Malaysia’s IOI Group has regained the right to sell “certified sustainable” palm oil under the brand of the RSPO, the world’s largest association for ethical production of the commodity.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil had suspended IOI’s certification over environmental abuses by the company’s units in the Indonesian part of Borneo island, known as Kalimantan…

Green groups condemned the lifting of the suspension. They said the RSPO should have waited until IOI had actually cleaned up its operations, instead of trusting it to keep its latest promises.

The Rainforest Action Network said the decision “placed the credibility of the entire RSPO certification system in doubt.”

Greenpeace said the decision proved the RSPO was “weak” and called for consumer good giants to refrain from resuming purchases from IOI…

Indonesia is the top producer of palm oil, used in everything from chocolate to cosmetics. The industry’s breakneck expansion in the archipelagic country has fueled economic growth but also deforestation, land grabbing and the annual peatland fires that last year blanketed the region in a choking haze, sickened half a million people and pumped more carbon into the atmosphere than the entire EU during a two-month period.