Paper giant APP failing its own sustainability goals: Report | News | Eco-Business

Activists have referred to as on financiers and purchasers of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of many world’s greatest paper producers, to cease doing enterprise with the corporate, citing alleged violations of its personal sustainability commitments.

“APP is a wolf in sheep’s clothes,” mentioned Sergio Baffoni, coordinator of a marketing campaign by the Environmental Paper Community (EPN) to guard Indonesia’s rainforests. “For years they’ve pretended to be a inexperienced champion, however their dedication to forest conservation and social duty stays empty phrases. Conflicts, intimidation and violence proceed to ravage communities residing within the areas exploited by APP and its suppliers.”

The EPN has printed a new report linking APP to deforestation, forest and peat fires, and social conflicts in its areas of operation in Indonesia. It additionally alleges APP failed to meet its guarantees to rehabilitate degraded peatlands and preserve rainforest.

Different criticisms leveled in opposition to APP embrace a failure to be really clear in its operations and the implementation of its sustainable insurance policies, and a weakening of its standards for assessing future suppliers.

The report says these shortcomings are proof that due diligence by the patrons and banks doing enterprise with APP have been ineffective, permitting the corporate to violate its personal forest conservation and human rights pledges. In consequence, conflicts and violence have continued unabated within the Indonesian areas the place it produces and sources pulpwood for its paper manufacturing, EPN says.

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APP is a wolf in sheep’s clothes…For years they’ve pretended to be a inexperienced champion, however their dedication to forest conservation and social duty stays empty phrases.

Sergio Baffoni, coordinator, Environmental Paper Community (EPN)

The group has written to worldwide banks, urging them to cease financing APP till a reliable impartial third-party verification has demonstrated that APP and its associates have improved their practices, remedied previous social and environmental hurt, and met the calls for made by the native and worldwide NGOs detailed within the report.

“APP stays a extremely controversial provider of pulp and paper merchandise to the worldwide market,” mentioned Rusmadya Maharuddin, forest campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia, one of many NGOs named within the report. “All patrons, financiers, banks and corporations that proceed to do enterprise with APP and [parent company] the Sinar Mas Group are complicit of their abuses”.

In response to the criticisms, APP says it stays firmly dedicated to its sustainability pledges and that it continues to make progress on these objectives.

“This 12 months, we introduced new targets to fulfill as a part of our Sustainability Roadmap Imaginative and prescient 2030,” APP mentioned in a press release to Mongabay. “We’re not good and we worth constructive criticism that can assist us to enhance. And as at all times, we now have an open invitation for any involved stakeholders to go to our operations, conduct their very own evaluations and arrive at their very own knowledgeable conclusions.”

Deforestation and fires

APP dedicated to ending deforestation in its Indonesian concessions in 2013. Whereas land clearing decreased after this, destruction of peatland from fires elevated, the EPN report says, with APP’s suppliers and sister corporations concerned in huge forest and peat fires all through Indonesia in 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

In 2015, the overall space burned inside APP concessions in South Sumatra province was 293,065 hectares (724,179 acres), practically three-fifths of which constituted carbon-dense peatland. In 2019, APP concessions in South Sumatra burned once more, with a complete affected space of greater than 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres).

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This 12 months, we introduced new targets to fulfill as a part of our Sustainability Roadmap Imaginative and prescient 2030. We’re not good and we worth constructive criticism that can assist us to enhance.

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP)

The EPN report attributes this repeated burning to the truth that APP continues to function in fragile and extremely flammable peat ecosystems.

“The actual fact is that plantations on drained peat develop into an intensive inventory of gas, and when a forest and peat fireplace begins there it’s unstoppable,” the report says. “That is why dried peat have to be instantly re-wetted.”

However as a substitute of restoring the dried peatland to its authentic moist situation to forestall it from burning, APP stays closely reliant on peatland plantations, the report says, with half of the concessions of its pulpwood suppliers being on peatland. Even with best-practice administration, cultivating pulpwood plantations on drained peatlands shouldn’t be sustainable, the report provides.

Greenpeace found 3,500 hectares (8,650 acres) of peatland that had been cleared in three concessions with ties to APP between August 2018 and June 2020. Peat clearing is usually carried out forward of planting pulpwood timber akin to acacia and eucalyptus.

Greenpeace additionally discovered 53 kilometers (32 miles) of drainage canals dug throughout the identical interval — a deliberate observe to empty the moist peat layer in preparation for planting, however one which additionally renders the soil extremely vulnerable to catching fireplace.

APP has denied the allegations of peatland clearing by the three related concession holders, saying it has had a strict coverage in place since 2013 of not changing peatland and never burning. It mentioned it has additionally carried out a number of programmes to handle fires in its concessions.

“Whereas APP suppliers are prohibited from land clearance by fireplace, this doesn’t imply that no fires will ever happen inside concessions,” the corporate said. “There are, nonetheless, nonetheless challenges on the bottom as a result of complexity of the land use inside our suppliers’ concessions. This will embrace villages situated inside and across the concessions.”

Restoration dedication

There’s additionally the matter of rehabilitating and defending degraded peat ecosystems, which the EPN says APP has promised to do however largely did not ship on.

In August 2015, APP dedicated to retire 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of plantations on peatland. However this represents simply 1.2 per cent of APP’s complete peat concessions, which cowl 600,000 hectares (1.48 million acres), the report says.

“It will have been a superb first step, if adopted by a re-wetting of dried peat on a big scale,” the report says. “This didn’t occur, and peat fires preserve periodically ravaging.”

APP says that because it retired the 7,000 hectares of peat plantations, it has been busy figuring out the native tree species to guard and dealing with authorities and college researchers on restoration methods. It says “additional plantations on peatlands shall be voluntarily retired and restored after they’ve been harvested,” and touts a goal of restoring 35,000 hectares (86,500 acres) of peatland over the course of 10 years.

In an earlier pledge, from 2014, APP mentioned it could restore 1 million hectares of rainforest and different ecosystems in 10 landscapes in Indonesia. The goal was to treatment historic deforestation of pure forest brought on by APP’s operations. However that promise stays unfulfilled, with no clear plan and minimal progress on its implementation to this point, in keeping with the EPN report.

It says the one tangible achievement, in addition to the retirement of the 7,000 hectares of peat plantations, is the beginning of restoration work on 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) of degraded forest, which represents only one.2 per cent of the million-hectare purpose that APP has publicly dedicated to.

Weakened provider coverage

In 2013, APP adopted its “accountable fiber procurement and buying coverage” (RFPPP), which bans suppliers concerned in any deforestation exercise. It adopted that up in 2014 with a coverage to judge future suppliers, which it referred to as the “affiliation process for implementing a no-deforestation dedication in APP’s provide chains.”

However in keeping with the EPN report, APP dropped the affiliation process from its web site after NGOs criticised the corporate for its continued violations in 2017. The report says the omission of the affiliation producer successfully weakens APP’s coverage on its suppliers, which falls in need of prohibiting growth of peatlands and the clearing of forests with excessive carbon inventory (HCS) , and doesn’t require the rapid termination of suppliers present in breach of coverage. It additionally scrapped the cutoff date of Feb. 1, 2013, for suppliers to conform, the report provides.

APP refutes the allegation that it modified its affiliation process with a weaker coverage, saying the process was built-in into its preliminary screening instrument for suppliers, often known as the “provider analysis and threat evaluation” (SERA), in 2018.

“This merging of the procedural features under no circumstances impacts the coverage commitments themselves,” APP mentioned in a press release to Mongabay. “Our HCS/HCV [high conservation value], peatland administration necessities and deadline stay unchanged.”

Transparency (or lack thereof)

One other level of competition is APP’s lack of transparency, the EPN says.

A 2018 report reveals APP has nearer ties to its wooden suppliers than it publicly discloses, with dozens of people who “seem like present or previous workers” of APP and its mum or dad group, Sinar Mas, being listed as executives, administrators and shareholders within the provider corporations.

APP acknowledged this, however mentioned it’s “regular” for APP workers to be “seconded” to the suppliers in an effort to present technical assist. It added this observe resulted in 2013. APP additionally refuted the report’s discovering that seven of the eight people listed as homeowners of 24 of the suppliers seem to have labored for APP.

In keeping with the EPN report, this use of hidden company buildings has allowed APP to keep away from duty for fires in its suppliers’ concessions.

It additionally factors out that APP has refused to share or make public its HCS forest space maps, peatland research and maps, knowledge on participatory mapping of group and conventional land claims, in addition to detailed knowledge about its social conflicts mapping.

“Just a few of those have been shared however in a really selective manner,” the report says. “In October 2019 its dedication in direction of full transparency was lowered to providing to share info in a ‘closed room in our workplace.’”

The dearth of transparency on social battle knowledge has resulted in NGOs questioning APP’s progress in resolving conflicts in its concessions and its declare of getting resolved 49 per cent of the conflicts.

NGOs have lengthy complained that APP has by no means revealed to the general public which conflicts have been resolved and the way. They are saying full disclosure is crucial if APP desires to handle its long legacy of land rights violations.

For many years, APP has been criticised for buying land with out group consent and inflicting hurt on indigenous communities. In 2019, there have been at the least 107 villages or communities in active conflict with APP associates or suppliers.

APP says it’s defending the privateness of villagers by withholding detailed info on the corporate’s social conflicts, and that the complexity of the problems prevents it from sharing extra info.

The opacity that surrounds the corporate has additionally made it unattainable for third events to independently confirm the progress that APP has made towards its personal promised objectives, in keeping with the EPN report. It says APP ought to disclose enough info on all areas related for its coverage implementation and supply clear and collaborative monitoring programs which can be accessible to the general public in order that the general public can meaningfully monitor the implementation of the coverage.

APP must also facilitate a really impartial verification of its progress utilizing a reputable set of indicators to measure its compliance, akin to these developed by NGOs, the report provides.

APP says it has engaged with stakeholders, together with NGOs, via its annual Stakeholder Advisory Discussion board because the begin of the implementation of its Forest Conservation Coverage (FCP).

“By way of the discussion board, we now have not solely supplied on our progress updates, we’ve additionally gathered their suggestions for steady enchancment,” APP mentioned. “APP additionally stories on the progress of its sustainability dedication via annual audited sustainability stories and thru common progress stories. Each of those are printed on our web site.”

However the EPN says the issue with this strategy is that it’s not impartial, because the progress is measured by events paid by the corporate.

“APP has continued to self-declare its progress on implementing varied elements of its coverage via communications or advertising campaigns, patrons’ journeys, its Stakeholder Advisory Discussion board conferences or via endorsements made by second events akin to Earthworm Basis, previously The Forest Belief, which is paid straight by the corporate for its providers,” it says within the report. “This strategy to reporting on progress in implementing its commitments is merely self-reporting, and is inadequate and unreliable.”

APP mentioned a “really” impartial verification is unattainable as a result of any verification program have to be paid for.

“The difficulty with the sort of criticism is that ‘really impartial’ is a imprecise time period, and maybe deliberately so,” APP mentioned. “Any verification program have to be paid for, and in so doing, could also be perceived as not ‘really’ impartial, subsequently excluding any type of verification as not being ‘really impartial.’”

It cited the case of the Rainforest Alliance, an eco-certification NGO commissioned by APP in 2014 to conduct an evaluation of its FCP progress. The Rainforest Alliance found via its evaluation that APP’s provide chain was freed from deforested timber.

“Nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped different events, together with the EPN from persevering with to claim in any other case,” APP mentioned. “If there’s unanimous settlement on events that may be thought-about ‘really impartial,’ and our critics can conform to accepting the findings of such verification, that will surely be one thing we’d be ready to spend money on.”

APP mentioned it has launched a brand new forest monitoring dashboard to trace forest cowl adjustments in near-real time in 2020, as a part of efforts towards better transparency.

The EPN, nonetheless, says this new system remains to be missing as a result of it’s restricted to maps of APP’s conservation areas and concession boundaries, with manufacturing areas notably lacking. The maps are additionally of low decision and may’t be downloaded.

APP mentioned the system is meant to trace adjustments in pure forest cowl in its conservation areas, which incorporates all HCS areas throughout its provider concessions, permitting the corporate to reply extra rapidly to unlawful deforestation or encroachment in distant areas.

“Manufacturing areas however are planted with acacia or eucalyptus,” APP mentioned. “These areas are replanted and harvested in common cycles. Modifications that happen within the manufacturing areas are deliberate upfront and solely related to manufacturing actions. It’s unclear why EPN would want such info to be made public.”

This story was printed with permission from Mongabay.com.