In July 2025, Indonesia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Arif Havas Oegroseno declared a strategic shift away from passively accepting externally imposed rules toward actively shaping global standards. Speaking at a bioenergy seminar in Jakarta, he announced Indonesia’s intent to lead the formulation of its own benchmarks for sustainable trade—especially for palm oil, cocoa, rubber, and coffee—through South–South cooperation. This initiative will leverage multilateral platforms such as BRICS, the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC), and the FAO, aiming to offer alternative frameworks that better reflect the realities and priorities of developing nations, particularly smallholder producers who struggle with the EU's stringent Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
Indonesia and Malaysia have implemented domestic sustainability measures like the mandatory ISPO (set to cover all growers, including smallholders by 2025) and Malaysia’s MSPO 2.0 (effective from early 2025), achieving high levels of plantation certification and yielding tangible results, such as reduced forest loss in Malaysia. However, critics argue that the EUDR fails to recognize such efforts. In response, Indonesia is proactively advancing its own standard-setting process within alliances of Global South nations rather than waiting to adapt to standards created elsewhere
