GOLDEN AGRI-RESOURCES LTD Golden Agri-Resources Ltd (GAR) resigned from the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA) membership on 30 December 2022.
Despite the resignation, GAR will continue to abide by the latest HCSA Toolkit in our operations and to implement High Carbon Stock (HCS) conservation in our supply chain and investments following our no deforestation commitment in the GAR Social and Environmental Policy (GSEP). We are conserving 78,000 Ha of High Conservation Value (HCV) and HCS areas. In addition, within our supply chain, we are supporting our suppliers in conserving 118,000 Ha of HCV and HCS areas.
As one of the pioneers of the HCSA methodology, GAR has been associated with the organisation from the beginning. The company's study with Greenpeace and The Forest Trust then (now known as the Earthworm Foundation) on HCS in one of GAR's plantation subsidiaries, PT Kartika Prima Cipta, informed the development of the first version of the HCSA Toolkit in 2012. GAR's Participatory Conservation Planning programme inspired the further improvement of the toolkit in subsequent versions.
GAR is proud of how the HCSA Toolkit has been acknowledged and adopted as an industry standard. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) adopted the toolkit in 2018 and was embedded in the No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation (NDPE) Implementation Reporting Framework in 2019. Also, it was integrated into the COP27 (Climate Change) Agribusiness Roadmap for palm oil this year, serving as a benchmark for other commodities.
The original intent of HCSA is to push for the HCSA Toolkit adoption beyond the palm oil industry. However, GAR has seen a shifting focus from HCSA in enforcing its guidance in the past few years. As a company operating in the palm oil industry, GAR sees this overlapping role with the RSPO as unnecessary and disagrees with the new direction that the organisation is taking.
GAR will continue our no deforestation commitment under the company's policy and monitor the ongoing action plan from our investments in the HCS remediation/restoration plan accordingly.
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gar - Golden Agri-Resources Ltd. published this content on 27 January 2023 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 27 January 2023 07:14:10 UTC.
