated 4 million smallholder farmers, fresh bunches of oil palm fruit might change hands several times before reaching the mill.