Since April 2015, the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA) Toolkit has been used by land managers across tropical rainforest regions, including RSPO members, to prevent deforestation. In 2017, the HCSA adopted a set of 14 ‘Social Requirements’ (SRs), to ensure that companies using the HCSA respect the needs, rights, and livelihoods of local communities and other rightsholders.  

SR13 sets out the requirements when applying the HCSA to established operations. It states that:  

Developers applying the HCSA to existing operations which lead to changes in land use that will have direct or indirect social impacts shall assess the impacts and negotiate with local people to ensure that their rights, livelihoods, food security and cultural values are assured.  

Partial guidance on how to apply SR13 is given in Appendix 6 of the Guía de aplicación de los requisitos sociales. The Appendix recognises the need to develop more detailed guidance based on experiences of implementation and on learning in other sectors.

In 2021, Musim Mas and Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) started a collaboration on a pilot to test the applicability of SR13 in an existing palm oil plantation. The aim was that learnings from the pilot would inform future revisions to the SRs and the SR implementation guidance, and development of further ICLUP guidance, while taking into account the realities of the local context. Musim Mas selected an RSPO-certified oil palm operation belonging to their subsidiary, PT Unggul Lestari, as the site for the pilot. The concession was located in Central Kalimantan Province, Indonesian Borneo. 

A report summarising the findings of the pilot outlines some key issues that arose and presents a set of recommendations to the HCSA on potential measures to improve the application of SR13.  

One of the key findings of the study was that both the desk review and field study concluded that adequate Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) was not in place before land acquisition began. The early socialisation process did not involve all affected communities and it was insufficient as an FPIC process. The communities were not made aware about their right to grant or withhold collective FPIC. The company’s reliance on legal provisions for land use rights and negotiations with individual landowners, rather than seeking collective FPIC, was insufficient. 

Key lessons from the pilot include: 

1. The need for an open-ended, qualitative approach to the desk review. 
2. The assessment needs to be carried out by independent assessors with appropriate regional expertise, including language skills, and they need to be given full access to the full internal documentation. 
3. The need for a field evaluation component as the desk review alone would not have provided an adequate picture of past performance.

The report recommends that HCSA plan a collaborative workshop to discuss further improvements based on the pilot’s findings. Detailed reports have been provided separately to Musim Mas on the findings of the desk review and the field evaluation, with accompanying recommendations for actions at PT Unggul Lestari.  

The full report is available aquí.