MESSAGE FROM THE CEO

This year’s General Assembly caps off RSPO’s milestone 20th anniversary, a year celebrating the many achievements of our global partnership. Standing on the strong foundations we have built since a small group of founders began creating the RSPO in 2004, we look with confidence to the challenges and opportunities of the years to come. RSPO now counts nearly 6,000 members, spanning growers and smallholders from remote rural regions to some of the world’s biggest companies. This strong, diverse partnership gives us an extraordinary ability to innovate and scale up meaningful change across the palm oil spectrum.

A highlight of GA21 is the adoption of the revised RSPO Principles and Criteria and Independent Smallholder Standard. This adoption is the culmination of a thorough and collaborative process with our stakeholders to ensure that our Standards remain relevant and effective in demonstrating the credibility and inclusivity of palm oil production.

Additionally, RSPO’s digital transformation has been a key priority central to future-proofing our organisation. A vital part of this growth is delivering prisma, RSPO’s advanced certification, trade and traceability platform, which will be an essential tool for our members to better demonstrate how we are producing, trading and using sustainable palm products across diverse markets and sectors in line with market expectations and regulatory requirements.

With dynamic growth, enhanced systems and processes, and openness to innovation, our global kinship has much to look forward to in the coming years. I am always encouraged by the unyielding commitment of our global RSPO partnership to continue advancing sustainability in this pivotal sector, despite the many challenges we face in the world today. Let us continue to strengthen our collaboration and remain aligned with our true north, guided by our founding principles and values, as we build the exciting next chapter of RSPO.

Joseph JD D’Cruz
Chief Executive Officer, RSPO

MESSAGE FROM THE CO-CHAIRS

Dear Fellow Members,

We are pleased to welcome you to the 21st RSPO General Assembly (GA21) in Bangkok, Thailand, culminating an eventful year celebrating RSPO’s 20th anniversary. Inspired by the “Land of Smiles”, we strive to embody the warmth and welcoming spirit of our country hosts as we graciously invite you to engage in this year’s assembly.

Recently, RSPO’s membership surpassed 6,000 members worldwide, marking a new milestone that highlights the vitality and expanding influence of our global partnership. It is astounding to grasp such phenomenal growth in just two decades, knowing how we started out with about 200 members and 16 countries during our inaugural meeting in 2004. As we chart our course ahead, our strength in numbers can only be harnessed if we are firmly rooted in our founding values and principles, to carry out our mandate of meaningful transformation of the global palm oil industry.

Foremost in the GA21 agenda is the adoption of the revised RSPO Principles and Criteria (P&C) and Independent Smallholder (ISH) Standard. We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the stakeholders involved for seeing through this review cycle and regional consultations with utmost professionalism, despite the long and gruelling process. We recognise the collaborative efforts in ensuring that the RSPO Standards are up to speed with emergent environmental and social challenges and thus remain relevant, robust and effective in addressing the most critical sustainability concerns. Our Standards are the bedrock of our organisation, and while the challenges in overseeing their evolution intensify at each review cycle, it pushes RSPO and the greater palm oil industry towards better stewardship, aligned with the latest innovations and broader global sustainability goals.

On the innovation front, we are very proud of the successful development of RSPO’s new trade and compliance system prisma (Palm Resource Information and Sustainability Management), which will be officially launched in December, with the full audit model set to be operational in mid-2025. prisma is poised to be a transformative moment for the palm oil industry, as it is built to streamline and optimise information and supply chain efficiency by standardising audit reports, providing a seamless framework for RSPO Members to be in sync with global sustainability demands.

We must continue the momentum of the past 20 years as we now look towards building the next 20 by scaling up our capacity, knowledge and expertise, amidst such a challenging moment for the world already reeling from the impacts of the climate emergency.

Our strong and collective action is needed to mobilise an ambitious future strategy that will prioritise a more proactive approach to risk management, heightened smallholder support, and new enabling services including modular standards, sustainability data custodianship and robust advisory services.

We count on the continued commitment and support of all our Members and partners to build this exciting next chapter for RSPO. Here’s to a successful and fruitful GA21!

Anne Rosenbarger, Co-chairperson
Jose Roberto Montenegro Baide, Co-chairperson
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil