Contested representations: A comparative analysis of palm oil sustainability in Malaysian and Dutch media

Abstract

The emergence of palm oil as the world's most produced and consumed vegetable oil has prompted various policy initiatives to help govern the industry in a sustainable manner. These initiatives include transnational sustainable certification schemes, such as the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and national level sustainability standards, such as Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil. To date, attempts to find consensus on sustainable policy and processes has been characterised by tension and disagreement. Most notably, stakeholders participating in policy dialogue from producing countries are unsatisfied with the outcomes of transnational palm oil governance. Tension stems from observations that sustainability is understood differently in the palm oil producing countries of the Global South compared with Northern consumption markets. To understand the different framings of palm oil and potential governance solutions, we investigate media coverage of palm oil sustainability in two different countries: the Netherlands – the largest importer of palm oil in Europe – and Malaysia – the second largest exporter of palm oil in the world after Indonesia. From a sample of 397 Malaysian and Dutch newspaper articles between 2000 and 2015, we employ framing analysis to examine the similarities and differences in media representations of palm oil sustainability. Our findings reveal considerable differences in the way palm oil sustainability is framed in the two countries. Malaysian media frame palm oil as a sustainable industry yet underpinned by a distrust towards transnational sustainability governance (e.g. RSPO) and a perception of unfair treatment towards producing countries by the West. Conversely, Dutch media frame the West as proud consumers of palm oil, who are driving up sustainability standards through NGO scrutiny and participation in transnational processes. We argue that a comparative analysis of media frames offers instructive insights for understanding processes of transnational sustainability governance. In particular, we posit that reconciling policy tensions between North and South palm oil stakeholders could be achieved by highlighting the differences in sustainability framings at different points in the value chain to identify contestation and consensus.