Sustainability assessment in crude palm oil production: A review

Abstract

Palm oil is important commodity for the world since it is a raw material for various important products such as cooking oils, cosmetics, and foods. Moreover, palm oil is found as a source for renewable energy such as biodiesel and biogas. As the result, the demand of palm oil is projected to jump in the future. To fulfil this demand, the increasing of palm oil production is unavoidable. Crude palm oil process is one substantial process to produce palm oil. This process becomes source of income for countries and citizen of those countries where crude palm oil are produced such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Despite of these positive impacts, the environmental impacts of crude palm oil process such as greenhouse gas emission, waste, high water and energy consumption are identified. Thus, to maintain sustainability in palm oil production, several standards such as Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) and Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) are introduced. One main requirement from these standards is to monitor sustainability impacts of crude palm oil production. Sustainability assessment is a procedure to evaluate sustainability impacts of products, process and policies. This paper aims to review sustainability assessment process applied in crude palm oil production.