How Can Zero-Deforestation Commitments Meet Conservation Goals Without Compromising the Inclusion of Smallholders in the Indonesian Palm Oil Sector?
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Date
2024
Publication Type
Doctoral Thesis
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Abstract
Palm oil is popular for its efficiency and significant economic contributions, yet its expansion is also linked to tropical deforestation, biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, and land disputes. Increased awareness of these adverse impacts has led to the adoption of corporate Zero Deforestation Commitments (ZDCs), articulated through No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) policies within the palm oil sector, aimed at severing the link between palm oil supply chains and deforestation. These initiatives will be reinforced by the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) by the end of 2024, which requires that EU imports of forest-risk commodities must not originate from land cleared post-2020. While private certification schemes such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil have been the subject of much research, comprehensive evaluations of ZDCs’ scope, coverage, and associated outcomes within complex supply chains remain thin. This thesis bridges these research gaps by employing various approaches, including supply chain tracing, policy analysis, forest cover assessments, a producer-level survey, and interviews and Focus Group Discussions with key stakeholders, and offers fresh insights into the potential and challenges of implementing ZDCs in the Indonesian palm oil industry.
Chapter 2 examines the spatial and functional fit of ZDCs—defined as the alignment between the geographical scope of governance arrangements and the socioecological issues they address—through a data-intensive ex-ante policy evaluation. It investigates three questions: (1) How comprehensive are ZDC policies in supply chains managing Indonesian palm oil? (2) What is the spatial fit of ZDCs concerning forests at risk? (3) How well do ZDCs incorporate local socioeconomic contexts into their policies? The findings reveal common shortcomings in corporate ZDC policies and their implementation including traceability, compliance support for high-risk mills, transparency, and smallholder inclusion, as well as a lack of spatial and functional fit due to inadequate coverage of at-risk forests and the smallholder supply base by ZDC mill owners compared to buyers (i.e., refinery groups).
Chapter 3 assesses the pathways through which ZDCs reach smallholder supply sheds (i.e., radius-based potential sourcing areas around a mill) in Sumatra, Indonesia. This chapter employs a state-of-the-art mixed-methods approach, combining a novel primary survey of 1,541 households, 38 semi-structured interviews with intermediaries and cooperatives, extensive supply chain tracing from producer to refinery levels, and geospatial analysis across more than 70 villages in seven regencies. The findings offer the first ground-level evidence of ZDCs' effectiveness and equity implications, highlighting their insufficient impact on halting deforestation and limited reach into smallholder supply sheds. This chapter provides evidence that ZDCs have not been fully implemented by companies, indicated by poor knowledge dissemination, inadequate capacity-building training, negligible price differentiation, and the failure to actively include or exclude non-industrial producers in their supply sheds.
The final research chapter in this thesis analyses bottom-up perspectives from 28 focus group discussions and 25 semi-structured interviews with smallholders, cooperatives, and other key stakeholders to explore the state of company-community relationships and the implementation and expectations of corporate ZDCs. It uncovers pronounced procedural equity gaps, highlighted by insufficient mechanisms for voicing concerns and a lack of active community engagement. Acknowledging the expectations of non-industrial producers, this chapter promotes the integration of the ethics of care into ZDC frameworks, emphasising relational aspects and care for vulnerable producers to enhance equity. This approach seeks to address historical grievances and current challenges in palm oil development, offering a nuanced pathway to more equitable ZDCs.
Overall, this thesis fleshes out the effectiveness and equity of ZDCs in the Indonesian palm oil sector. It highlights substantial gaps in policy coverage and implementation, showing that ZDCs fall short of achieving conservation goals but also lack measures to prevent unintended negative impacts on non-industrial producers. This study emphasises the need to refine ZDC strategies by integrating relational and care measures to ensure equitable outcomes.
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Contributors
Examiner: Meemken, Eva-Marie
Examiner: Garrett, Rachael
Examiner: Grabs, Janina
Examiner : Zähringer, Julie
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ETH Zurich
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Subject
Environmental policy; Conservation; Deforestation-risk commodities; Smallholder inclusion; Palm oil; Indonesia; Sustainable supply chains; Deforestation; Policy effectiveness and equity
Organisational unit
09766 - Meemken, Eva-Marie / Meemken, Eva-Marie
09659 - Garrett, Rachael (ehemalig) / Garrett, Rachael (former)
Notes
Funding
- Assessing the effectiveness and equity of zero-deforestation commitment implementation in the palm oil sector ()
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