"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.

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.

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.

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.

A forest named by international scientists as one of the top 20 priority landscapes globally for the survival of the tiger is being systematically targeted for pulp production by Asia Pulp & Paper/Sinar Mas Group (APP/SMG), one of the world’s largest paper suppliers. This is in breach of company’s claims that it doesn’t target high quality and high conservation value forest for clearing and that it’s carbon footprint is close to neutral.

Greenomics Indonesia's  report on Wednesday criticizes Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), a member of Sinar Mas Group, through its affiliated company PT Putra Riau Perkasa, of deceiving public “in an attempt to dupe the public into believing that the company is ‘going green’.  According to this report, claims by APP in developing PT Putra Riau Perkasa as a “Carbon Reserve” project in Kampar Peninsula on Sumatra Island, “is only half true.” PT Putra Riau Perkasa’s own micro-delineation report found that none of the 15,640 hectares of land covered by the concession was suitable for development as pulpwood plantations, the report said. "This was because the land satisfied all of the legal requirements for designation as protected zone, with 12,799 hectares consisting of deep peat, 1,429 hectares of being rich in biodiversity, and 1,270 hectares satisfying the criteria for protection as a nature reserve," says the report. The announcement of Kampar Carbon Reserve initiative to the public, APP is only “doing nothing more than attempting to establish its “green credentials” in the face of mounting international criticism” for Sinar Mas’ notorious forestry practices, according to Greenomics.

Sinar Mas hired a group of auditors to evaluate the evidence, published by Greenpeace International, of its oil palm division’s role in the clearance of carbon-rich peatlands and critical wildlife habitat in Indonesia. Sinar Mas claimed that the audit showed it ‘operates responsibly and within the laws’ and that Greenpeace claims were ‘exaggerated or wrong’, a move which backfired when the auditors themselves criticised the company for misrepresenting its findings.

However, rather than address the impact of its current operations on the climate, Sinar Mas has since hired the Australia-based consultancy ITS Global (International Trade Strategies Global) to ‘assess the validity and accuracy of the claims’ made by Greenpeace ‘based on the evidence cited in the report’. ITS Global is headed by Alan Oxley – a well-known industry apologist.
ITS Global appears to have been paid by Sinar Mas to cast doubt on the reliability of Greenpeace evidence – without any attempt to ground-truth the validity of the findings or to provide credible evidence to back up its claims. The validity of the data used by Greenpeace is demonstrated below.

Photographic evidence, aerial monitoring and field analysis details how the Sinar Mas group continues to clear rainforest containing priceless biodiversity – such as orangutan habitat - and carbon-rich peatlands, despite public promises it has made to clean up its act.

Sinar Mas group is notorious for its destruction of millions of acres of Indonesian rainforest, peatland and wildlife habitat. Two divisions within the group lead the destruction: pulp and palm oil. Recently, the group has diversified into coal.