Agropalma’s RSPO certification temporarily suspended following year-long investigation

In Brazil, Mongabay investigation into land-grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon has led to the suspension of the sustainability certificate of the country’s second top palm oil exporter, as shown in email correspondence seen by this reporter, in addition to key sources of the case.

Agropalma, the only Brazilian company with the sustainability certificate issued by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) — a members organization including palm oil growers, traders, manufacturers, retailers, banks, investors and others — has had its certificate “temporarily suspended” since February, the RSPO secretariat confirmed to Mongabay in an emailed statement.

In mid-December 2022, Mongabay published a yearlong investigation revealing that more than half of the 107,000 hectares (264,000 acres) registered by Agropalma in northern Pará state derived from fraudulent land titles and even the creation of a fake land registration bureau, which is at the center of a seven-year legal battle led by state prosecutors and public defenders.

Part of the area overlaps ancestral land claimed by Indigenous peoples and Quilombolas — descendants of Afro-Brazilian runaway slaves — including two cemeteries visited by Mongabay. In the Livramento Cemetery, residents claim that just one-quarter of it remains and that the company planted palm trees on top of the graves. Quilombolas also accuse Agropalma of polluting the water of the river they depend on to live. The company denies the accusations.

Just a few weeks after the publication of the investigation, representatives from Assurance Services International (ASI) — the organization that evaluates the work of certifiers and, consequently, whether companies are complying with RSPO rules — and Brazil-based IBD Certifications Ltd. contacted Joaquim dos Santos Pimenta, a Quilombola who leads the Acará Valley’s Quilombola Association ARQVA, in early January “to understand the denouncements” published by the report, he told Mongabay.

In an emailed statement to Mongabay, ASI confirmed that “the report was a reason for ASI to conduct a compliance assessment to IBD, the certifier of Agropalma, at the Certificate Holder’s premises.” It added that Agropalma’s certificate suspension “was a decision taken by IBD.”