Contribution of independent smallholder RSPO certification to village-level SDGs achievements

Abstract

As the world’s largest palm oil producer, Indonesia has promoted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to assess the impacts of palm oil development. However, various literatures have only covered the conceptual discussion and potential contributions of palm oil development to SDGs, leaving the use of SDGs as an assessment tool underexplored. This research discusses how RSPO’s independent smallholder certification can contribute to SDGs’ achievements at the village level. By interviewing 88 respondents from 34 RSPO-certified smallholder organizations (as members of Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil Smallholder Forum / Fortasbi), RSPO certification shows significant impacts on the SDGs except SDG 14 (life below water) and SDG 17 (partnerships for the goal). This finding indicates that RSPO can lead to SDGs fulfillment in different ways, either directly as the impacts at the group level simultaneously contribute to village-level SDGs achievements (for SDGs 4, 9, and 10) or indirectly as there are impacts at the group level that do not necessarily affect village-level SDGs achievements (for SDGs 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15 and 16) and do not cause any impact (SDG 7). This result also reflects the collaboration challenges among stakeholders, especially at the village level.