The Decent Rural Living Initiative (‘DRLI’) is a pre-competitive collaboration by five leading palm oil producers – Cargill, Golden Agri-Resources, Musim Mas, Sime Darby Plantation and Wilmar. These Anchor Partners are working together, and with relevant experts and stakeholders, to develop long term practical solutions that benefit rural workers in the palm oil industry, with an initial focus on Indonesia.
The palm sector is a key to the Indonesian economy, employing over 5.7 million people across the country and lifting scores of rural dwellers out of poverty. However, many workers within the supply chain still experience precarious employment, as well as poor living conditions.
Leading palm companies have taken significant steps to adopting occupational health and safety measures, as well as to provide health and educational services. But the challenges affecting the Indonesian palm oil sector are systemic. They cannot be effectively addressed by siloed approaches. Nor by palm oil companies alone.
In January 2018, Cargill, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), Musim Mas, Sime Darby Plantations and Wilmar agreed to collectively address systemic labour rights challenges within the sector.
With the support of Forum for the Future, growers have engaged with a broad range of stakeholders* to provide insights, influence and experience in dealing with issues affecting workers and their families, to help identify the best areas for a pre-competitive collaboration. Together the Anchor Partners are embarking on a range of pilots based on the outcomes of intial stakeholder engagement, with the hope that successes can be shared and scaled.
History & Background
Recognising the urgent need for collective action to address ongoing concerns about systemic human rights failings across the palm oil sector, the Anchor Partners engaged Forum for the Future to facilitate a consultative process to identify areas where business could have direct impact.
Formed in early 2018, the Decent Rural Living Initiative (DRLI) is a unique pre-competitive collaboration which aims, long-term, to help ensure the sustainability of the palm oil sector.
Forum for the Future acted as the convening partner for the initiative in its development stage. Their expertise led the partners and other key stakeholders through a series of strategic conversations to identify areas where the growers are well positioned to accelerate solutions through pre-competitive collaboration.
From these conversations 6 focus areas were identified and further developed into the current three pilot projects.
