Game-changing tools for Indonesian oil palm
“Users can better understand the trade-offs between economic growth, emissions reduction, and social impacts.”
Balancing carbon trade-offs
New tool demonstrates costs, benefits of sustainability in palm oil production
Amid rising concerns about the sustainability of Indonesia’s palm oil production, a new tool has been developed to help users better understand the trade-offs between increased productivity, which can improve the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers, and reducing carbon emissions from the sector.
The Simulation of Indonesian Palm Oil Sustainability (SIPOS) platform, developed by CIFOR-ICRAF, is also proving effective at influencing government policies at every level and across ministries, including forestry and economics.
“It’s a great tool. With SIPOS, users can better understand the trade-offs between economic growth, emissions reduction and social impacts,” said Herry Purnomo director with CIFOR-ICRAF and principal researcher with the project.
“It has an important role to play in calculating, and demonstrating, the impacts of different actions and interventions,” said Purnomo.
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The SIPOS web-based application can be used to create simulated scenarios for analysis, studies – or decision-making processes in forming policy. SIPOS users can measure the social and environmental effects of increasing oil palm productivity, using such indicators as production, forest cover, emissions and volume, and trade value.
The identified increase in emissions can then be offset or even reduced through various interventions, such as a moratorium on peat and forest clearance, boosting the productivity of smallholders, or buying carbon credits.
For example, one scenario looks at what would happen if further clearance of forest for plantations was stopped in state forest areas, other land use areas, and peatlands, in order to study impacts on forest cover and emissions generated from the palm oil sector.
Such information can be applied by governments to develop sustainable palm oil policies based on a better understanding of the impacts on economic, ecological, and social values. That’s particularly important in Indonesia, which is the world’s largest palm oil producer and exporter.
SIPOS, which works on the national level, incorporates data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s Directorate General of Plantations, using a 2022 baseline for its projections. SIPOS was built on the Jurisdictional Approach for Palm Oil Sustainability (JAPOS) framework – a similar model that was developed at the regional level. Including inputs and impacts from local government is also very important, since regulations are often created at that level, noted Purnomo.
The SIPOS project, which began development in January 2020 and concluded in September 2024, was supported by the Walmart Foundation and adopted a participatory, multistakeholder and inclusive approach, drawing on lessons learned by CIFOR-ICRAF and other stakeholders.
The tool can also project some of impacts of complying with the new European Union Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR) and various other international trade standards that ban imports of certain products from deforestation and illegal sources.
The project also gave rise to development of the digital strategy game Landscape Game 2, a groundbreaking blend of entertainment and education designed to simulate complex landscape management issues in a dynamic, interactive format. Developed through CIFOR-ICRAF and Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), in collaboration with Agate Studio, the game offers insights into sustainable landscape management practices while connecting players across the globe. Players assume the roles of policymakers, conservationists, and land managers while the digital landscape includes a variety of ecosystems, each with distinct natural characteristics such as waterways, topography, and climatic conditions.