Eyes on the Forest expose APP for breaching the legally binding commitments on achieving "full sustainability" by 2007 and protecting High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF) in the Pulau Muda Forest Management Unit. In the early 2000s, the Sinar Mas Group's Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) defaulted on a debt of U.S. $13.9 billion and became Asia's biggest corporate debt default.

In June 2004, APP's major creditors - comprised of the export credit agencies of Germany, Japan, France, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Spain and Denmark - announced agreement with APP over the Master Restructuring Agreements , which included some "environmental covenants" as legally binding contractual obligation. Among them, achieving "full sustainability" by 2007 and protecting High Conservation Value Forests.

APP began clearing the HCVF as early as 2007, only three years after it signed its legally binding obligation and the year by which APP had publicly committed to achieve "full sustainability". Eyes on the Forest has reported in detail on APP's history of never fulfilling its sustainability commitments . APP continued to clear HCVF until today, destroying a total of 12,000 hectares of HCVF, one third of the forest it had pledged to creditors to protect.

In May and September 2011 Eyes on the Forests investigated on clearcutting into the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape by PT Artelindo Wiratama, an affiliated to Asia Pulp & Paper.This forest clear-cutting occurs in good natural forest that should be protected.

This report highlights legal facts that APP's pulpwood suppliers cleared blocks of peat swamp forest in a planned and programmed manner after these blocks had been identified as containing ramin, a tree species that is protected both under Indonesian law and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

A yearlong investigation by Greenpeace uncovered that APP is systematically violating Indonesia’s laws which protect ramin, an internationally protected tree species under the CITES treaty. Ramin trees come from Indonesia’s peat swamp forests which are also home to the endangered Sumatran tiger.

Numerous visits were made to APP’s largest pulp mill in Indonesia over the course of last year. Hidden among other rainforest species waiting to be pulped were numerous illegal ramin logs. To prove these trees were ramin, samples were taken and sent to an independent expert lab in Germany. The lab confirmed that all of these samples were indeed ramin.

A yearlong investigation by Greenpeace uncovered that APP is systematically violating Indonesia’s laws which protect ramin, an internationally protected tree species under the CITES treaty. Ramin trees come from Indonesia’s peat swamp forests which are also home to the endangered Sumatran tiger.

Numerous visits were made to APP’s largest pulp mill in Indonesia over the course of last year. Hidden among other rainforest species waiting to be pulped were numerous illegal ramin logs. To prove these trees were ramin, samples were taken and sent to an independent expert lab in Germany. The lab confirmed that all of these samples were indeed ramin.

Report on the investigations conducted in October 2011 inside concession of PT Arara Abadi of Nilo district, an APP subsidiary and main supplier in the province. Eyes on the Forest found at least 250 hectares of natural forest that has just been clearcut by APP’s subsidiary, PT Arara Abadi, where no heavy machines found there at the time when investigation conducted. The license for this concession is a part of permit granted to the company amounting to 299,975 hectares based on Minister of Forestry Decree Number 743/Kpts-II/1996, dated 25 November 1996. Data obtained from Riau Forestry Service says the concession of PT Arara Abadi distrik Nilo is around 26,438 hectares. The APP subsdiary has converted natural forest to pulpwood plantation (industrial timber plantation/HTI) since end of 1990s. It means that this concession has harvested acacia trees for 2-3 times since it was first clearcut. In early July 2011 a Sumatran tiger found dead after being trapped by snare for six days in land that part of PT Arara Abadi’s concession where it was found starving and in a worse condition.

In a press release on December 14, 2011, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) called on WWF International to disassociate itself from The Truth Behind APP’s Greenwash, a December 2011 report of Sumatra NGO coalition “Eyes on the Forest (EoF)”.

The APP release contained the claim: “In fact, APP is regularly assessed and certified by many of the world’s leading authorities on sustainable forest management and environmental auditors - including Geneva-based SGS, TUV, AFNOR, the official French auditors for the European ‘EcoLabel’, PHPL, Indonesian sustainable forest management standard, LEI, Indonesian voluntary sustainable forest management standard, and PEFC Chain-of-Custody, the world’s largest forest certification program.”

WWF International has thus decided to verify whether the above mentioned organisations agree to the claim that they demonstrate APP’s sustainability and whether their certifications can help APP deny any of the issues raised by the Eyes on the Forest and other NGOs.

In 2009, people in North America consumed about 80 million tons of paper. But not all tissue and paper towels are made from responsible sources. According to tihs report, the fastest growing brand of toilet paper in the United States today, Paseo, has a direct link to rain forest destruction. Paseo toilet paper and tissue products are made from pulp from the Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp & Paper (APP).

In response to the Eyes on the Forest, Asia Pulp and Paper issued a press release titled, "APP Calls for Facts, not Fiction, about Forest Protection." Naturally, the public at large will be inclined to ask whether the EoF investigative report is actually fiction, as implied by APP, rather than fact.
Greenomics Indonesia feels compelled to respond to the APP in the form of a Greenomics report, given that the EoF report quoted from a number of Greenomics reports as one of the grounds on which it based its conclusions. In these Greenomics reports, all of our arguments were based on legal and official documents issued by the APP Group itself, which were submitted to and approved by the Ministry of Forestry. In responding to APP’s press release, Greenomics Indonesia also feels it necessary to highlight a misleading PR effort directed at the Secretary General of the Ministry of Forestry on 16 December 2011 during a meeting that was attended by APP representatives at the request of the Secretary General of the Minister of Forestry in order to discuss the case of PT Ruas Utama Jaya (RUJ), an APP wood supplier operating in Riau Province that have a concession extending to 44,330 hectares. During this meeting, the APP representatives purported to explain various issues concerning the operations of RUJ, including the RUJ operations map and land cover conditions in the area.
It should be stressed here that the practice of clearing natural forest on the RUJ concession has become the principal issue that gave rise to the bitter war of words between EoF and APP in the wake of the publication of the EoF report. In this Greenomics Indonesia report, we shall discuss four things, namely:
* Legal concession map versus commitment to the protection of Sumatran tiger habitat in the RUJ concession;
* The clearing of Sumatran tiger habitat in the RUJ concession;
* The driving of Sumatran tigers from the RUJ concession to deep-peat concession areas; and
* Misleading PR by APP in respect of the part of the RUJ concession which APP claims has been set aside for conservation purposes.

APP continues repeating the same false statements together with some new twists, all trying to hide the ultimate foundation of the Sinar Mas Group/APP’s operations: the continuing destruction of natural tropical forest and drainage of peat soils. APP’s PR effort today is bigger and with more aggressive use of the media than ever before. APP has recruited a wide variety of publicists, individuals and supposedly independent NGOs to flack its allegedly green practices, including, Cohn & Wolfe, Environmental Resource Management, Alan Oxley and his World Growth and ITS Global, Mazars, Carbon Conservation, Patrick Moore and his Greenspirit Strategies, Bastoni and his Sumatran Tiger Conservation Foundation (YPHS). It runs its commercials globally on CNN, Sky TV and other international broadcasting channels.

In this report, Eyes on the Forest investigates APP’s PR claims. Has there been any improvement of SMG/APP’s practices on the ground? Has there been a reduction of the company’s impact on the world’s most diverse natural tropical forests, wildlife, and the world’s climate?

The answer is a straightforward: No. SMG/APP continues draining deep peat soils and clearing natural forests and its negative impact is increasing with the scale of its operations.

PT Mutiara Sabuk Khatulistiwa – which operates in Riau Province – has cleared peatland forest extending to more than half of its concession for the purpose of providing land for the planting of acacia. This sets a bad precedent for logging concession management in Indonesia. The timber resulting from the PT MSK’s land clearing operations was supplied as raw materials to PT Indah Kiat Pulp and Paper (PT IKPP/Asia Pulp and Paper) for use in its pulp and paper plants.

Seemingly indefatigable, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is continuing to go all out to convince the global public that the Sinar Mas Group company’s pulp and paper operations are committed to the conservation of Indonesia’s biodiversity.

In fact, just recently APP “challenged” global public opinion through an advertisement it placed in The New York Times, inviting the global public to monitor its commitment to biodiversity conservation.

APP also continues to claim that its operations have voluntarily set aside a certain portion of their concessions as an expression of its commitment to biodiversity conservation.

This Greenomics Indonesia report will reveal the true reason why APP’s flagship Taman Raja and Kampar Carbon Reserves have been set aside, something that is continually touted to the global public through advertisements as an expression of APP’s commitment to biodiversity conservation.

In fact, the reason for the two reserves is eminently simple. This report, supported by official and legal data, sets out the true situation as regards the reason for APP’s actions in setting aside the reserves.

In September, Greenomics Indonesia was afforded the opportunity to make two presentations to the Ministry of Forestry regarding the need for Indonesia to immediately reposition itself as a pulp and paper producer. The presentations were chaired by the Ministry of Forestry’s Secretary General, Dr. Hadi Daryanto. The first presentation, on 12 September, was attended by internal Ministry of Forestry figures, while the second presentation, on 14 September, was attended by representatives of APP (Asia Pulp and Paper) and APRIL (Asia Pacific Resources International Holding Limited).

Peat surface CO2 emission, groundwater table depth and peat temperature were moni- tored for two years along transects in an Acacia plantation on thick tropical peat (>4 m) in Sumatra, Indonesia.  

A total of 2300 emission measurements were taken at 144 locations. 

The autotrophic root respiration component of the CO2 emission was separated from heterotrophic emissions caused by peat oxidation in three ways: (i) by compar- ing CO2 emissions within and beyond the tree rooting zone, (ii) by comparing CO2 emissions with and without peat trenching (i.e. cutting any roots remaining in the peat beyond the tree rooting zone), and (iii) by comparing CO2 emissions before and after Acacia trees harvesting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 31 May 2011 – exactly one week prior to the issuing of the statement and eleven days since the introduction of the moratorium on the issuing of new licenses and on improvement of management of natural primary and peatland forest – Minister of Forestry Zulfkifli Hasan issued Minister of Forestry Decree No. SK.292/Menhut-II/2011 on changing the status and functions of designated forestland in Central Kalimantan Province. The said change in status and functions was related to the revision of the Central Kalimantan Provincial Spatial Plan (RTRWP) and was an effort to resolve confusion over land use allocations in the province. The said Decree converted a total of 1.67 million hectares (round number) of forestland to non-forestland, and changed the functions of forestland extending to 690 thousand hectares (round number). In addition, the Decree designated around 30 thousand hectares of non-forestland as forestland.

PT Bina Duta Laksana (PT BDL) is an industrial logging and pulp wood plantation company that supplies tropical timber and plantation fiber to Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), Indonesia’s largest pulp and paper company that has recently moved its headquarters to China. With PT BDL, APP is now grabbing land, decimating the farms, wetlands and forest lands once considered useless or unprofitable for the logging sector. The new frontiers and increased impacts of industrial pulp wood plantations are taking a serious toll on Riau’s forests, leaving only 37 percent of the forest that existed in Riau in 1985.

Greenomics Indonesia has taken the initiative of assessing the level of concern that is really exhibited by APP and APRIL for the protection of the Sumatran tiger. This initiative is intended to serve as a response to the aggressive and groundless PR arguments of the two companies, which claim that their operations exhibit a high level of concern for the protection of the Sumatran tiger. We frequently read and hear of claims from the pulp and paper industry, particularly APP, to the effect that their operations reflect a high level of concern for the protection of the Sumatran tiger. Many of these claims, however, are based on public relations arguments designed purely to mislead the public. The assessment of APP and APRIL’s concern for the protection of the Sumatran tiger needs to be carried out at the level of each pulpwood plantation concession that supplies timber to the two companies. This is essential in order to evaluate the aggregate level of concern of APP and APRIL for the protection of the Sumatran tiger.

WWF camera traps recorded an astounding 12 tigers in just two months in the central Sumatran landscape of Bukit Tigapuluh, including two mothers with cubs. A video camera trap captured footage of three young tiger siblings playfully chasing a leaf.

Clearcutting by PT Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, an affiliated company to APRIL, in Logas Selatan block (Sei Tasem), threatens Sumatran Tiger forest as it shows how the group breaks its commitment not to use legal timber from HCVF.

In 2010, PT RAPP in Logas Selatan block (Sei Tasem) obtained a permit logging of natural forests with size of around 1593 hectares. The area of natural forest clearance is a part of PT RAPP’s concession size totaling 350,165 hectares in several sites in the province. This confirms that the natural forest clearcutting occurs inside concession affiliated to Asian Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL).

The Italian environmental organization Terra! uncovered a link between the Italian paper manufacturer Cartiere Pigna and the deforestation of Indonesian rainforests carried out by Asia Pulp & Paper (APP). Cartiere Pigna sought charges against Terra! in a suit for damages to its corporate reputation, and Terra! was convicted for damaging Pigna’s brand name, and it was sentenced to pay €27,000. If Terra! is no longer allowed to state that Pigna is linked to deforestation, then paper tests will, and don’t lie. Fiber testing revealed that Pigna's exercise books have a high percentage of acacia (between 62 and 74%). Conversion of natural forests to pulp and palm oil plantations is the main factor of tropical deforestation and peatland destruction in Indonesia, which has made this country the world’s  third  largest  emitter  of  greenhouse  gases. In the analyses of the exercise books, significant percentages of mixed tropical hardwood (MTH) were also found, which means natural rainforest. Among them, Dipterocarpaceae (Dipterocarpus spp.) and others of Myristicaceae, most of them are considered to be threatened (as they are included in the Red List drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN).

In its letter to customers of 11 August 2010, APP stated that the Mazars audit had confirmed the claims made in the Open Statement, which the company said set out “numerous facts that demonstrate that APP has been fulfilling its obligations to operate in a sustainable and environmentally conscious way.” Greenomics Indonesia would like to take this opportunity to rebut one of the crucial “facts” stated in APP’s Open Statement of 1 August 2010.
This so-called fact, as confirmed by the Mazars audit, is set out in the following paragraph of the Open Statement: “Since 1996, APP’s pulpwood suppliers have been developing degraded and low conservation-value areas, legally designated by the Government of Indonesia for pulpwood plantations to support the country’s sustainable development. Much of pulpwood suppliers’ concession areas are denuded wasteland and community-based forest plantations. APP would not accept its pulpwood suppliers to cut high conservation value forest as defined by the Government of Indonesia”.
Greenomics Indonesia has examined the veracity of this “fact” having regard to APP’s pulpwood sources, the clearing of natural forest, and the connection between these activities and climate change.

Bukit Tigapuluh – or “Thirty Hills” – is one of the last examples of the kind of landscapes that earned Indonesia the nickname “Emerald of the Equator”: dense canopy, lush rainforests of unbelievable biodiversity and rolling hills. Two tribes of forest-dwelling indigenous people live here. It is one of the few remaining areas in Sumatra that still host three of the island’s four endemic flagship species: the endangered Sumatran elephant and the critically endangered Sumatran tiger and orangutan, along with many other plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth. It is a good example of a landscape considered to be a High Conservation Value Area.
Threatening more than half of the remaining unprotected forest – close to 97,000 hectares – APP/SMG could become the single biggest destroyer of natural forest in Bukit Tigapuluh. Like the pulp and paper industry, the tigers, elephants and orangutans prefer the flatlands to the hills, putting them in the direct path of the bulldozers that come to clear the forest. The ones that survive are subsequently threatened by conflict with the plantation workers, illegal encroachers and poachers who follow, once easy access is provided by logging roads.