Greenpeace has issued a 45-page report that boldly claims that some packaging that uses our paper contains mixed tropical hardwoods. It goes on to attack the toymakers who use this packaging. It also resurrects long-discredited allegations about Asia Pulp and Paper Group (APP) and our products.
All materials in APP carton box packaging, as well as all other APP produced paper products, come from a pulpwood supply that is verified to follow the legal guidelines of the country of origin, including Indonesia and any other country that APP imports pulp supply from.
Despite Greenpeace’s unsubstantiated allegations, the facts are that our packaging materials contain more than 95% of recycled paper sourced from around the world. Less than two percent of the pulp in those carton boxes comes from legal and sustainable Indonesia pulpwood plantations. And the remainder is from PEFC certified forests. APP is one of the few companies in Southeast Asia, which has been working hard to promote the production of this type of recycled carton box packaging. We are happy to share the scientific analysis of our packaging materials with anyone who wants to review it.
The timing of this report is both surprising and disappointing. The last few months have marked the beginning of a new era of international cooperation with Indonesia. We saw our President sign the official enactment of the forest moratorium, working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve natural forests and wildlife while investing in economic and social development. We also saw the EU signed a Voluntary Partnership Agreement that officially recognizing Indonesia’s SVLK wood legality standard, an important step to demonstrate to the world that Indonesia is serious about preventing the export of illegally sourced wood-based products.
These are examples of real game changers for Indonesia. We see a tremendous positive momentum building in our relationship with countries around the world. And APP has fully supported each of these historic developments. We have made public our commitments to Indonesian and Sustainable Forestry Management certification standards, helped advance the development of SVLK, and pledged to be ‘VPA ready’ ahead of schedule by the end of 2012. And most recently we laid out a path to becoming a true global leader in sustainable and responsible paper production with the creation of Vision 2020, our roadmap for the future for addressing sustainability, environmental, conservation and social issues across our Indonesian operations.
Why does Greenpeace choose now to issue a report that takes a legally sourced product that’s 95 percent recycled material and use it to attack Indonesia’s pulp and paper industry? And to include a call to action for consumers to help force toy companies to stop dealing with Indonesian companies altogether? It’s simply irresponsible.
Tags: APP, Asia Pulp & Paper, Asia Pulp and Paper, conservation, forest certification, forest protection, Greenpeace, Indonesia forest, Indonesian Government, pulp and paper industry, pulpwood, sustainability, sustainable forest management, SVLK, Vision 2020
Cynical
You don’t change spots on an evil corporate leopard. There’s no way that APP has suddenly become a good environmental steward. I hope I’m wrong. But too much of the Indonesian rainforest is gone because of its actions.
I dare you to print this.
Aida G.
We understand your skepticism. No company is perfect and many struggle with building their environmental sustainability policies and getting them into practice. At APP we too continue to evolve. The critical thing is to have a roadmap for change. In our case we’ve developed Vision 2020, sustainability reporting and are targeting 100% sustainable plantation pulp by 2015. In the meanwhile we continue to push our zero tolerance on illegal wood from our suppliers.
In Indonesia, we have the opportunity to learn lessons from the West but our situation is unique. Sustainable forestry didn’t exist during the Industrial Revolution. Forest protection didn’t exist. Now as global citizens we are aware that environmental conservation and economic development have to be balanced. 30% of the population lives below the poverty line in Indonesia. This has been identified by the UN as one of the major culprits for deforestation. We also have the opportunity to be the leaders in sustainable forestry due to climate and fast growth cycle in Indonesia where a tree that we plant can be harvested in 5-6 years rather than 80 years as is the case with many species in Europe and the West.
We hope that over time and by hearing the stories from the people in Indonesia we can show you the progress being made and to share with you the issues that concern us as well.
alaincompost
I agree that you cannot change the spots on an evil Leopard but you can tame it.
The most positive approach is to help and encourage APP to become a good environmental steward.
More Indonesian forets could have been saved if Conservation organizations had been smarter by opening dialogue and proposed compromises to the big companies when it was still possible to do so. Instead they fought a badly coordinated battle and they lost …
nnn777
Greenpeace not wanting consumers to do business with indonesia? that’s a far cry. Greenpeace is putting pressure on them to improve policies, which IS responsible…. they are taking a stand against unnecessary destruction of the earth. Not changing damaging policies that allow the destruction of virgin forests is the irresponsible thing.
Aida G.
nnn777, a challenge that we notice is that there isn’t a common definition for a number of terms that get tossed around. For example, you mention ‘virgin’ forests, which are more accurately referred to as primary forest. Within any forest, either primary, secondary or degraded forest, there is the possibility that high conservation value forest (HCVF) might exist. These HCVFs are protected by Indonesia law. Our suppliers are prohibited by law from harvesting timber from these areas. Even among the legal concessions allocated by the Indonesian government (which are not primary forests but instead degraded forests) we set aside 40% of this land for conservation and community use.
We have seen all parties involved embrace policy change, the results of the efforts of many. The moratorium has suspended all new forest concessions for two years. This year we also implemented SVLK, the new Indonesian standard on wood legality. Beyond the national legal regulations, Indonesia (APP included) has also committed to a groundbreaking voluntary partnership (VPA) with the European Union which is designed to ensure that all imports from Indonesia are legally sourced and comply with all international standards. 2011 has been a landmark year for forest conservation and protecting the natural environment of Indonesia while ensuring economic opportunities are maintained.
boedijaeni
For Greenpeace: Blaspheming and blame easy to do, and whether you have made positive changes to Indonesia! Remember the people of Indonesia can be angry because your behavior.
For APP: Prove to the world that you have done the best for Indonesia,
I will be with you because I know who is true.
budi jaeni
Full Disclosure: I am an APP employee
Bartje
It’s cheap to hide behind aliases (Cynical and nnn777) and swallow all "evidence" GP dishes out. I betcha you don’t know half of the man-bites-man stories behind GP’s "evidence"…
Remember the photo where – according to GP – activists stopped the destruction of orangutan habitat (see a.o. Illegal Forest Clearance and RSPO Greenwash, Image 11). Activists chained themselves to a parked(!) excavator one early dawn, and before normal working hours began, locals detained the activists and brought them before their traditional court. Greenpeace was fined USD 8,000 – it accepted but never paid that fine – and it certainly didn’t stop the company’s activities!
GP argues that ‘The cost of inaction – or worse, false accounting – to stop deforestation and peatland degradation will be climate change, biodiversity loss, and the derailing of genuine low-carbon development for the people of Indonesia’ (Protection Money, page ii). Shouldn’t GP lead by example???
alaincompost
Greenpeace and friends failed to save Indonesian forests when they had the chance. Now they play the Conservation heros by attacking APP with unclear accusations over Barbie packaging. It’s an easy way to show that they are still relevant so they can continue to raise money to pay their bills. Maybe now the momentum is for the big companies like APP to save remaining critical Indonesian forests. I believe they can be more efficient and play an important role in conservation. The bad guys can become the good guys after all …. and the losers are still the losers…
alaincompost
What are the NGO’s doing ?
An other part of the Bukit 30 forest ecosystem is at the moment being logged with impunity by Barito Pacific. Why are WWF, Green Peace and others turning a blind eye on the on going destruction of this important habitat for Tigers, Elephants and other endangered species of Sumatran Biodiversity ?
APP has so far refused to get involved in more forest destruction around the Bukit Tigapuluh National Park. The truth is that the company is working with its suppliers and other stakeholders, including local NGOs to maintain the integrity and expand the Bukit30 National Park .
Do we need APP to accept to buy the pulpwood from Barito Pacific to make the NGO’s react ?
ManuKey25
Indonesian paper industry is all about money, corruption and fooling the society … whatever the employees says on this blog…
And there’s many proof of that… anyway this is too late, there is too much species that are already instinct…
Aida G.
Thanks for your comment. I would like to address the last line first.
I agree with you. It’s too late for far too many animal species. Ever heard of the Passenger Pigeon? Great flocks containing thousands, in some cases millions of birds would fill the sky. This was in the 1900s, during the industrialization of America and before the species was effectively wiped out. The cause? Destruction of forests across North America and unregulated sport hunting. (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2011)
It’s also too late for the Tasmanian Tiger, once the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. This is also a species that went extinct during the 20th Century. The cause? After a century of colonial settlement the species was pushed to the brink of extinction due to intensive hunting encouraged by bounties. (Australia Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and the Environment website – http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au)
Sadly, it’s also too late for Javan and Bali Tiger, both of which suffered a similar fate. The extermination of the Bali tiger was largely attributed to the colonial development by the Dutch settlers in the Indonesian islands (Geertz, 1963). The extinction of Javan Tiger was also largely attributed to the Dutch agricultural revolution that started in the late 1800s (Seidensticker, 1978, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Tiger Paper, Vol XXXIII, No. 3, July-Sept 2006). Not by Indonesian industry players.
According to a 2011 report by the US Environmental Protection Agency, today there are as many as 1,300 endangered animal and plant species in the US alone. Natural England, the government agency responsible for the English countryside, reported recently that more than two animals and plants are becoming extinct in England every year. Hundreds more are severely threatened. Of the 500 species of biodiversity that have died out in Britain over the course of history, all but about a dozen were in the last two centuries, during its industrialization.
As Indonesia picks up the pieces and rebuilds its nation after years of colonization by the Dutch, English, Portuguese and Japanese, we must do our best to develop our economy while preserving the remaining critical biodiversity and natural habitat. We have much to learn from the history of developing nations about saving animal species. While Indonesia’s industrialization occurred later than other countries, mostly due to hundreds of years of colonization that only ended post World War II, our progress as a nation is just as important to our nearly 350 million residents seeking their paths to better lives.
Unfortunately we can’t turn back the clock. Take the Javan Rhino, for instance. We can’t turn back the clock on hundreds of years of sport hunting and poaching that eradicated all by 50 of a species that once roamed Southeast Asia by thousands. What we can do is learn from past mistakes. We can implement a precautionary approach to proactively plan our economic development and conservation efforts through regulation and investment in innovative partnerships. We can take precautionary measures to ensure that our children and our children’s children not only have opportunities for education and jobs but that they can live in a world that is blessed with the Javan Rhino, Sumatran Tiger, Elephant and Orangutan.
The Javan Rhino is the rarest mammal on earth with only 50 or so still alive, all living in Ujung Kulon National Park on the far western tip of Java Island. Check out this link (http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20110911005083/en/Asia-Pulp-%26-Paper/APP/Asia-Pulp-and-Paper) and you can learn about a new multistakeholder group of public groups and private companies, led by Ujung Kulon National Park and APP, working to help regenerate the species. The group has an ambitious goal: to increase the population of Javan Rhinos by 50% over the next five years.
Whether we are talking about Javan Rhinos or Sumatran Tigers, the key to protecting and regenerating a species lies in public private partnerships. It’s too big a job for the government to do alone. And it’s too complicated a job for companies to lead alone. That brings us to your first point about the pulp and paper industry in Indonesia.
The Javan Rhino and Sumatran Tiger were threatened as a species long before our government established legislation to encourage investment in a pulp and paper industry. The greatest threat to these animals is and always has been illegal poaching. APP, as well as other leaders in the Indonesian pulp and paper industry, are playing critical roles as partners in preserving essential habitats, providing jobs and viable economic alternatives and investing in education designed to help eradicate illegal poaching.
Yes, it is essential that we operate healthy, profitable companies. Just like companies anywhere else in the world, we must be profitable in order to have the financial wherewithal to re-invest in society. That re-investment comes in many forms: promoting education, healthcare, reducing infant mortality rates, empowering women, and protecting the environment and endangered species. APP and its pulpwood suppliers invest an average of $40 million annually in community, social development and environmental programs.
We have great challenges ahead of us. We have a rapidly growing population that faces real issues dealing with poverty across our country. We have to develop a healthy economy to provide for these people and do it in a way that promotes protection of our natural resources and biodiversity. We do face the challenge of corruption, just as countries around the world do. We are a young country that emerged from 350 years of colonization in the last half of the 20th Century. We have to support our government’s efforts to wipe out corruption.
But while the challenges are great, so is the hope. We are making a difference. And we will continue to partner with governments, NGOs, academic institutions, private companies and any and all other groups who want to play a role in addressing the many challenges we face as a nation.
We do encourage our employees to write and comment on Rainforest Realities. Just as we encourage you to post your comments and other experts from a wide range of industries to share their perspectives. We hope you will continue to read our blog and that through the process you can learn about what’s really going on in Indonesia.