Malaysia has lots of forests left, despite decades of intensive deforestation across the country, but what the nation needs is more protection for more forests. So it’s encouraging that the federal government plans to gazette more wooded areas as permanent forest reserves. To wit: by 2020 the Peninsular Malaysia Forestry Department wants to…
The results are in and they are so-so. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has released its latest Palm Oil Buyers’ Scorecard, on which it has evaluated the performance of numerous companies worldwide based on how well they have done on fulfilling their pledged commitment to buying and using…
As legislative reversals go, this one was a biggie. French legislators planned to impose a punitive tax on palm oil products from leading producers like Malaysia and Indonesia as part of a new biodiversity law. The planned tax – dubbed the Nutella Tax (after the famous chocolate spread, which contains plenty of…
Malaysia’s Felda Group, the state-owned commodities company which is one of the world’s largest palm oil plantation operators, has long been positioning itself as a leader in sustainable agribusiness practices. Now, however, the group has asked that Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil Principles and Criteria certificates, which grant a badge of…