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.

WWF is still reviewing the policy to understand its full implications. WWF is encouraged by APRIL's commitments, but the policy needs to be strengthened and clearly defined. WWF continues to recommend that companies wait and see before sourcing from and investing in APRIL and their associated business entities, until APRIL/RGE improves the policy, independent 3rd party confirmation that the group has stopped draining peat soils and developing and pulping HCV and HCS areas, and long-standing social issues have been resolved. WWF also urges RGE and APRIL to comply with milestones similar to those developed by the Environmental Paper Network released last September, which can be found here: www.environmentalpaper.org/milestones.

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.

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.

Despite being in business for 17 years and having access to pulpwood supply concessions covering more than 10% of Riau province’s landmass (940,000 hectares), APRIL has continued to rely on clearance of natural forest for its pulping business as late as this year, 2012.

• APRIL’s public commitment to sustainable and natural fiber free operations after 2009 was pure sales talk; greenwashing to win back customers who had left the company due to its dismal sustainability record. Any statements on environmental sustainability made by APRIL today must be viewed with the highest possible skepticism and should not be taken at face value.

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.

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.

Several reports have documented the destructive environmental and social impacts of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), part of the Sinar Mas group, including its involvement in clearing rainforest in Indonesia for paper.Nonetheless in 2006 the EU Ecolabel was awarded to two brands of photocopy paper – Golden Plus and Lucky Boss – produced by the Indonesian company Pindo Deli, a subsidiary of APP.

NGOs have warned the European Commission they would have to advise their supporters, the public and companies to steer away from the EU Ecolabel for paper and timber products, unless the European Commission ensures (1) the awarding process of the EU Ecolabel becomes transparent – at least in line with existing forest certification procedures; and (2) the EU Ecolabel criteria are considerably strengthened.

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.