Riau is the largest provincial contributor to national palm oil production and the fifth largest contributor to Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP). It is one of our top supplier provinces. We estimate that our supplier mills make up 70–80% of the total mills in the province, forming 20% of our total CPO procurement.
Riau province is also a long-established palm oil production area, with significant numbers of independent smallholder producers who need counseling and assistance with various agricultural challenges.
Historically, deforestation in the landscape has been severe. It has been estimated that illegal oil palm plantations have taken over at least 40% of the Tesso Nilo National Park. The province is also home to protected areas such as the Giam Siak Kecil Biosphere Reserve and Zamrud National Park, which would benefit from enhanced, long-term protection.
Read our diagnostic report for Riau here.
Following our Landscape Strategy for Aceh published in 2020, we have applied the lessons learned to guide our next steps.
Building on this progress, Musim Mas expanded its landscape approach in September 2024 to include Aceh, Riau, North Sumatra, South Sumatra, Central Kalimantan, and West Kalimantan under Musim Mas’ Priority Landscapes Strategy 2024
The landscape strategy comprises three objectives: Engagement, Assurance, and Monitoring and Response. This will fulfill a key component of the Group’s updated NDPE Roadmap to 2025, which commits to developing landscape strategies for all the Group’s remaining key sourcing regions.
Firstly, the Engagement objective entails outreach to independent smallholders and mills to convey NDPE requirements and the possible consequences of non-compliance.
The Assurance objective has components to ensure that the mills supplying crude palm oil and palm kernels to Musim Mas are NDPE compliant.
Finally, the Monitoring and Response objective contains proactive elements to detect and verify deforestation at the landscape or jurisdictional level.
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We have village engagement programs to support peat and forest conservation. We conserve land plots and prevent deforestation by training independent smallholders and supporting suppliers on traceability and NDPE commitments. We are monitoring and following up on improvement plans that we have developed based on our mill verifications for the key suppliers in the region.
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As Riau is prone to forest fires in its peatlands during the annual dry season, fire prevention and mitigation are our core focus within this landscape.
As a member of the Fire Free Alliance (FFA), we are looking into a fire-free landscape initiative for our pilot fire prevention program in the province. More on Musim Mas’ fire management and prevention efforts can be found here.
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Musim Mas works with partners in Riau province to mitigate human-elephant conflict in Tesso Nilo Landscape, including Tesso Nilo National Park.
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We are part of the Radar for Detecting Deforestation (RADD), a satellite monitoring system with WRI and other stakeholders to alert the public of cases of deforestation in Indonesia, starting with a pilot project in Siak.
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We are collaborating with an industry peer on a bottom-up, participatory landscape-level project to understand and map HCV-HCS areas and existing and potential plots for smallholder expansion.
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Establishing Smallholders Hubs:
We aim to build the capacity of the district government and local agricultural officers to enable them to train independent smallholders in their area through our Smallholders Hubs. We launched a small-scale hub in the province in February 2021.
More on our smallholders’ program here.
Musim Mas – UNDP Program:
Musim Mas is working with UNDP (United Nations Development Program) to engage villages in Riau to establish smallholder programs.
