Malaysia’s Sime Darby Plantation sells one fifth of the world’s production of palm oil certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Yet, they are aware of the difficulty of selling sustainable palm oil. “Some 50 per cent of the oil that we produce—all of which is certified sustainable—actually isn’t sold as sustainable palm oil,” says Dr Simon Lord, Sime Darby Plantation’s chief sustainability officer. “The willingness of the market—and we are talking here about Europe—to pay more for sustainable oil is just not there,” he says, referring to the European Union’s proposed ban on biofuels by 2020, to tackle deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia, the world’s two biggest oil palm producers. Lord is also of the view that recent moves by some European retailers—most recently British highstreet supermarket chain Iceland—to remove palm oil from its products are misguided, and do nothing to protect the Southeast Asia’s rainforests. In this interview, the British executive talks about why selling sustainable oil palm is so difficult, the EU’s moratorium, the impact of climate change on the palm oil industry, and his company’s efforts to improve human rights on its plantations.

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