Sustainable palm oil
Patrick Cescau, Group CEO
I'm delighted to have the opportunity, as part of your May Day summit, to launch a major initiative on palm oil. It is one that will have a significant impact, not just on climate change but also on the production of the rainforest. We are today, announcing our intention to move to 100%, certified, sustainable palm oil, by 2015. And we'll also support an immediate moratorium on any further deforestation in Indonesia linked to palm oil cultivation.
Voiceover
The soaring global demand for palm oil, for food and fuel, is destroying the world's rainforests. The impact on climate and endangered species is devastating. That's why Unilever has announced a major new commitment to ensure that all its supplies come from sustainable and certified sources.
Laurie Mayer, BBC Broadcast Journalist
Taking a global view, just how grave a threat is posed by the current scale of palm oil production?
Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director, Forum for the Future
It's quite confusing for people, because what we've got is two problems converging in the same place.
One is the problem associated with deforestation, continuing loss of the world's rainforests, which contributes about 20% of total CO2 emissions every year, so, it's a big problem.
Secondly, we've got this issue about the conversion of land use out of food production into fuel production, as it were, production of biocrops, biofuels of one kind of another. And these two problems are now coming together.
So, the palm oil issue is right at the heart of both of those, because increased palm oil production is accelerating rainforest destruction, particularly in countries like Indonesia, and it's also feeding into a growing set of concerns that, actually, using these crops to make fuel rather than food, isn't that smart from a sustainability point of view.
So, this is becoming a very big issue, very fast, and will, I think, cause growing concern.
Laurie Mayer
Now, as a company, you say you have great sympathy with Greenpeace, that your positions are very close to each other. And yet, I put it to you, that their Forestry Campaigner is saying that Unilever is contributing to one of the greatest environmental crimes ever committed. You don’t sound that close, do you?
Gavin Neath, SVP, Communications & Sustainability
I think if you look at this problem, the reality is that our positions are very similar indeed.
The announcement that we made had two elements to it, and the first one addressed their central concern, which was that we, as a business, would join a moratorium on any further deforestation in Indonesia associated with the cultivation of palm oil. And that's something we're very happy to do.
But we're prepared to go well beyond that and commit the business to source 100% certifiable sustainable palm oil by 2015.
Laurie Mayer
Is this moratorium something that you can guarantee to make work?
Gavin Neath
We'll have to work very hard to give it real teeth and real bite.
Greenpeace, what they use is photographic evidence, satellite imagery, of the forests in Indonesia and Malaysia, and they superimpose onto the images that they have, the tracts of land that are owned by the various big suppliers in this area. So, if they observe from that photography, illegal logging or deforestation going on, we would have photographic evidence with which we can confront our suppliers and, under those circumstances, take the necessary action.
And, I think there's, we've spoken to our major suppliers, and I think there's a real desire now to change the rules of the game.
Laurie Mayer
So, how close are we to having totally sustainable palm oil?
Vindi Banga, President, Foods
We actually believe that, today, about 80% of the palm oil we use is from sustainable plantations. However, the key issue is that there has been no independent body to certify it in that manner.
Now, the Roundtable has just agreed a set of criteria, which now aligns everyone on that certification process. So, that should be a very key step forward to be able to prove, to ourselves and to the external world, about the use of oil that is certified sustainable.
These things do take time. If you bear in mind our own experience in tea, we have been working in our own plantations to think through sustainable agriculture for tea bushes, for a very long period of time. And, in Kericho, in Kenya, we believe that our plantation was, indeed, fully sustainable. More recently, we've been working with the Rainforest Alliance who, earlier this year, actually certified our plantation as sustainable.
Laurie Mayer
But, being cynical for a moment, you've got people on the Roundtable, who've signed up to all the criteria, but they're still behaving badly.
Vindi Banga
But, you know, bear in mind that, as one company, it's not our job to police the world. Our job is to do what we can to establish a sustainable agenda and to be bold and strike forward and lead that agenda. That's what we can do. We can then hope that the rest of the world will follow in those tracks.
Laurie Mayer
You're satisfied that, as a corporation, you are acting responsibly, doing everything that you can, and that now it's governments who must help.
Gavin Neath
We certainly need help in doing this. The action we've taken, I'm sure, will unleash a lot of energy and a lot of activity in this whole area, but we are going to need government support and perhaps inter-governmental organisations, as well, like the UN and other bodies, to get involved in this, because it is such an important issue for all of us.
Jonathon Porritt
The whole of the industry has got to come in behind this new set of standards and supply chain management systems, basically. The next step, undoubtedly, is to get the certification process sorted out, so that when a company like Unilever makes this promise to its consumers, that the raw materials in its products have come from certified, genuinely sustainable producers, it can show, in the audit of the supply chain, that that really is the case.
The only way you ever make this change is if governments regulate and if the best performers in the sector make sure that the worst performers are basically stopped from damaging the reputation of the sector as a whole.
