RSPO freezes palm oil company’s operations in Papua
The world’s biggest sustainable palm oil association has frozen the operations of one of its most prominent members on concessions in Indonesia because of failures to meet its standards on new planting. The Complaints Panel of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil issued a stop-work order for seven subsidiaries of Goodhope Asia Holdings as a result of “poor quality” audits and insufficient documentation required under its New Planting Procedure rules. The Singapore-based palm oil company, an arm of Sri Lanka’s Carson Cumberbatch, has been linked to various cases of environmental and human rights abuses in Indonesia, including allegations of grabbing land from an indigenous community in Papua province on the island of New Guinea, where the industry is quickly expanding.
