**1. Introduction**

Indonesia is the biggest producer of palm oil in the world. Palm oil is an important commodity for various products, such as cooking oil, margarine, cosmetics, and biofuel. Until now, the Indonesian palm oil industry has played a very strategic role and has made a real contribution to Indonesia's economic development and has become a mainstay in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Nowadays, however, Indonesia was accused and deemed to have developed oil palm plantation (OPP) with high risk to the environment by the European Union (EU) based on the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) II and its technical regulations (delegated art). As a consequence, Indonesian palm oil products will be gradually restricted and removed from the EU biofuel market. The EU's decision to exclude palm oil as renewable energy in the RED II faced critics and protest from Indonesia. It finally creates EU-Indonesia palm oil dispute since this action threatens the 12% share of Indonesia's palm oil exports, particularly exports destined for the EU.

The EU's views and allegations need to be scientifically and proportionally responded to, especially to the main issues that were raised. The EU argued that the expansion of palm oil has direct link with deforestation and degradation of forest, peat land degradation and emissions escalation [1, 2]. Another hot issue is loss of biodiversity, saving peat lands, and disturbing the balance of the ecosystem. Indonesian government is considered not serious in implementing sustainable land-use policies that enabled palm oil corporation harming forest and its biodiversity [3].

In fact, many palm oil companies in Indonesia have considered and counted environmental and sustainability factors into their business development concept. The 3-P (Planet-People-Profit) concept has been widely used as a guideline in the management of the palm oil industry in Indonesia. In addition, efforts to achieve sustainability, particularly regarding oil palm plantation sustainability (OPPS) have been implemented through ISPO (Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil) and RSPO (Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil) certification [4, 5]. However, in reality, these efforts have not been deemed sufficient to be considered as producing a sustainable palm oil industry, not causing damage or degradation of soil-land-environment (S-L-E). Indonesia should have a scientific-based approach and evaluation system to counteract negative accusations and allegations that the OPP in Indonesia is not environmentally friendly, unsustainable and destroy forests and peat-lands. For this reason, more concrete efforts are needed in the form of a system supported by tools that can be used to evaluate the effects of OPP in Indonesia objectively, rationally, scientifically, measurably, proportionally, quantitatively and accurately to the quality of S-L-E in Indonesia which can also be used to increase productivity. and help design management to prevent S-L-E degradation.
