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 are conducted by licensed assessors to identify HCV and HCS forest areas for protection. Growers then develop management actions to mitigate threats to these HCV and HCS forest areas 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 oil palm companies in Malaysia and Indonesia). We used 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 practices; 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.