Mesoamerican Palm Oil Alliance (MAPA)

General

In 2015, Solidaridad launched the Mesoamerican Palm Oil Alliance (MAPA) as a regional knowledge and exchange platform for accelerating the uptake of best practices and compliance with the RSPO standard. This programme accelerates our work in this arena, to increase market demand for sustainable palm oil in the region. MAPA spans four countries (Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico) to accelerate the uptake of best practices, closing certification gaps, and bringing innovation and improved visibility to Mesoamerican palm oil producers. In 2020, we have been working with 43 (from a total of 53 existing mills in the region) palm oil companies to train a total of 12,631 smallholders and 43,820 mill and estate workers on good practices across the four countries, bringing 306,982 hectares under better management practices. We have supported the RSPO National Interpretation processes in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In Guatemala, the human rights policy was approved by the sector, as well as the mechanisms to implement the Zero Deforestation Agreement using a Satellite monitoring system. We trained 12 companies on Zero Deforestation Verification procedures, and 5 companies have uploaded their palm oil plantation maps to the monitoring system. Together with RSPO and the Honduran National Agrarian Institute, we continued supporting smallholders’ land titling processes and access to finance, one of the most important elements to access a certification scheme. We have developed a land title protocol to scale land title legalization for palm oil producers. 2020 was challenging for the sector in Nicaragua, Guatemala and particularly in Honduras. These countries have been very affected by hurricanes Eta and IOTA, causing severe production losses and damage to processing plants, equipment and road infrastructure, and washing away 18,600 oil palm hectares in Honduras. We will continue working with the palm oil sector to prevent and mitigate climate change impacts and seeking for other technical resources, such as involving experts from the Netherlands Water Authority to tailor and improve actions in a robust prevention and mitigation plan.