GAKPI (19/05/2025) - JAKARTA – The Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries’ (CPOPC) Secretary General Rizal Affandi Lukman said that Bill Gates’ statement about palm oil damaging the environment is misleading because it does not correspond to the reality on the ground.

According to Rizal, Bill Gates has deliberately made misleading opinions to lead the public into seeing the palm oil as the cause of deforestation without being supported with accurate data.

“Probably, Gates is not yet well informed that palm oil is the only vegetable oil among other vegetable oils that undergoes a strict process of sustainability certification,” said Rizal.

Bill Gates, a tech tycoon and co-founder of Microsoft, met with President Prabowo Subianto on Wednesday (7/5/2025) as part of his visit agenda to Indonesia. He is known to have made a large investment in C16 Biosciences, which is developing a synthetic alternative of palm oil named Palmless by using fermentation. Gates and C16 Biosciences see it as a promising business, as global data shows that demand for vegetable oils, especially palm oil, has been continually increasing.

Rizal said that the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia have taken necessary steps to ensure that palm oil production is sustainably conducted. One of their steps is by stopping the expansion of oil palm plantations through the opening of forest areas.

Previously, the World Research Institute reported that deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia has seen a sharp decline since 2017.

“Both countries (Indonesia and Malaysia) have continually realized their commitment to improve sustainability and increase the productivity of existing palm plantations without land expansion based on their national policies,” he said.

Lukman said that Indonesia and Malaysia have gradually implemented the sustainability certification as a mandatory certification for all oil palm growers through the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO), and Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO), and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) based on voluntary scheme for private companies and smallholders.

In addition to those certifications, there are also Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB), Agriculture Sustainable Standard (SAN), International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), and High Carbon Stock (HCS) Approach.

The CPOPC secretary general believes that what is needed to improve the sustainable production of palm oil for food and energy resilience is a strong spirit for cooperation among palm oil producing countries and consuming countries. (*)

Read more at https://gapki.id/en/news/2025/05/08/cpopc-bill-gates-statement-on-palm-oil-misleading/