11 Jul
2006 - Jakarta, Indonesia – A new WWF monitoring
report reveals that Asia Pulp & Paper (APP)
continues to threaten forests in Indonesia that
are important to both wildlife and people, despite
earlier commitments and pledges made by the company
to its buyers.
According to the report, the
company has been responsible for some 80,000ha
of natural forest loss every year, equivalent
to roughly one-half of the Indonesia province
of Riau’s annual forest loss since 2002. As of
2005, the company controlled nearly one-fifth,
or 520,000ha, of the natural forests left on Riau’s
mainland. All these forests are under threat,
as are any additional forests that APP acquires
in its quest to fill its wood supply gap and expand
pulp production.
“We estimate that around 450,000ha
of natural forests have been cleared over the
past five years to supply APP’s pulp mill in Riau,"
said Nazir Foead, WWF-Indonesia's Director of
Policy & Corporate Engagement.
"APP’s failure to commit
to the protection of high conservation value forests
means that hundreds of thousands of hectares of
forests will go the same route.”
High conservation value forests
(HCVFs) are forests of outstanding and critical
importance due to their environmental, socio-economic,
biodiversity or landscape values. At a meeting
with WWF last month, APP refused to guarantee
that such forests would be excluded from its future
logging and wood sourcing operations. APP had
called for the meeting in response to WWF's report.
It was the first official meeting between the
two since February 2004 when WWF ended its formal
engagement with APP over the company's refusal
to address key environmental and social concerns
in its sustainability action plan.
Since 2001, WWF and some of
APP’s customers had been calling for the company
to develop a sustainable wood supply plan that
would protect HCVFs. APP had previously committed
to protecting several HCVF blocks, however, recent
monitoring reports show that the company failed
to protect these blocks from illegal logging and
fires.
“By refusing to protect HCVFs,
APP is endangering the very survival of the tigers,
elephants and other species that inhabit Indonesia’s
forests,” Foead added. “It is not justifiable
for one company to destroy forests which are highly
valuable for the sake of corporate profits.”
WWF is working with the central
and local governments in Indonesia to factor the
protection of conservation values into land-use
planning and licensing processes. These procedures
currently do not ensure protection of all HCVFs.
The global conservation organization is already
successfully working in partnership with palm
oil producers, including APP's sister company,
PT Smart, to develop practices that maintain HCVFs
in and around their oil palm plantations.
WWF is also assisting global
pulp and paper buyers to apply responsible purchasing
policies that require avoiding products that contain
fibre sourced from illegal logging operations
or from unprotected HCVFs.
“There is no excuse for buyers
with responsible purchasing policies to trade
with a company that continues pulping high conservation
value forests,” said Duncan Pollard, Director
of WWF's Global Forest Programme.
END NOTES:
• According to a background
paper that accompanies the WWF Monitoring Report,
half of Riau’s forests disappeared between 1988
and 2005 at an average rate of 170,000ha a year,
or 460ha a day. The annual rate of forest cover
loss was 2.2 per cent in 2002, 4.2 per cent in
2004 and 6.8 per cent in 2005, illustrating a
rapid acceleration over the past few years. The
key cause of the forest loss has been land clearance
to feed timber to the two pulp mills belonging
to multi-national companies APP and Asia Pacific
Resources International (APRIL). Since 2001, WWF-Indonesia
has been calling for both companies to protect
HCVFs, not only in Riau, but also globally. In
July 2005, APRIL publicly committed to protect
and exclude all HCVFs from its global wood supply.
• PT Smart, APP’s sister company
in the Sinar Mas Group, has already committed
to protect HCVFs at the Roundtable on Sustainable
Palm Oil (RSPO). Initiated by WWF and various
partners in 2003, the RSPO is an independent,
non-profit, multi-stakeholder association focused
on promoting sustainable palm oil and achieving
a common definition of responsible palm oil production.
A key element of responsible palm oil production
is HCVF protection. All companies that are members
of the RSPO must identify forest areas of high
conservation value before establishing new plantations
or expanding existing ones.
Nazir Foead, WWF Indonesia / Rod Taylor, WWF International
/ Soh Koon Chng, WWF International
