Smallholder Readiness for Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Jurisdictional Certification of Palm Oil by 2025 - Trial Sustainable Smallholder Community Programme in TTBK, Sabah.
The main objective of this activity is to make more visible the realities and aspirations of Sabah's oil palm smallholders and to identify the gaps between the smallholders' current agricultural and management practices and the social, environmental and legal standards requirement under the state of Sabah's Jurisdictional Certification commitment 2025. The sub-activities conducted to achieve the objectives are: 1. Conduct smallholder needs assessment in the trialed areas, Telupid, Tongod, Beluran and Kinabatangan (TTBK) - which aims to establish a baseline measurements of the current gaps and needs of the TTBK smallholders, with regards to their management and agricultural practices. The baseline assessment and findings will serve as a comparison point after interventions to their practices have been made. 2. Map the communities' traditional resources - which aims to understand the extend of the smallholders' traditional resources apart from oil palm. 3. Establish village committees for capacity building in each of the identified villages (20) across TTBK - which aims to organize the smallholders into groups so that capacity building training can be delivered more effectively, ensuring the transfer of knowledge within the communities is actively happening. 4. Assess the effectiveness of the existing agronomic extension models in the trailed 20 villages across TTBK - which aims to understand the the smallholders current agronomic practices and identify the practices that need improvement. 5. Develop an intervention model to address identified smallholders needs - which aims to improve the current practices to be more sustainable for the environment, improve social well-being and provide financial safeguard to the smallholders. 6. Implement the intervention model in the trialed 20 villages across TTBK - with the aim to introduce the smallholders to best management practices with the assistance from the local mills. 7. Assess effectiveness of the intervention model - to assess the impacts of the intervention model, identify gaps and improve the model to fit the smallholders needs. Upon the completion of the activities, the final deliverable of the project will be a draft roadmap for full smallholders intervention model for the entire Sabah. The roadmap will be presented to the Jurisdictional Certification Steering Committee (JCSC) for endorsement.
The key reason why the TTBK region was chosen for the pilot is because this region is known as the 'lowest hanging fruit', in which, the region spans zones of oil palm all the way to new frontiers; governed by the same administrative region and it was where some smallholder certification work had begun. Although certification work has started in the region, RSPO Certification is still considered relatively new to the TTBK smallholders. It took considerable amount of time to conduct the Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) to get the smallholders to participate in the activities. The smallholders were reluctant to share information or even participate in the activities, especially activities which involved mapping exercises, fearing that they will lose their land. Forever Sabah, being a new NGO operating in the region, had difficulty penetrating into the communities due to issues with trusts. It was reported that several villages had rejected the program making the selection of the trial villages tricky and time consuming, in the early phase. It took Forever Sabah more than six months to identify the 20 villages and establish the village committees - which massively delayed the implementation of the project. Despite the early challenges, it was a pleasant experience working with the smallholders as they have been very cooperative and goal-driven to adopt sustainable farming practices. A comprehensive survey was deployed to the smallholders across the 20 villages to get insights on the current agronomic practices. The results were then used to develop the TTBK smallholders intervention model, which was trialed across the 20 villages with the assistance from identified local mills. The effectiveness of the intervention model was assessed and improvement was adopted in the form of a full roadmap for smallholder intervention for the whole of Sabah. The full roadmap for smallholder intervention takes into account the experience from the TTBK trial (from FPIC to implementing the various programs in the intervention model) and it now covers the other four divisions (Interior Sandakan, Tawau, Kudat, and West Coast). Currently, the roadmap is sitting with Forever Sabah waiting for the the JCSC to gather in early 2020 to proceed with the endorsement. Upon endorsement, the activities within the roadmap will be implemented for all 33,000 smallholders in Sabah by 2025. Through this activity, a couple of achievement was unlocked: 1. An intervention model that highlights the next steps for smallholder intervention in the next five years 2. Structured smallholders engagement strategy (FPIC) 3. The information of the smallholders magnitude in Sabah is available The above will greatly assist RSPO certification work, thus contributing to the UN SDG. Some challenges that are worth highlighting: 1. Stakeholders engagement is a time-challenging process - delays were experienced due to the states General Election; local mills were not being cooperative; government bodies were slow and unresponsive etc.
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