RSPO alone cannot make palm oil deforestation-free

By Matin Qaim and Kibrom T. Sibhatu

Palm oil is the most widely produced and consumed vegetable oil world-wide. It is extracted from the fruits of the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), a tropical palm native to West and Central Africa which is now also widely cultivated in Asia and Latin America. Palm oil’s versatility makes it an essential ingredient in a variety of food and non-food products, including biodiesel and cosmetics. However, the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations is linked to tropical deforestation, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity loss, land conflicts, and other environmental and social problems.

Several national and international sustainability standards have been established as mechanisms to reduce the negative effects and encourage more responsible practices within the palm oil industry. Existing ones include voluntary sustainability standards, like Organic and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), as well as mandatory ones, like Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) and Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO). Among these, RSPO is the most prominent and the only internationally-recognised standard aimed at addressing environmental and socioeconomic issues associated with palm oil production.

Role of RSPO in international markets

RSPO was established in 2004 through a cooperation scheme between the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and several companies and stakeholders in the palm oil industry. RSPO’s main objectives include promoting practices that reduce deforestation, safeguard biodiversity and prevent the clearance of areas with high conservation value and high carbon stock. It also aims to improve living conditions of farmers and workers, with a particular emphasis on respecting the rights of Indigenous communities.

Over the last 20 years, RSPO has gained a considerable market share, accounting for approximately 20 per cent of all internationally-traded palm oil. Most of the RSPO-certified palm oil is exported from producing countries – such as Indonesia and Malaysia – to Europe and North America, where preferences for sustainability standards are high. In Germany and a few other western European countries, close to 90 per cent of all palm oil imports are nowadays RSPO-certified. This high share results from a combination of public regulations, NGO pressures and private industry commitments. In other importing regions of the world – including China and India – the share of RSPO-certified palm oil is small.

Over the last six decades, oil palm fruit production has increased more than 30-fold.
Photo: Matin Qaim

Evaluating RSPO's impacts

Many studies evaluate effects of RSPO certification on environmental outcomes, oil palm yield and human wellbeing. Some of them find positive effects in certain situations, whereas others do not. Most studies focus on specific outcomes and countries or regions, making it difficult to draw generalisable conclusions. In a systematic review and meta-analysis, which was published recently in Environmental Research Letters (Sibhatu and Qaim 2026), we have synthesised the global evidence.

Based on clear criteria, we identified 53 original studies for inclusion in our systematic review. Most of these original studies focus on producing countries in Southeast Asia (75 %), the rest on countries in Latin America and Africa, or multiple countries across continents. This regional distribution reflects the disparity in geography of palm oil production and RSPO certification. Many of the studies look at RSPO effects on specifically-defined indicators; around half focus primarily on environmental outcomes, whereas the other half analyse effects on oil palm yield, income and human wellbeing.

Environmental effects

Several studies show that RSPO reduces but does not eliminate deforestation within certified concessions. However, in nearby non-certified land, deforestation for oil palm cultivation sometimes increases. Such leakage effects were particularly shown in Indonesia, leading to a statistically insignificant effect of RSPO on overall deforestation (see Figure). This is somewhat disappointing for a standard whose main objective is to decrease deforestation.

The problem is that – as a voluntary standard – RSPO only covers a certain segment of the industry. The increased deforestation largely occurs on non-certified land, so the issue is not primarily one of non-compliance with RSPO rules. Stricter rules and more effective monitoring and enforcement may help to address the remaining issues of deforestation on RSPO-certified land, but not the leakage effects. This underlines that RSPO alone cannot solve the issue of deforestation associated with palm oil, which – by the way – holds true for any voluntary sustainability standard.

Summary effects of RSPO on environmental and socioeconomic sustainability

We also find mixed effects of RSPO on other environmental outcomes, such as biodiversity, water pollution and ecological toxicity. These effects are influenced by geographic and land-cover conditions, local farming practices, and farmers’ access to input markets and technical support. In this respect, improved designs of the RSPO standard and the institutional context can help achieve more consistent positive outcomes.

Clear positive environmental effects of RSPO were identified in terms of lower GHG emissions (see Figure). Specifically, our meta-analysis confirms a mean RSPO reduction in GHG emissions of 34 per cent per unit of palm oil produced.

Effects on yield and income

One of the key principles of RSPO is to improve the quantity and quality of oil palm yield. And indeed, most studies suggest that RSPO certification results in higher yields, which is also confirmed by a statistically significant effect in our meta-analysis. RSPO-related yield gains can be explained through farmers in certified channels having better access to credit, inputs and extension services.

Furthermore, several studies suggest that RSPO certification significantly increases the prices that farmers receive for their output, thanks to better market access and the ability to sell their produce at premium prices. Higher prices and higher yields also lead to higher revenues and profits. In some cases, the positive profit effects are not significant because RSPO certification also entails higher production and administration costs.

Beyond profit, RSPO may also influence living conditions of local communities through various indirect pathways, such as local market developments or the provision of rural services. Several studies look into such broader social effects of RSPO with mixed results. Especially in more market-oriented communities, RSPO certification is sometimes associated with better healthcare, educational facilities, and lower poverty rates, whereas such associations are not observed in communities with more subsistence-oriented livelihoods. This variation may be influenced by regional differences in infrastructure, government support and the extent to which certification bodies engage with local communities.

Limited smallholder inclusion

Globally, around half of the oil palm land is managed by smallholder farmers, while the rest is large-scale company land. In principle, both large-scale palm oil companies and smallholder farmers can be RSPO-certified. If smallholders are part of a contract scheme, RSPO certification is organised through the contracting company. Independent smallholders without a company contract can obtain RSPO certification either alone or as part of a farmer group. However, up till now, RSPO certification in the small farm sector has been very limited. In 2024, only two per cent of the estimated seven million smallholders growing oil palm globally were certified.

The low rates of smallholder participation in RSPO can be explained by various factors. RSPO certification is costly and requires formal land titles, which many smallholders do not have. In addition, without specific support, smallholders often face technical and institutional constraints to obtain certification and comply with the RSPO standard. This is a well-known problem and also the reason why RSPO developed and adopted a smallholder strategy in 2017 with various support measures, including capacity building and supply chain partnership programmes.

However, evidence suggests that obtaining certification is only part of the challenge. Even when being RSPO-certified, smallholders sometimes cannot reap the full benefits because structural features of certified supply chains exclude them from actually selling through these channels. Aggregation costs, documentation requirements and traceability constraints mean that certified mills source predominantly from contracted farmers and plantations, passively bypassing independent smallholders despite their formal certification status.

While the number of RSPO-certified independent smallholders has grown in recent years, they remain at a structural disadvantage in capturing the economic benefits of certification. Further adjustments in RSPO programmes and institutional support could help to make certified supply chains more smallholder-inclusive.

Conclusion

A few broader lessons can be drawn from our systematic review and meta-analysis. RSPO helps to increase oil palm yields and profits, and also entails some environmental benefits. However, the evidence suggests that it does not significantly decrease tropical deforestation. The effects may somewhat improve through tighter rules and standards, but likely only to a limited extent. Completely deforestation-free supply chains can hardly be achieved through voluntary certification programmes alone. The same is true for other regulations that only apply to certain market segments, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation. Mandatory national standards, like ISPO or MSPO, could be better suited to deal with leakage effects, but would need stricter rules on deforestation.

In terms of socioeconomic effects, RSPO is often associated with higher profits for producers, whereas the broader livelihood effects for local communities are mixed. Smallholder farmers are so far hardly included, which needs more attention through improved program designs. If only large plantations are certified and smallholders cannot participate, rising inequality and further marginalisation of vulnerable groups is possible, especially given that sustainability certification is increasingly required to access certain high-value markets.

In conclusion, while RSPO has certain positive effects in specific situations, further development of the standard and other policies are needed to make palm oil production more sustainable.

Matin Qaim is Executive Director of the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany.
Contact: mqaim@uni-bonn.de

Kibrom T. Sibhatu is a Research Scientist at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) in Nairobi, Kenya.

This article is based on: Sibhatu, K.T., Qaim, M. (2026). Environmental and Socioeconomic Effects of Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Certification: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Environmental Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae803b

Further reading:

Rural 21 issue 4/2024: Land matters

Rural 21 Dossier on "Forests"