The influence of certification and size of palm oil plantations on terrestrial biodiversity in Indonesia and Malaysia Author Date Cathelijne Stikkers | s1896768 Supervisors March 2019 Prof. dr. ir. P.M. van Bodegom Dr. L.A. Scherer Abstract The cultivation of palm oil has many adverse social and environmental impacts. The high level of biodiversity that is native to areas where palm oil plantations occur is at risk. Various measures are taken, such as the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The RSPO certification is a sector governance measure that indicates which management and operations interventions have to be implemented to protect the public interest – countering negative social and environmental impacts. No research has been done on the impact of RSPO certification and the plantation size on biodiversity. The research question of this thesis is “do RSPO certification and plantation size influence the level of biodiversity of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia?” Three open source online data sets from Global Forest Watch containing information on plantations were used. These spatial data sets were combined with Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) species observations data. From GBIF, four taxa were selected to be used in this study, known to be impacted by palm oil cultivation: birds, lizards, primates and small mammals. The majority of the GBIF observations that laid within the studied plantation data set, however, were bird observations (93.0%). Only 1.8% of the GBIF observations laid within the palm oil plantations. Data analysis indicated that there is no significant difference between RSPO and non-RSPO-certified plantations in terms of biodiversity. The obtained results imply that the measures that are taken by plantations to obtain the RSPO certificate do not affect the level of biodiversity and therefore certification does not protect the species living on plantations better when compared to plantations that are not RSPO-certified. Results also indicate that biodiversity is not influenced by the size of a plantation – small, medium or large. The proposed research was the first attempt in getting insight into the effectiveness of certification and small-scaled plantations – in other words plantation size – on biodiversity levels. It can be concluded that the effectiveness of the two measures has not been proven yet. Suggestions for further research are done, in which higher quality data sets and larger numbers of observations are of importance. i Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................................................. i Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................. 1 Research question ................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Relevance .................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 Literature Review....................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Definition of biodiversity in the context of this research ................................................................................ 6 Biodiversity and palm oil cultivation ......................................................................................................................... 7 Certification and the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).............................................................. 9 Conclusions of the literature review........................................................................................................................ 14 Methodology .............................................................................................................................................................................. 15 Spatial palm oil plantation data ................................................................................................................................. 15 Biodiversity data ................................................................................................................................................................ 16 Overlay spatial indicators and biodiversity ......................................................................................................... 18 Systematic Overview ........................................................................................................................................................ 19 Statistical analysis ............................................................................................................................................................. 20 Assumptions ......................................................................................................................................................................... 21 Species occurrence analysis ......................................................................................................................................... 21 Results ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 23 The distribution of the GBIF species observations .......................................................................................... 23 The distribution of species across the studied plantations ......................................................................... 24 The differences in biodiversity levels between the various types of plantations ............................ 26 Species occurrence analysis ......................................................................................................................................... 29 Discussion ................................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Implications .......................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Limitations of this research .......................................................................................................................................... 37 Future research................................................................................................................................................................... 39 Conclusions................................................................................................................................................................................. 41 References ................................................................................................................................................................................... 42 Appendix A – Chapter RSPO (2013) on Principle 5 ............................................................................................... 46 Appendix B – Chapter RSPO (2018) on Impact Goal Planet .............................................................................. 56 Appendix C – Overview RSPO’s Roadmap for Sustainable Palm Oil ............................................................. 66 Appendix D – Full executed code .................................................................................................................................... 67 Appendix E – Histograms of response variables after log transformation ............................................... 83 Appendix F – Descriptive Statistics (SPSS) ................................................................................................................ 86 Appendix G – ANOVA Tables from execution of analysis (R) ........................................................................... 87 Appendix H – Output tables of the species occurrence analysis per species ........................................... 88 Appendix I – Additional information species occurrence analysis ............................................................. 113 ii Introduction Agricultural activity is currently one of the greatest threats to biodiversity together with the overexploitation of natural resources (Sodhi et al., 2004). In Southeast Asia, this threat has intensified over the past years due to the constant expansion of oil palm plantations to meet the increasing global demand in vegetable oil. Palm oil is a highly versatile vegetable oil which can be included in both edible and non-edible products. It has low production costs, as well as a high efficiency in comparison to other vegetable oils. Consequently, palm oil is becoming more and more popular. It is estimated that global palm oil production is increasing 9% per year and it is expected to continue to increase in order to match the demand (Carter et al., 2007). Most recent numbers by Index Mundi – a data portal that gathers facts and statistics from multiple resources worldwide – indicate that Indonesia is the largest palm oil producer; in 2018 it produced