RPHK (Relawan Pemantau Hutan Kalimantan), an NGO coalition in Kalimantan (Relawan Pemantau Hutan Kalimantan - RPHK) released a report revealing that the "forest conservation policy" of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) / Sinar Mas Forestry (SMG) announced in February failed to protect up to 1,400 hectares of natural forest in West Kalimantan province. Field investigation and Landsat image analysis shot that these forests were cleared inside PT Daya Tani Kalbar concession, after APP's self-imposed moratorium on logging and land clearing form 1st February.

 

 

 

 

According to the Indonesian coalition Eyes on the Forest (EoF), Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) is not complaining with the moratorium on natural forest logging announced by the company last February. In a report released yesterday, EoF exposed natural forest clearing in concession of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) supplier, PT Riau Indo Agropalma (RIA), in Kerumutan forest block, an important Sumatran tiger habitat in Riau province.

According to APP however, the clearing was carried out in the area managed by a local community in partnership with PT Riau Indo Agropalma, which is therefore not included in the moratorium. The company promised a deep investigation on the case. According to NGOs, the case shows that the moratorium still contain loopholes that allow natural forest clearing.

Eleven social and environmental civil society groups and networks sent a joint letter to Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) on 24 April 2013, explaining the substantial social and conservation issues APP has failed to address adequately in its Forest Conservation Policy and associated documents. On 5 February 2013, the Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) published a new “Forest Conservation Policy” (FCP). Since then, SMG/APP organized several “focus group discussion” meetings with various Indonesian NGOs to socialize their policy and the “Standard Operational Procedures (SOP)” or Protocols it developed to implement it. Summarizing their responses to these meetings, the NGOs stated “considering how important and fundamental these issues are, we would like to ask APP to pay serious attention to these notes prior to enacting those protocols”.

The Indonesian NGOs coalition Eyes on the Forest published today a new report on Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) deforestation record in Riau and response to company’s forest conservation policy as the coalition said it protected “at most 5,000 hectares of natural forest. The EoF new report, Where are the trees?.. disclosed that almost three decades of natural forest pulping by SMG/APP on forests, wildlife and peat soils in Riau, the company’s suppliers’ concessions lost 683,281 ha of natural forest between 1985 and 2012. Of that, 77% was lost in legally questionable ways as these forests had been protected by the TGHK spatial plan, the >3m peat depth limit, and/or the 10% minimum concession forest cover limit. 83% was lost in Sumatran tiger and elephant habitats, 77% was lost on peat. “Our analysis found that the policy protects at most 5,000 hectares of natural forest in Riau Province, in stark contrast with more than 1.4 million hectares of deforestation we estimate the company’s pulp production in the province has caused,” says Muslim Rasyid of Jikalahari in a press release.

This report has been prepared by Greenomics Indonesia with the technical input from the Directorate General of Forestry Business Management, the relevant unit of the Ministry of Forestry.
Mr. Bambang Hendroyono, the Director General of Forestry Business Management, facilitated a series of Greenomics Indonesia presentations on this report at the offices of his Directorate, and subsequent discussions to which representatives of Indonesian forestry business associations were invited to attend.

On 5 June 2012, APP (Asia Pulp and Paper/Sinarmas Forestry) announced the "APP Sustainability Roadmap 2020 and beyond," which once again reiterated APP’s earlier announcement on 14 May 2012, of its suspension of natural forest clearance in Indonesia starting 1 June 2012. The said announcement only referred to APP- owned pulpwood suppliers. According to Greenomics, almost no natural forest or conflict-free areas were involved. In concrete terms, the area of natural forest that would benefit from the moratorium only amounted to some 200 hectares out of the more than 1.15 million hectares included within the relevant concessions.

According to Greenomics Indonesia, there is no natural forest or forested peatland of meaningful extent that has been saved by the New APP Forest Conservation Policy in the concessions of APP's suppliers that have been allocated for the development of pulpwood plantations in Sumatra.

The report illustrates how the natural forest and forested peatland that remains in the concessions of APP's suppliers on the island of Sumatra consist of (i) legally designated protection zones that have been retained with the approval of the Ministry of Forestry, granted long before the launch of the New APP Forest Conservation Policy, (ii) areas affected by conflicts with local communities/third parties, (iii) areas that are inaccessible due to lack of roads, or (iv) areas in respect of which repeated attempts at clearance have been made, but to no avail, such as in the case of anticipated criticism of the clearance of deep forested peatland which was later turned into a protection zone with the approval of the Ministry of Forestry.

The conclusion of the report is that commitment to the New APP Forest Conservation Policy was delayed until the clearance of natural forest and forested peatland for the development of pulpwood plantations had been completed. The natural forest fiber resulting from such clearances has come in very useful as a source of raw material for APP operations, particularly for 2013.

After years of campaigning by Indonesian and international environmental and social non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the largest paper company in Asia, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) has announced a new Forest Conservation Policy which - among other commitments - extends an immediate moratorium on logging in natural forests to all its suppliers.
The controversial paper company was blamed for causing the destruction of up to two million hectares of rainforests in Sumatra, threatening the last habitat of the Sumatran tiger, displacing local communities and causing conflicts and fatalities, and releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases by converting peatland forests into plantations. Read more...

TheAsiaPulp&PapercompanyoftheSinarMasGroup(SMG/APP)portraitsitselfasa saviour of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger. Investigations by the NGO coalition Eyes on the Forest (EoF) show that the forest clearing operations of APP and its suppliers appear to be one of the major threats to the survival of the tiger in Riau, Sumatra.

Mums reading children’s books about the pristine forests of the world, on paper made partially from destroying these very forests, is a sad reality – still. This study shows the second W WF analysis of children’s books from major publishers in Germany, and concludes that they still contain significant amounts of tropical rainforest fibres. Book imports to Germany from China have increased dramatically in recent years. And indirectly, fibres from forest destruction in, for example, Indonesia, reach German customers. WWF remarks that other book types or paper product ranges could be affected as well.

On the global level, Germany is an important pulp and paper buyer. Also, the German book market is – with a turnover of 9.6 billion EUR in 2011 – quite big. Children’s books achieve the second largest turnover in book sales. W WF Germany decided to have a closer look at the publishing sector to showcase the link between forest destruction in the tropics and paper products on the European market..

Today over 40% of German book imports stem from Asia. The amount of storybooks imported from China and Hongkong has even multiplied by a factor of 12 between 2000 and 2011..

China has become a global player in the paper sector in recent years. Half of the worldwide increase in paper and paperboard production since 1990 is attributable to China. China is however also the world’s largest pulp importer – Out of 23.9 million tonnes of pulp used in China in 2011, 64% or 15.2 million tonnes were imported. It is not surprising that China as an important paper producer without sufficient own fibre resources imports pulp from neighbouring countries, like Indonesia.

Financial institutions have been warned today to avoid investments in pulp and paper mills associated with deforestation and human rights abuses in Indonesia. Sixty environmental and social non-governmental organisations, including a dozen Indonesian civil society groups, have sent letters to banks and other financial institutions around the world asking for assurances that they will not invest in increased pulp milling capacity by Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) or other companies associated with the Sinar Mas Group until reforms have been achieved.

orestry giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) is overstating the conservation significance of its recently announced moratorium on forest conversion on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, argues a new report issued by an Indonesian activist group. 

 

This report, published Greenomics, says that the nearly 200,000 hectares of "natural forest" APP says it won't covert to industrial plantations consists mostly of "scrubland, agriculture land or land affected by conflicts with local communities". 

 

"The use of the phrase 'suspension of natural forest clearance' [by APP] is inappropriate," states the report, which says that only 204 hectares of the 198,941 hectares APP says is now off-limits from development is actually forest in a contiguous block. 

"APP/SMG: The pulping continues"analyzes the “sustainability roadmap” issued by controversial Indonesia deforester Asia Pulp & Paper (APP). The analysis found there is no natural forest left to apply their new policies to in Riau Province, since all natural forest in their ‘own’ concessions had either already been cleared or protected under Indonesian law or APP showcase commitments which are also mostly nothing more than confirmation that the company would obey the law. The report finds "the fate of up to 1.2 million hectares, more than half of Riau’s remaining forest, remains in danger of being cleared by APP/SMG’s so-called 'independent suppliers' who can continue to deliver natural forest wood to the company’s mills unaffected by the new forest policies." These forests include some of the last refuges of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger and elephant, as well as forests on carbon-rich deep peat, whose clearing will lead to very high carbon emissions for decades to come.
Not only is APP backtracking from the broken sustainability commitments of 2004 and 2007, it also appears to be moving back from commitments made just a year ago in its “Vision 2020, a roadmap to guide sustainability principles, goals and program.” In this announcement, APP said it would “source 100 percent of its pulpwood supply from sustainable plantation stock by the end of 2015”. The 2012 roadmap switches terminology from “100 per cent sourcing” to “100 per cent capability” with the introduction of a new loophole for “Mixed Tropical Hardwood (MTH) waste & residues”.
"APP/SMG: The pulping continues" includes photographic evidence of clearfelled rainforest areas APP calls “waste and residues.

In 2001, APP was involved in what was then Asia’s biggest corporate debt default - US$13.9 billion. As part of a restructuring debt agreement it reached with its creditors, APP had the legally binding obligation to develop sustainable forestry operations and pulp and paper production. A recent report4 revealed that APP began clearing the forest just three years after signing this agreement, swallowing one-third of the forest that APP committed to protect. The letter is calling on governments not to fund a new pulp mill proposed by Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), one of the world's most controversial pulp and paper companies. Expanding APP’s production capacity further will inevitably lead to further deforestation, and to increased violations of the terms of its environmental covenants with ECAs.APP has historically been supported by European Export Credit Agencies2 (ECAs) and the letter requests that they end support for all business developments linked to deforestation in Indonesia and elsewhere. The letter is signed by more than 30 environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including all members of ECA-Watch, Greenpeace and WWF. It has been delivered to ECAs from Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain and France.

A coalition of Indonesia’s NGOs called Anti-Forest Mafia Coalition urged global pulp buyers last week to beware of allegedly corruption-tainted pulp products following an analysis of timber companies’ involvement in graft cases that jailed government officials in Riau province. The coalition in a press conference in Jakarta also urged the government to curb logging licenses to companies who allegedly involved in forest corruption cases and bring the timber companies to justice.

 The NGOs consist of Jikalahari, ICW, IWGFF, Walhi, Sawit Watch, Telapak, Greenpeace and Huma held a press conference last week following the coalition’s submission of data on corruption to the national Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

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.