Data from: Addressing the challenges of managing and monitoring biodiversity in High Conservation Value areas and High Carbon Stock forests within oil palm landscapes

Corporate commitments to biodiversity protection are difficult to achieve
due to limited knowledge of effective conservation strategies and
insufficient attention to the social challenges involved in fulfilling
these commitments. We explore these concerns in tropical oil palm
landscapes focusing specifically on the commitment of members of the
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to meeting environmental
sustainability standards relating to maintaining or enhancing High
Conservation Values (HCVs) and High Carbon Stock (HCS) forests. Prior to
developing new plantations, the RSPO requires that baseline assessments be
conducted by licensed assessors to identify HCV and HCS forest areas for
protection. Growers then develop management actions to mitigate threats to
these HCVs and HCS forests and preserve the conservation values and carbon
stocks within them. We investigated the challenges that growers face in
achieving these environmental sustainability commitments by carrying out
online surveys and interviews of plantation managers (18 participants from
12 palm oil companies in Malaysia and Indonesia). We use findings from our
survey and interview questions to make recommendations for improvements in
managing and monitoring biodiversity within oil palm landscapes. Practical
Implication: Drawing on findings from our surveys and interviews,
integrated with our knowledge of current policy and practice, we make 15
recommendations to help support biodiversity conservation, focused around
four themes: (A) respecting human rights, including the rights to free,
prior and informed consent (FPIC) and to participation in decision-making
processes that affect people’s rights; (B) standardising biodiversity
metrics, with guidance on measuring biodiversity and analysing data on
species trends, recognising that local biodiversity is highly dynamic; (C)
building management and monitoring capacity and buy-in from oil palm
companies through training and sharing of best-practice; and (D) improving
sustainability processes by incorporating information into monitoring and
adaptive management systems, and creating open, transparent and
standardised processes for regular reporting. We hope our recommendations
will encourage the implementation of evidence-based practices that respect
rights and incorporate local community perspectives, leading to better
protection of biodiversity in oil palm landscapes in the long-term.