The Sustainable Palm Oil Choice (SPOC) initiative was set up in June 2019 as a movement to promote the use of sustainable palm oil in Europe and bring more balance to the debate about palm oil.

SPOC is currently redefining its strategy and action plan to ensure that it works in synergy with existing initiatives and that the right target audiences are reached. Since April 2020, the SPOC initiative has been led by Marieke Leegwater from the international civil society organisation Solidaridad. It is foreseen that more NGOs will join the initiative in the future.

Marieke Leegwater is the new Programme Manager for the Sustainable Palm Oil Choice Initiative (SPOC) for the rest of the year. Since 2013 Marieke has been working for Solidaridad, a civil society organisation promoting sustainable and inclusive value chains, where she coordinates their international palm oil programme. Marieke’s ambition at SPOC is to intensify collaboration between industry and NGOs and through that further contribute to sustainable palm oil value chains.

In the second phase of the SPOC initiative, the following aims are priorities:

• making high quality information available about the progress of the transformation of the EU market,
• amplifying the voices of NGOs that support sustainable palm oil, and
• creating an understanding of the difficulties in the sustainability process, e.g. how to create smallholder-inclusive, deforestation-free palm oil value chains.
  
  SPOC is a marketplace for initiatives that drive sustainability improvements on the ground. It has two main strategies for reaching the objective of 100% sustainable palm oil in Europe.
• Active outreach about missing volumes: ‘Closing the Gap’.
• Rebalancing the debate about sustainable palm oil: promoting its use and communicating its value.
  
  For more information please contact Marieke Leegwater.