topic: Pulp And Paper

topic: Pulp And Paper

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Indonesian company defies order, still clearing peatlands in orangutan habitat
- Indonesian Pulpwood producer PT Mayawana Persada is continuing to clear peatlands on critical Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) habitat, despite a government order to stop clearing.
- An NGO coalition analysis found that 30,296 hectares (74,900 acres) of peatland, including 15,560 hectares (38,400 acres) of protected lands, had been converted as of March; 15,643 hectares (38,700 acres) of known Bornean orangutan habitat were cleared between 2016 and 2022.
- Conservationists are calling on the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to revoke the company’s permits.

Report links pulpwood estate clearing Bornean orangutan habitat to RGE Group
- NGOs have accused PT Mayawana Persada, a company with a massive pulpwood concession in Indonesian Borneo, of extensive deforestation that threatens both Indigenous lands and orangutan habitat.
- In a recent report, the NGOs also highlighted links that they say tie the company to Singapore-based paper and palm oil conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle (RGE).
- RGE has denied any affiliation with Mayawana Persada, despite findings of shared key personnel, operational management connections, and supply chain links.
- The report also suggests the Mayawana Persada plantation is gearing up to supply pulpwood in time for a massive production boost by RGE, which is expanding its flagship mill in Sumatra and building a new mill in Borneo.

Ten years since anti-deforestation pledge, corporate world still not doing enough
- Global Canopy released its Forest 500 list of the 350 companies and 150 financial institutions connected to deforestation-linked commodities, including beef, leather, soy, palm oil, timber, pulp and paper.
- This is the organization’s 10th report, showing that numerous companies haven’t done enough to remove deforestation from their supply chains over the last decade.
- The report found 30% of companies still haven’t developed a single deforestation policy for their supply chains, while others have developed policies but failed to implement them in a meaningful way.
- The few companies with strong, long-term goals aren’t always doing enough to meet them, according to the report.

Reversing progress, Indonesia pulp & paper drives up deforestation rates again
- Reversing years of progress, deforestation caused by Indonesia’s pulp and paper industry is on the rise, increasing fivefold between 2017 and 2022, according to a new analysis.
- The increase in deforestation follows dramatic declines that occurred after major wood pulp and paper companies adopted zero-deforestation commitments due to public pressure.
- In addition to deforestation, the pulp and paper industry is linked to land and forest fires and peat subsidence, which contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) that speed up global warming.

The year in rainforests: 2023
- The following is Mongabay’s annual recap of major tropical rainforest storylines.
- While the data is still preliminary, it appears that deforestation declined across the tropics as a whole in 2023 due to developments in the Amazon, which has more than half the world’s remaining primary tropical forests.
- Some of the other big storylines for the year: Lula prioritizes the Amazon; droughts in the Amazon and Indonsia; Indonesia holds the line on deforestation despite el Niño; regulation on imports of forest-risk commodities; an eventful year in the forest carbon market; rainforests and Indigenous peoples; and rampant illegality.

Calls for FSC to drop Canada’s Paper Excellence over ties to deforester
- Green groups have gathered mounting evidence that Canada’s biggest pulp and paper company, Paper Excellence, is effectively controlled by notorious Indonesian deforester the Sinar Mas Group, via its subsidiary, Asia Pulp & Paper.
- They are now calling on the Forest Stewardship Council, which certifies millions of hectares of Paper Excellence-managed forests as well as 42 of the company’s mills, to cut ties with it.
- APP was in 2007 “disassociated” from the FSC and remains barred from membership due to “destructive forestry practices”; its control of Paper Excellence should lead to the same outcome for the Canadian company, activists say.
- Both companies have denied allegations of controlling ties — despite the fact that Paper Excellence’s sole shareholder is the son of the APP chair and previously directed APP’s China business, among other revelations.

As fire season worsens, Indonesian activists report four companies for burning

JAKARTA — Activists have reported four companies — two industrial forest firms and two palm oil firms — to the local police over fires in their concessions in Central Kalimantan as Indonesia is grappling with its worst fire episode since 2019. According to satellite image analysis done Sept. 2-10, the activists found a total of […]
Report alleges APP continues deforestation 10 years after pledge to stop
- A new Greenpeace report alleges that pulp and paper giant APP continues to clear forests and develop peatlands 10 years after adopting its landmark 2013 pledge to stop destroying natural forests for its plantations.
- The report identifies 75,000 hectares (185,300 acres) of deforestation in APP supplier concessions or companies connected to APP between February 2013 and 2022 — an area the size of New York City.
- APP has also changed the start date of its no-deforestation policy from 2013 to 2020, which would allow the company at some point in the future to accept new suppliers that deforested between 2013 and 2020.
- APP denies allegations of continued deforestation and says its suppliers have ceased forest conversions since 2013; the company also says it has committed to peatland restoration.

Deforestation surges in hotspot of critically endangered Bornean orangutans
- Deforestation within a pulpwood concession that overlaps with key orangutan habitat in Indonesian Borneo has escalated in recent months.
- Concession holder PT Mayawana Persada cleared 14,000 hectares (34,600 acres) of forest between January and August, or 40 times the size of New York’s Central Park, of which 13,000 hectares (32,100 acres) were areas identified as orangutan habitat.
- In July alone, the company cleared 4,970 hectares (12,300 acres), the highest monthly deforestation figure recorded.

Timber harvests to meet global wood demand will bring soaring emissions: Study
- At a time when the world desperately needs to reduce its carbon emissions, global timber harvests to meet soaring demand for wood products — including paper and biomass for energy — could produce more than 10% of total global carbon emissions over coming decades, a new groundbreaking study finds.
- Global wood consumption could grow by 54% between 2010 and 2050, creating a demand for timber that would result in a “clear-cut equivalent” in area roughly the size of the continental U.S., adding 3.5 to 4.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually for years to come.
- The study scientists warn that flawed national climate policies and faulty carbon accounting are failing to accurately forecast these potential carbon emissions resulting from the cutting of natural forests.
- The researchers point out that less natural forests need to be cut to meet the rising global demand for wood products. That demand could partially be met by increasing wood production in already existing plantation forests.

Report links paper giant RGE to Indonesia deforestation despite pledges
- A new investigative report alleges that the supply chain of one of the world’s largest producers of wood pulp and products, Royal Golden Eagle, is tainted with wood from deforestation in Indonesia.
- The allegation comes despite the company having adopted a no-deforestation policy since 2015.
- The report also reveals a chain of offshore shell companies pointing to RGE’s control of a new mega-scale pulp mill in Indonesia’s North Kalimantan province.
- This new mill threatens large-scale deforestation once it’s in operation, due to its huge demand for wood, the report says.

Companies, big banks are still lagging on deforestation regulations: report
- Global Canopy’s annual Forest 500 report reviews the top 350 most influential companies and 150 financial institutions exposed to deforestation risk in their supply chains and investments.
- While many entities have developed some policies on deforestation, they’re not keeping up with the best practices needed for improving forest-risk supply chains, the report said.
- However, a new deforestation supply chain law in the European Union could force many of the largest companies and financial institutions to implement stricter regulations moving forward.

Report unveils ties between Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas and Canada’s Paper Excellence
- An investigative report has revealed that Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas has hidden ties with Canadian paper company Paper Excellence, which indicates that the former is secretly controlling the latter.
- The ties are hidden through a multilayered corporate structure with holding companies in numerous offshore jurisdictions that are characterized by high levels of corporate secrecy, such as the Netherlands, Labuan (Malaysia), the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong, according to the report.
- Paper Excellence could soon become one of the biggest pulp and paper suppliers in North America, as it’s in the process of acquiring Resolute Forest Products, Canada’s third-largest producer of sawn wood.

With FSC rule change, deforesters once blocked from certification get a new shot
- The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has adopted a number of significant changes during its recent general assembly in Bali, chief among them moving its cutoff date for eligibility from 1994 to 2020.
- With the change, logging companies that have cleared forests since 1994, but before 2020, will be allowed to obtain certification from the body, something they weren’t allowed to do before.
- To qualify, companies will have to restore forests and provide remedy for social harms done in the 1994-2020 period in their concessions.
- The decision has sparked responses from both critics and supporters, with the former saying the new rule rewards known deforesters, and the latter saying it opens opportunities for forest restoration and remedies for Indigenous and local communities.

FSC-certified paper plantation faces farmer backlash in Colombia
- Smurfit Kappa Cartón de Colombia (SKCC), a paper company with multiple plantations certified by the FSC ethical wood label, is facing backlash from Indigenous and local farmers over land disputes and environmental impacts.
- Mongabay was able to confirm three cases of plantations violating Colombia’s legal forest code. Communities living close to the company’s paper plantations say they are to blame for water shortages and a decrease in biodiversity and soil fertility.
- There is little agreement over the effects of these plantations on water availability, but many activists and academics say agroforestry or silvopasture systems can be alternative solutions to increase biodiversity and contribute to farmers’ livelihoods.
- A SKCC forestry division manager said SKCC carries out rigorous legal and background analyzes of the properties to operate according to the law and practices respect for the environment.

Plantations threaten Indonesia’s orangutans, but they’re not oil palm
- A significant portion of orangutan habitat in Indonesia lies within corporate concessions, but industrial tree companies, like pulp and paper, don’t have strong enough safeguards and commitment to protect the critically endangered apes, a new report says.
- According to the report by Aidenvironment, there are 6.22 million hectares (15.37 million acres) of orangutan habitat within corporate oil palm, logging, and industrial tree concessions.
- Of the three types of concessions, industrial tree companies are the “key stakeholder” as they operate with much less transparency and scrutiny than the palm oil sector, Aidenvironment says.

Net-zero commitments must include more anti-deforestation policies, UN tells private sector
- Many companies with net-zero commitments have made little, tangible progress against tropical deforestation, according to a recent report from a U.N. climate change task force.
- Approximately a third of carbon emissions released each year are absorbed by forests, making tackling deforestation a key part of the fight to keep global temperatures below 1.5°C (2.7°F).
- Many companies, even ones that have implemented other effective net-zero commitments, have fallen short on deforestation, meaning their carbon footprint may end up being larger than they hope.

FSC-certified Moorim Paper linked to massive forest clearing in Indonesia’s Papua
- A subsidiary of South Korean paper company Moorim has cleared natural forests a tenth the size of Seoul in Indonesia’s Papua region over the past six years, a new report alleges.
- The report, published by various NGOs, alleges that the cleared areas consisted of primary forests serving as a habitat for threatened species and a source of livelihood for Indigenous Papuans.
- Moorim’s Indonesian subsidiary, PT Plasma Nutfah Marind Papua (PNMP), which holds the concession to the land, also allegedly cleared the forests without obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous and local communities.
- Moorim has denied the allegations, but the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which certifies its paper products as being sustainably sourced, says it has begun assessing the case to determine whether there’s enough substantial information to indicate a violation of its policies.

Bornean communities locked into 2-million-hectare carbon deal they don’t know about
- Leaders in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, signed a nature conservation agreement on Oct. 28 with a group of foreign companies — apparently without the meaningful participation of Indigenous communities.
- The agreement, with the consultancy Tierra Australia and a private equity-backed funder from Singapore, calls for the marketing of carbon and other ecosystem services to companies looking, for example, to buy credits to offset their emissions.
- The deal involves more than 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of forest, which would be restored and protected from mining, logging and industrial agriculture for the next 100-200 years.
- But land rights experts have raised concerns about the lack of consultation with communities living in and around these forests in the negotiations to this point.

Paper giants’ expansion plans raise fears of greater deforestation in Indonesia
- Two paper giants, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL), plan to significantly expand their production capacity in Indonesia.
- Activists warn that these plans could lead to increased deforestation of natural forest and peatlands in Indonesia to plant the pulpwood trees needed to meet this capacity, exacerbating the annual fire season.
- They say the projects are benefiting from the Indonesian government’s deregulation initiative that strips away environmental and social protections across a wide swath of industries, including pulp and paper.
- In response to the expansion plans, a coalition of 33 NGOs has sent a letter to APP’s financiers and buyers, asking them to refrain from doing business with the company.

Spike in deforestation detected in Papua concession linked to South Korea’s Moorim
- Satellite imagery has detected 965 hectares (2,384 acres) of tree loss from January to May this year in a concession run by a subsidiary of South Korean paper company Moorim in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua.
- The findings appear to corroborate an earlier investigation, using drone images, that showed signs of clearing in peat swamp areas in the concession.
- Besides the alleged deforestation, Indigenous communities in the area have also reportedly been denied the right to give their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) to the project.
- The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which certifies Moorim’s paper products as sustainable, says its takes these allegations “very seriously”; Moorim did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.

North American paper industry merger sets off environmental alarms
- Canadian firm Paper Excellence plans to acquire U.S. pulp and paper giant Domtar, with shareholders overwhelmingly approving the proposed merger.
- The acquisition signals Paper Excellence’s expansion in North America, something that environmentalists say will threaten Canada’s boreal forest.
- This is because Paper Excellence is reportedly controlled by the owners of Indonesia’s Asia Pulp & Paper, which has a long track record of deforestation, forest and peat fires, and human rights violations.

Indonesian pulpwood firms told to protect peat are doing the opposite: Report
- Pulpwood companies in Indonesia are continuing to plant on degraded peatlands inside their concessions, despite being required to protect and restore these ecosystems, a new report shows.
- The report focuses on 16 pulp and paper producers and found all of them in violation of peat protection and rehabilitation regulations.
- Among the violations are planting and harvesting acacia trees in previously burned peatlands, and digging new canals to drain peatland.
- Among the companies highlighted in the report are subsidiaries of two of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world, APP and APRIL.

For an Indigenous group in Sumatra, a forest regained is being lost once more
- The Indigenous community of Pandumaan-Sipituhuta in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province have started replanting frankincense trees in their customary forest after a company had cleared the land to make way for a pulpwood plantation.
- The community has been in conflict with the company, PT Toba Pulp Lestari, since 2009, which has led to numerous clashes and criminal charges brought by the company against community members.
- The government finally granted recognition of the Indigenous group’s rights to its ancestral forest at the end of 2020.
- But the size of the customary forest had been slashed by more than half after the government earmarked some of the forest to be converted into large-scale agricultural plantations under the national food estate program.

Land dispute turns violent as Sumatran Indigenous groups clash with pulpwood firm
- A recent clash between Indigenous community members in Sumatra and workers from pulpwood producer PT Toba Pulp Lestari has marred ongoing efforts to resolve a decades-long land conflict.
- The two sides have been locked in dispute over the land in North Tapanuli district since 1992, with 23 Indigenous communities claiming ancestral rights to some 20,754 hectares (51,284 acres) inside the concession granted to TPL, an affiliate of pulp and paper giant Royal Golden Eagle.
- In the wake of the recent clash, Indonesia’s national parliament has called on the police to investigate and press charges against the company for the violence against the communities.
- While a resolution is still far from being achieved, many members of the Indigenous communities defending their land claims against TPL have been met with violence and imprisonment.

‘Drastic forest development’: Vietnam to plant 1 billion trees — but how?
- After a string of deadly typhoons in late 2020, Vietnam’s prime minister called for the country to plant 1 billion trees nationwide by 2025 to reduce the risk of landslides and flooding.
- Surprisingly, the government says tree planting will be concentrated in developed areas such as cities and industrial zones; it has not released further specifics on what species will be planted, where, by whom, or the cost.
- Past reforestation campaigns have succeeded in increasing the country’s overall tree cover, but mainly by establishing plantations of non-native species that are regularly clear-cut for paper or timber. Some organizations and farmers are working to change the way Vietnam approaches reforestation.
- This story was produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

In Indonesia, pulp and paper firms stoke demand that may drive deforestation
- Pulp and paper companies are expanding in Indonesia by building new mills, putting more pressure on existing pulpwood plantations to increase their production.
- According to a new NGO report, this could reverse a declining trend of pulpwood-related deforestation in recent years, with producers seen as likely to clear more forests for plantations in order to meet the demand from the new mills.
- Activists, therefore, have called on the government to provide protection foron all natural forests in Indonesia from such an expansion.

Secretive group found to have cleared orangutan habitat in Indonesia: Report
- A new report has identified the secretive Nusantara Fiber group as being responsible for the most deforestation by the industrial forestry industry in Indonesia in the past five years.
- The group’s six subsidiaries cleared a combined 26,000 hectares (64,200 acres) of forest in Indonesian Borneo from 2016 to 2020 to plant pulpwood, timber and biomass trees, according to the report by the NGO Aidenvironment.
- Little is known about the group, but historical records suggest possible ties to the pulpwood and palm oil conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle; the latter has denied any such connection.
- Aidenvironment has called for a halt to the deforestation, which has cleared habitat of the critically endangered Bornean orangutan, and for greater transparency on the ownership structures of both groups, as well as the application of zero-deforestation policies.

‘Hungry’ palm oil, pulpwood firms behind Indonesia land-grab spike: Report
- Land conflicts in Indonesia escalated in 2020, with palm oil and pulpwood companies taking advantage of movement restrictions to expand aggressively, according to a new report.
- These disputes have historically waned during times of economic downturn, but last year’s increase was driven by “land-hungry” companies, according to the NGO Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA).
- Most of the conflicts involved palm oil and pulpwood companies, while infrastructure developments backed by the government were also a major contributor.

Seven financial firms key to rooting out deforestation, report finds
- Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and index funds are some of the most popular investment tools available, popular among individual and institutional investors alike.
- Just a handful of asset management firms control between 60% and 70% of these funds, according to a recent report from the financial think tank Planet Tracker.
- Planet Tracker’s analysis found that $9.3 billion from ETFs is invested in a set of 26 companies engaged in the soybean trade and linked to deforestation.
- The report concludes that the financial firms in which ETFs and index funds are concentrated are critical in addressing financial support for deforestation.

Paper giant APP failing its own sustainability goals, report alleges
- A new report urges bank and buyers to stop doing business with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, for its alleged failure to uphold its own sustainability commitments.
- The report, by the Environmental Paper Network (EPN), a coalition of NGOs, lists a litany of violations — from destruction of tropical peat ecosystems to the prevalence of burning to persistent community conflicts — associated with APP’s operations in Indonesia.
- The company has denied the allegations, saying it continues to make strides in restoring peat areas of its concessions and resolving land disputes with local and Indigenous communities.
- However, the EPN points to a lack of transparency and verifiable progress in both APP’s sustainability commitments and resolution of conflicts.

On plantations and in ‘protected’ areas, Sumatran elephants keep turning up dead
- In Sumatra’s Riau province, 93% of known elephant habitat is in forests where commercial and industrial activity is permitted.
- In the past five years, at least seven elephants have been found dead in pulp and paper concessions controlled by affiliates of industry giants Asia Pulp & Paper and the APRIL group.
- Many of these elephants are believed to have been killed by poachers, who activists say can easily enter and leave concession sites. Activists call on concession holders to do more to protect the animals who range on land under company management.
- Please note: this article contains graphic descriptions and images that could be upsetting to some readers.

Pulp producers pull off $168 million Indonesia tax twist, report alleges
- TPL and APRIL, two major pulp and paper producers in Indonesia, may have deprived the country of $168 million in taxes from 2007-2018 by mislabeling a type of pulp that they exported to China, a new investigation alleges.
- The companies, affiliated with the Singapore-based Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) group, recorded their exports as paper-grade pulp, even though they were purchased by factories in China as higher-value dissolving pulp.
- Paper-grade pulp is used to make paper and packaging, while dissolving pulp is used to make viscose for clothing; Zara and H&M were among the reported buyers of the viscose made from the mislabeled pulp from Indonesia during that time. Both companies have since eliminated controversial sourcing from their supply chains.
- The NGOs behind the investigation say it emphasizes the importance of enforcing greater corporate transparency to prevent companies from using offshore tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions to minimize their domestic tax obligations.

Podcast: Sumatra’s deforestation demystified
- Sumatra contains some of the largest tracts of intact rainforest left in the world, which are relied upon by Indigenous and local peoples plus a massive diversity of wildlife found nowhere else.
- These vast forests are under threat from the rapid expansion of industrial-scale agribusinesses that market both palm oil and pulp and paper products to the global market.
- To understand the causes of the threat better, this episode of the podcast interviews Nur Hidayati, director of top Indonesian environmental group Walhi, and Mongabay editor Philip Jacobson.
- They share that while there are some signs of progress, corruption and a lack of corporate transparency must be dealt with, and alternatives to the production of commodities like palm oil should be pursued.

Brazilian and international banks financing global deforestation: Reports
- According to a new report, some of the world’s biggest Brazilian and international banks invested US$153.2 billion in commodities companies whose activities risked harm to forests in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and Central and West Africa since 2016 when the Paris Climate Agreement was signed.
- These investments were made primarily in forest-risk commodities companies that include beef, soy, pulp and paper, palm oil, rubber and timber producers. The big banks are failing to scrutinize and refuse loans to firms profiting from illegal deforestation, said several reports.
- Banco do Brasil offered the most credit (US$30 billion since 2016), for forest-risk commodity operations. BNDES, Brazil’s development bank, provided US$3.8 billion to forest-risk companies. More than half of that amount went to the beef sector, followed closely by the pulp and paper industry.
- “Financial institutions are uniquely positioned to promote actions in the public and private sector and they have an obligation with their shareholders to mitigate their growing credit risks due to the degradation of natural capital and their association with industries that intensively produce carbon,” said one report.

‘Zero-deforestation’ paper giant APRIL justifies clearing of Sumatran peatland
- A subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest pulp and paper companies is alleged to have cleared carbon-rich and ecologically important peatland in Sumatra that should have been restored.
- The clearing was reported by villagers in July on a concession managed by PT Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (RAPP), a subsidiary of Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL), which has a zero-deforestation policy across the group.
- The area included forest that had been burned in 2016 and that would therefore have qualified for priority restoration under a government program to protect peatlands.
- The government had previously warned RAPP for clearing peatland in 2016 in a different concession, but APRIL says the clearing this time around was legal and approved by the environment ministry.

Paper giant APRIL linked to Borneo forest clearing despite zero-deforestation vow
- One of the world’s biggest pulp and paper producers, APRIL, is alleged to have violated its own zero-deforestation commitment by sourcing wood from a company clearing rainforest in Indonesian Borneo, a new report says.
- APRIL denies the allegation and insists it sourced zero-deforestation wood from AHL; the NGOs say the company’s claim is premised on an exceedingly narrow definition of what constitutes deforestation.
- APRIL denies the allegation and insists it sourced zero-deforestation wood from AHL; the NGOs say the company’s claim is premised on an exceedingly narrow definition of what constitutes deforestation.

Which version? Confusion over environmental fallout of Indonesia deregulation law
- A rule allowing subsistence farmers to burn small plots of land has been reinserted into the Job Creation Act passed last week.
- Other provisions affecting the plantation industry have also been adjusted in a new version of the law that appeared this week.

Paper giant APP’s Sumatran road project cuts through elephant habitat
- A subsidiary of paper giant Asia Pulp & Paper Sinar Mas plans to upgrade a road that cuts through peat and mangrove forests that constitute a wild elephant habitat in Indonesia’s southern Sumatra.
- The project aims to improve connectivity between the company’s pulp mill and port, as part of efforts to turn it into the largest pulp and paper producer in Asia.
- The company has promised that the project will not require the further clearing of peat or mangrove forests and will have minimal impact on the elephant population of about 150.
- Conservationists say they’re worried the project could usher in further development of infrastructure and settlements, which could eventually wipe out the wild elephant population in this region.

Just half of major timber and pulp suppliers committed to zero deforestation: Report
- The world’s 100 most significant timber and pulp companies score just 22.6%, on average, when assessed across 175 environmental, social, and governance indicators, according to the latest assessment by the Zoological Society of London using its Sustainability Policy Transparency Toolkit (SPOTT).
- 2020 is the first way-point towards the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests’ goal of eliminating natural forest loss by 2030, but 44% of companies still don’t have a robust commitment to halting the conversion of natural ecosystems.
- Climate change risk assessments, which are not a requirement of current forest management certification programs, are often viewed by companies as an “optional extra,” and only 4% of firms provided an assessment of their future climate risk.
- More than half of companies are committed to respecting the rights of local communities, but only 9% have published procedures for obtaining free, prior informed consent from local communities on all new developments. Just 11 firms provided evidence they’re paying all workers minimum wage.

Paper giant APP linked to Indonesia peat clearing despite sustainability vow
- Greenpeace Southeast Asia has identified nearly 3,500 hectares (8,650 acres) of peatland clearing in pulpwood plantations in Sumatra supplying Asian Pulp & Paper.
- Analysis of satellite imagery showed the clearing began in August 2018 and continued through June this year, despite APP having a “no peatland” and “no burning” policy that it also imposes on its suppliers.
- Greenpeace and local NGO Jikalahari also found evidence of fires in the concessions in question, which appeared to have been set deliberately to clear the land for planting.
- APP has denied clearing the peatland or setting the fires, calling into question the accuracy of the maps used and saying the fires spread from neighboring farms.

FSC slammed for slow probe into deforestation by firms linked to Indonesia’s richest man
- An environmental NGO that flagged deforestation by two pulpwood companies linked to a Forest Stewardship Council member says the FSC has dragged its feet on carrying out a proper investigation.
- The companies and the FSC member, a paper mill, are all controlled directly or indirectly by Robert Budi Hartono, Indonesia’s richest person.
- The complaint was filed last December, but the investigation only began in February this year, and has been put on hold since June because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the FSC says.
- The NGO has questioned the FSC’s delayed response, its non-standard investigation process, and its apparent failure to link the pulpwood companies to the certified paper mill earlier.

Indonesian parliament to probe pulpwood firm’s dispute with Indigenous group
- Lawmakers in Indonesia want to question pulp and paper company PT Arara Abadi about its dispute with an Indigenous community in Sumatra that resulted in a member of the community being jailed on dubious charges.
- The company has held the concession to the land since 1996, but the Sakai Indigenous tribe have lived and farmed there since 1830, and claim ancestral rights to the area.
- Those rights, however, are not recognized by the government, which allowed PT Arara Abadi, a subsidiary of paper giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), to press charges against Indigenous farmer Bongku for clearing a small plot of pulpwood trees.
- Bongku was granted early release in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and says his fight will continue.

It’s time to rein in the industries devouring the world’s last standing forests (commentary)
- Gaurav Madan, Senior Forests and Lands Campaigner at Friends of the Earth U.S., argues that industrial commodity producers are failing to rein in destruction of the world’s tropical forest, despite a raft of commitments to end deforestation.
- Accordingly, Madan argues, society should prioritize transitioning away from unaccountable production and unfettered consumption.
- “It’s time we end our addiction to endless consumption and realize our future is tied to the fate of the planet,” he writes.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indonesian court jails indigenous farmer in conflict with paper giant APP
- A member of an indigenous community mired in a long-standing land conflict with a subsidiary of paper giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) has been sentenced to a year in prison.
- A court in Indonesia found Bongku, a farmer, guilty of cutting down 20 acacia and eucalyptus trees planted by the company in Sumatra’s Riau province.
- Activists have condemned the verdict, saying the charges didn’t fit the alleged crime and should have been thrown out.
- The case is the latest in a long-running spat between the company and the Sakai indigenous community, who occupied the land decades before the company obtained a permit for its plantation there.

Calls for end to business with paper giant APP over Sumatra land disputes
- A coalition of 90 NGOs has published an open letter urging investors and buyers to stop doing business with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, in light of its ongoing disputes with communities in Sumatra.
- The letter was precipitated specifically by allegations that an APP subsidiary used a drone to spray herbicide on farms belonging to a community with which it’s locked in a land dispute.
- APP has denied wrongdoing in the incident, but activists say the move is just the latest in a campaign of intimidation mounted by the company.
- Another APP affiliate is involved in a similar dispute in another part of Sumatra, which led to the recent jailing of an indigenous farmer for planting food crops on land claimed by both parties.

Conflict between Indonesian villagers, pulpwood firm flares up over crop-killing drone
- Villagers in Sumatra allege that a pulpwood plantation company owned by forestry giant Asia Pulp & Paper has escalated a long-running land dispute by killing their crops and intimidating them.
- Residents of Lubuk Mandarsah say PT Wirakarya Sakti (WKS) used a drone to spray herbicide on their rubber and oil palm trees, and sent security officials door to door to scare villagers into leaving the area.
- The villagers and WKS have since 2007 been embroiled in a dispute over 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres) of land in Sumatra’s Jambi province that both claim.
- Tensions between the two hit breaking point in 2015 when WKS security guards killed a villager during an altercation.

Indonesian police charge indigenous men in dispute over nutmeg plantation
- Police in Indonesia have charged two indigenous men with vandalizing heavy equipment after a confrontation with a company accused of illegally logging their ancestral land.
- The company, CV Sumber Berkat Makmur, has a concession to cultivate nutmeg trees in East Seram district, Maluku province, but it’s unclear whether the ancestral land of the Sabuai indigenous community falls within the concession.
- Activists and local lawmakers have called for a halt to the company’s activities while the uncertainty about its permit is cleared up.
- The case is just the latest in Indonesia in which local authorities have opted to pursue criminal charges against communities mired in land disputes with companies.

Indonesian indigenous land defenders jailed in fight with pulpwood giant
- A court in Indonesia has sentenced two indigenous farmers to nine months in jail in the latest legal battle over land claimed by both the community and pulp and paper company PT Toba Pulp Lestari.
- The two sides have been locked in dispute over the land in North Sumatra’s North Tapanuli district since 1992, with the Sihaporas indigenous community claiming ancestral rights to some 40,000 hectares (98,800 acres) inside the concession granted to PT TPL.
- Tribal elders Jonny and Thomson Ambarita are the latest members of the community to be jailed following charges brought by the company, which itself stands accused of an assault against the community. Authorities have not pursued the Sihaporas complaints against the company.
- Indigenous and land rights activists have criticized what they say was a flawed trial, and called for greater recognition by the Indonesian government of indigenous land rights.

Versace, Amazon, Samsonite among companies listed as deforestation ‘laggards’
- In its annual Forest 500 report, the environmental organization Global Canopy reports on the most influential companies and financial institutions that deal in key commodities linked to deforestation.
- The six commodities that drive deforestation worldwide are leather, beef, palm oil, soybeans, timber, and pulp and paper.
- The report identifies 140 companies as having made no public commitments to ending deforestation, and 100 as having done so but not reporting on the implementation or progress of these commitments.
- It also finds that 68% of 150 financial institutions assessed have zero commitments to deforestation.

Tropical forests’ lost decade: the 2010s
- The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. The world looked like it was on track to significantly reduce tropical deforestation by 2020.
- By the end of the 2019 however, it was clear that progress on protecting tropical forests stalled in the 2010s. The decade closed with rising deforestation and increased incidence of fire in tropical forests.
- According to the U.N., in 2015 global forest cover fell below four billion hectares of forest for the first time in human history.

FSC complaint filed against pulpwood firms tied to Indonesia’s richest man
- An NGO that linked two pulpwood companies to Indonesia’s wealthiest man has alleged continued deforestation by the companies, in violation of sustainability commitments.
- The companies are owned indirectly by cigarette and banking tycoon Robert Budi Hartono, and supply, among others, paper and pulp giants APP and APRIL.
- APP has denied responsibility for the wood sourced from one of the companies, even though it acknowledges having “significant influence” over the mill that bought it.
- APRIL says the supplier hasn’t violated its own sustainability commitment — but part of the reason is that that commitment isn’t retroactively applicable to existing suppliers.

Paper and fast fashion fan the flames burning Indonesia’s peat: Report
- Pulp and paper giants APP and APRIL continue to source their raw material from plantations located on carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia.
- The burning of these peat forests prior to planting accounts for much of the fires that have made Indonesia one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, and of the toxic haze that spreads out to neighboring countries.
- A report by a coalition of NGOs warns that these problems could get worse under the companies’ current peat-intensive business model and a relaxing of peat-protection regulations by the government.
- The companies have disputed the scale of the fires attributed to their suppliers’ plantations, and say they already carry out peat conservation initiatives.

Indonesian enforcement questioned as fires flare up on the same concessions
- Indonesia says it plans to impose stricter punishment for plantation companies with recurring instances of fire on their concessions, including permanently revoking their permits.
- Several of the companies whose concessions have been burning this year were also at the heart of the 2015 fires.
- Activists say the fact that the problem is recurring on the same concessions highlights the government’s failure to adequately punish the companies.
- A Greenpeace report has found no meaningful action taken against palm oil companies guilty of burning since 2015, and inconsistent enforcement against pulpwood companies during that same period.

‘Not a pretty picture’: South China’s forests vanish as tree farms move in
- Forests in South China have been increasingly replaced by monoculture ecalyptus plantations grown for wood fiber for the pulp and paper industry. Even forests under official protection haven’t been spared. Xidamingshan Forest Reserve is one of these, losing so much of its native forest over the past decade that it was delisted by the World Database of Protected Areas in 2018.
- Central government-led environmental inspections in 2016 found that the Guangxi region lost 6.9 percent of its nature reserve areas over a five year period between 2011 and 2015, with the loss primarily due to unclear borders and the ensuing environmental damage from economic activities such as plantation agriculture and mining.
- The Guangxi government set about trying to determine the borders of the Xidamingshan Nature Reserve in 2016, with the final determination coming on Jan. 31, 2019. However, where those borders will actually be depends on the outcomes of negotiations between Guangxi and local governments, and their implementation is at the mercy of a protracted bureaucratic process.
- Meanwhile, forests continue to be lost at a fast pace, with satellite data showing large areas of tree cover loss in 2019.

‘Dangerous’ new regulation puts Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands at risk
- The Indonesian government has effectively rescinded protection for much of its carbon-rich peatlands by issuing a new regulation that limits protection to the area of a peatland ecosystem where the peat is the thickest.
- Concession holders will now be allowed to exploit areas outside these “peat domes,” as long as they maintain the water table, in a mechanism seemingly borrowed straight out of the pulpwood industry playbook.
- Under previous regulations, areas with a layer of peat 3 meters (10 feet) or deeper were off-limits for exploitation, and any companies with such areas in their concessions were obliged to restore and protect them. These areas are now open to exploitation, as long as they’re not considered part of the peat dome.
- Activists warn the new regulation will encourage greater exploitation of Indonesia’s fast-diminishing peatlands, increasing the risks of fire, carbon emissions, and failure to meet the government’s own emissions reduction and peat restoration goals.

Out on a limb: Unlikely collaboration boosts orangutans in Borneo
- Logging and hunting have decimated a population of Bornean orangutans in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park in Indonesia.
- Help has recently come from a pair of unlikely allies: an animal welfare group and a human health care nonprofit.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration to meet the needs of ecosystems and humans is becoming an important tool for overcoming seemingly intractable obstacles in conservation.

Indonesian ban on clearing new swaths of forest to be made permanent
- A temporary moratorium that prohibits the issuance of new permits to clear primary and peat forests is set to be made permanent later this year.
- Though largely ineffective in stemming deforestation in the first few years after its introduction in 2011, the moratorium has since 2016 been shored up by peat-protection regulations that have helped slow the loss of forest cover.
- Environmental activists have welcomed the move to make the moratorium permanent, but say there’s room to strengthen it, such as by extending it to include secondary forests.
- They’ve also called for the closing of a loophole that allows primary and peat forests to be razed for plantations of rice, sugarcane and other crops deemed important to national food security.

Altered forests threaten sustainability of subsistence hunting
- In a commentary, two conservation scientists say that changes to the forests of Central and South America may mean that subsistence hunting there is no longer sustainable.
- Habitat loss and commercial hunting have put increasing pressure on species, leading to the loss of both biodiversity and a critical source of protein for these communities.
- The authors suggest that allowing the hunting of only certain species, strengthening parks and reserves, and helping communities find alternative livelihoods and sources of food could help address the problem, though they acknowledge the difficult nature of these solutions.

’Green’ bonds finance industrial tree plantations in Brazil
- The Environmental Paper Network (EPN), a group of some 140 NGOs with the goal of making the pulp and paper industry more sustainable, released a briefing contending that green or climate bonds issued by Fibria, a pulp and paper company, went to maintaining and expanding plantations of eucalyptus trees.
- The report suggests that the Brazilian company inflated the amount of carbon that new planting would store.
- The author of the briefing also questions the environmental benefits of maintaining industrial monocultures of eucalyptus, a tree that requires a lot of water along with herbicides, pesticides and fertilizer that can impact local ecosystems and human communities.

’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.

In Indonesia, a paper giant shuffles a litany of land conflicts
- Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and its suppliers are mired in more than a hundred land conflicts with communities in Indonesia, with a potential 600 additional disputes looming, activists say.
- Many of the conflicts center on the lack of clear boundaries between the company’s concessions and community lands.
- The company says it is working to resolve these disputes, but adds that the process is long and complicated.
- All sides agree that the government, in charge of demarcating village boundaries, needs to be more involved in the conflict-resolution process.

Peat protection rule may be a double-edged sword for Indonesia’s forests
- A government regulation issued in 2016 requires logging companies to restore peat with protected status in their concessions, mostly in Sumatra, and prohibits them from developing on it.
- But activists say this prohibition threatens a massive supply shortfall for two of the world’s biggest paper producers, which they warn could push the companies to source wood from unprotected forests in other parts of Indonesia.
- Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) face a supply crunch of up to 30 percent and 25 percent respectively, according to an analysis by NGOs.
- Both companies dispute this finding, saying their supplies remain secure even as they seek to boost their output.

Malaysian state chief: Highway construction must not destroy forest
- The chief minister of Sabah, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, said that the Pan Borneo Highway project should expand existing roads where possible to minimize environmental impact.
- A coalition of local NGOs and scientific organizations applauded the announcement, saying that it could usher in a new era of collaboration between the government and civil society to look out for Sabah’s people and forests.
- These groups have raised concerns about the impacts on wildlife and communities of the proposed path of the highway, which will cover some 5,300 kilometers (3,300 miles) in the states of Sabah and Sarawak.

European Parliament to vote on timber legality agreement with Vietnam
- The European Parliament begins debate March 11 on a resolution to consent to the recently signed Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with Vietnam on the trade of timber and timber products from the Southeast Asian country.
- The VPA is the result of nearly eight years of negotiations aimed at stopping the flow of illegally harvested timber into the EU.
- Members of parliament are expected to vote in favor of the resolution on March 12, though officials in the EU and outside observers have voiced concerns about the legality of the wood imported into Vietnam from other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Borneo study explores links between farm expansion and deforestation
- A nearly two-decade study of land-cover change in Borneo has identified a positive correlation between the loss of forests and the expansion of plantations, primarily for oil palms.
- The findings undermine the long-held position of industry and government representatives that plantation expansion doesn’t contribute to deforestation and that it makes use of already cleared land.
- The study also highlighted a slowdown in rates of both deforestation and plantation expansion, which the researchers attributed to declining process of crude palm oil, more stringent regulations on forest clearing, and wetter weather in 2017.
- While the expansion of plantations hit a new low in 2017, activists say the possible illegal clearing of peat forests continues unabated in Indonesian Borneo, despite repeated calls to the government for action.

The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
- This is our annual rainforests year in review post.
- Overall, 2018 was not a good year for the planet’s tropical rainforests.
- Rainforest conservation suffered many setbacks, especially in Brazil, the Congo Basin, and Madagascar.
- Colombia was one of the few bright spots for rainforests in 2018.

Forestry reforms could fall short without PM’s backing in Ukraine
- Ukraine’s prime minister called for “a massive crackdown” on his country’s timber sector after allegations of widespread corruption and illegality.
- The London-based NGO Earthsight first revealed the potential illegalities in a July 2018 report, and since then, independent investigations from WWF Ukraine and the EU’s Technical Assistance and Information Exchange have corroborated Earthsight’s findings.
- A reform package that would allow for independent enforcement of Ukraine’s forestry laws and increased transparency has been approved by the country’s cabinet of ministers, but it still lacks the signature and public backing of Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

Fires and haze return to Indonesia as peat protection bid falls short
- Fires on peatlands on Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra islands have flared up again this year after relatively fire-free dry seasons in 2016 and 2017.
- The government has enacted wide-ranging policies to restore peatland following the disastrous fires of 2015 that razed an area four times the size of Grand Canyon National Park.
- However, the fires this year have sprung up in regions that have been prioritized for peat restoration, suggesting the government’s policies have had little impact.
- Officials and activists are also split over who to blame for the fires, with the government citing smallholder farmers, and environmentalists pointing to large plantation companies.

Report finds APP and APRIL violating zero-deforestation policies with wood purchases from Djarum Group concessions in East Kalimantan
- Paper giants APP and APRIL might have defaulted on their zero-deforestation commitments, a new report by a coalition of NGOs says.
- The report alleges APP and APRIL purchased wood from companies clearing natural forest in Indonesian Borneo.
- Both companies have denied the allegations, with APRIL saying the wood was sourced from non-high conservation value (HCV) areas, and APP saying it received the wood after an administrative lapse and had since quarantined the shipment.

EU demand siphons illicit timber from Ukraine, investigation finds
- Corrupt management of Ukraine’s timber sector is supplying the EU with large amounts of wood from the country’s dense forests.
- The London-based investigative nonprofit Earthsight found evidence that forestry officials have taken bribes to supply major European firms with Ukrainian wood that may have been harvested illegally.
- Earthsight argues that EU-based companies are not carrying out the due diligence that the EU Timber Regulation requires when buying from “high-risk” sources of timber.

Revealed: Paper giant’s ex-staff say it used their names for secret company in Borneo
- Last December, it came to light that a plantation company clearing forest in Indonesia was owned by two employees of Asia Pulp & Paper, a giant firm that has promised to stop deforesting.
- APP claimed the employees had set up the company on their own, without management knowing. But an investigation by Mongabay provides evidence that contradicts APP’s story.
- The findings place APP squarely in the middle of an emerging debate about the presence of “shadow companies” among the holdings of the conglomerates that dominate Indonesia’s plantation sector.

Orangutan forest school in Indonesia takes on its first eight students
- A forest school in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, funded by the Vienna-based animal welfare organization Four Paws and run by the local organization Jejak Pulang, has just started training its first eight orangutan orphans to learn the skills they need to live independently in the forest.
- Borneo’s orangutans are in crisis, with more than 100,000 lost since 1999 through direct killings and loss of habitat, particularly to oil palm and pulpwood plantations.
- Security forces often confiscate juvenile orangutans under 7 years of age, and without their mothers to teach them the skills they need, they cannot be released back into the forest.
- Jejak Pulang’s team of 15 orangutan caretakers, a biologist, two veterinarians and the center’s director aim to prepare the orphaned orangutans for independence.

Indonesia land swap, meant to protect peatlands, risks wider deforestation, NGOs say
- Under a government program, pulpwood and logging companies in Indonesia are eligible for a land swap if their existing concessions include at least 40 percent protected peatland.
- However, a lack of transparency over how the substitute areas are selected has led to fears that up to half the land that could potentially be awarded may be natural forest, thereby speeding up deforestation in the name of protecting peatland.
- There are also fears that granting eligible companies these substitute areas, which the government says will be on abandoned or undeveloped timber concessions, will reignite conflicts with local communities.
- The government has promised to publish a map of the land swap areas, adding it wants to ensure the new lands don’t include natural forests and won’t spark conflicts with local communities.

Do environmental advocacy campaigns drive successful forest conservation?
- How effective are advocacy campaigns at driving permanent policy changes that lead to forest conservation results? We suspected this might be a difficult question to answer scientifically, but nevertheless we gamely set out to see what researchers had discovered when they attempted to do so as part of a special Mongabay series on “Conservation Effectiveness.”
- We ultimately reviewed 34 studies and papers, and found that the scientific evidence is fairly weak for any claims about the effectiveness of advocacy campaigns. So we also spoke with several experts in forest conservation and advocacy campaigns to supplement our understanding of some of the broader trends and to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge.
- We found no evidence that advocacy campaigns on their own drive long-term forest conservation, though they do appear to be valuable in terms of raising awareness of environmental issues and driving people to take action. But it’s important to note that, of all the conservation interventions we examined for the Conservation Effectiveness series, advocacy campaigns appear to have the weakest evidence base in scientific literature.

Indonesian palm, pulp companies commit to peatland restoration
- Some 125 palm oil and pulp companies have committed to restoring a combined 14,000 square kilometers (5,400 square miles) of degraded peatlands that fall within their leases over the next eight years.
- The move is part of government-driven efforts to prevent a repeat of the massive land and forest fires that flared up in 2015, largely as a result of peatlands being drained for planting and rendered highly combustible.
- At the heart of the rehabilitation work is the extensive blocking of drainage canals, which aims to restore moisture to the peat soil.

Audio: Lessons from indigenous peoples about coping with climate change, plus the call of the night parrot
- Happy new year to all our listeners out there! On our first episode of 2018, we speak with the author of a book about the resilience of indigenous peoples in the face of climate change, and we’ll hear some recordings of the elusive night parrot in Australia!
- Our first guest today is Gleb Raygorodetsky, the author of The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change, which details the author’s experiences with a number of Indigenous cultures and the ways their lives on their traditional territories are being reshaped by the impacts of global warming.
- Our second guest is Nick Leseberg, a PhD student at the University of Queensland in Australia whose work focuses solely on the night parrot, a species endemic to Australia that scientists have only recently been able to study. Just four years ago, nobody knew what a night parrot sounded like — but now Leseberg is here to play us some of the calls he’s recorded in this Field Notes segment.

Paper giant and its ‘suppliers’ are essentially one and the same, investigation finds
- A new investigation reveals intimate connections between Asia Pulp & Paper, which is Indonesia’s largest paper producer, and 25 of the plantation companies that supply it with pulpwood.
- The firm has always claimed the suppliers are “independent” entities, separate from Asia Pulp & Paper itself. But the investigation suggests that that they are all part of the same conglomerate.
- The supplier companies are often linked to deforestation, haze-causing fires, and conflict with indigenous communities.

Companies still not doing enough to cut deforestation from commodities supply chains: report
- The latest “Forest 500” rankings are out from the Global Canopy Programme (GCP), and the main takeaway is that the global companies with the most influence over forests still aren’t doing enough to cut tropical deforestation out of their supply chains.
- Just five companies improved their policies enough over the last year to score a perfect five out of five in the 2017 rankings. Commitments to root deforestation out of timber and palm oil supply chains did increase, according to the report, but less than one-fourth of the Forest 500 companies have adopted policies to cover all of the commodities in their supply chains.
- Progress among financial institutions also continues to be sluggish, the GCP’s researchers found, with just 13 financial institutions scoring four out of five and 65 scoring zero. No financial institutions have received the maximum possible score.

RAPP to retire some plantation land in Sumatra amid government pressure
- A subsidiary of paper giant APRIL has agreed in principle to retire a large part of its plantations in eastern Sumatra for conservation purposes, following government orders.
- The company initially refused to comply with what it saw as an illegal order, and warned of a 50 percent reduction in supply from its concessions.
- In giving up part of its concessions, RAPP is demanding to be compensated with new land — something the government has agreed to do in stages.

FSC mulls rule change to allow certification for recent deforesters
- Motion 7 passed at the FSC General Assembly meeting in Vancouver on Oct. 13, indicating that the organization will pursue a change to its rules allowing companies that have converted forests to plantations since 1994 to go for certification.
- Current rules do not allow FSC certification for any companies that have cleared forested land since 1994.
- Proponents of a rule change say it would allow more companies to be held to FSC standards and could result in the restoration or conservation of ‘millions of hectares’ in compensation for recent deforestation.
- Opponents argue that FSC is bending to industry demands and that a rule change will increase the pressure for land conversion on communities and biodiversity.

Land-swap rule among Indonesian President Jokowi’s latest peat reforms
- To prevent another round of devastating wildfires, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration has issued a series of policies governing the management of peatlands — carbon-rich swamps that have been widely drained and dried by the nation’s agribusinesses, rendering them highly flammable.
- The administration hopes a new land-swap scheme will help it claw back peat from big oil palm and timber planters, providing a means to supply the firms with additional land elsewhere in the country.
- Business associations complain about the new policy, saying it’s not feasible for a company in Sumatra to move its operations all the way to Papua.
- Environmental pressure groups, meanwhile, call the regulation an unfair boon for large firms, providing a rapacious industry with more land than the vast amounts it already controls.

First real test for Jokowi on haze as annual fires return to Indonesia
- Land and forest fires have broken out in pockets of Indonesia since mid-July.
- Last year the country caught a break, when a longer-than-normal wet season brought on by La Niña helped mitigate the fire threat.
- This year, hotspots have started appearing in regions with no history of major land and forest fires, like East Nusa Tenggara and Aceh.
- The government has responded by declaring an emergency status as well as deploying firefighters.

Transforming business as usual in Indonesia: an interview with Aida Greenbury
- Aida Greenbury is the former Chief Sustainability Officer at Asia Pulp & Paper, a forestry giant with extensive operations in Indonesia.
- Greenbury was the lead internal architect for APP’s 2013 forest conservation policy, which is today one of the most ambitious zero deforestation commitments in the plantation sector.
- Greenbury left APP in May and is today working on collaborative initiatives to protect and restore ecosystems.

New investor guide aims to help navigate social and environmental risks of commodities supply chains
- Procuring agricultural commodities has become a much more difficult business function for food makers and agribusiness conglomerates to perform amidst rising global temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns, as well as increasingly widespread groundwater depletion and soil erosion, all of which affect agricultural productivity and raise the cost of sourcing in-demand raw materials.
- Engage the Chain offers guidance to investors on how to evaluate the level of risk in their portfolios, and also includes a number of examples of the types of threats these environmental and social impacts can pose to companies that, unwittingly or not, find their supply chains associated with them, from reputational and brand damage to litigation and running afoul of regulators.
- Ceres developed the guide through a peer review process that included input from top investors, a number of companies involved in the global commodities trade, and environmental NGOs.

‘Give us back our land’: paper giants struggle to resolve conflicts with communities in Sumatra
- Plantation firms like Asia Pulp & Paper and Toba Pulp Lestari have a long history of land grabbing, often dating back to the New Order military dictatorship. More recently, they have pledged to eliminate the practice from their supply chains.
- Many of the conflicts remain unaddressed. The companies say they are working hard to resolve them.
- A new online platform launched by the Rainforest Action Network shows that communities are still suffering the impacts of having their traditional forests and lands seized to make way for plantations.

Indonesia’s plantation lobby challenges environmental law
- The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) and the Indonesian Association of Forestry Concessionaires (APHI) lodged a judicial review with the Constitutional Court last month.
- They want the court to edit the 1999 Forestry Law and the 2009 Environment Law so that companies are not strictly liable for fires that occur in their concessions.
- They also want to the court to extend the ban on using fire to clear land to small farmers.

Indonesian governor asks president to let timber firms drain peat in his province
- West Kalimantan Governor Cornelis asked President Joko Widodo to let some timber plantation companies drain peatlands, even though Jakarta banned the practice last year.
- In a letter to the president dated Apr. 25, Cornelis makes an economic argument for allowing the companies to proceed as usual.
- Cornelis is a member of an international consortium of governors dedicated to fighting climate change; Greenpeace said his request to the president amounted to a “double standard.”
- His request came just days after Jakarta sanctioned a timber firm in his province for building an illegal canal through the Sungai Putri peat swamp forest.

Rainforest conservation may be aimed at the wrong places, study finds
- Climate-based conservation policies often focus on forests with large carbon stores – but what this means for biodiversity protection has been unclear.
- Previous research found a link between tree diversity and carbon storage on the small-scale, with tropical forests that have more tree species possessing larger stores of carbon. But this correlation had not been tested for larger areas.
- Researchers examined thousands of trees at hundreds of sites in the tropical forests of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Their results indicate that on the one-hectare scale, tree diversity is low and carbon storage is quite high in Africa, while the opposite is the case in South America. In Southeast Asia, both carbon stocks and tree diversity appear to be high.
- The researchers say their results indicate carbon-focused conservation policies may be missing highly biodiverse ecosystems, and recommend a more fine-tuned approach for prioritizing areas for conservation.

Governments must do more to help companies end deforestation in commodities supply chains, companies say
- Fern conducted interviews with and policy reviews of 15 companies, from major consumer-facing companies like IKEA, Nestlé, and Unilever, to producers and traders such as APP (Asia Pulp and Paper), Cargill, Golden Agri-Resources, and Sime Darby.
- One overriding message emerged, Fern reports: companies see government policies and actions — or lack thereof — as one of the main obstacles to cleaning up their supply chains.
- Many companies view the governments of countries where commodities production occurs as having a crucial role to play in “creating an enabling framework of rules, regulations and effective administration without which private sector commitments to tackle deforestation can only have limited impact,” the report states.

In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, conservation efforts drown in a sea of eucalyptus
- Since 2001, Brazil has almost doubled its area of protected land without increasing its conservation budget.
- In the central corridor of the Atlantic Forest, protected areas are scattered among large extensions of eucalyptus monocultures maintained by pulp companies.
- With limited resources and facing powerful companies, those in charge of protected areas are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

In defining plantations as forest, FAO attracts criticism
- The FAO lumps non-oil palm tree plantations into its definition of forest cover when conducting its Global Forest Resource Assessments. The assessments analyze land cover change in countries around the world using largely self-reported data.
- Nearly 200 organizations have signed an open letter authored by the NGO World Rainforest Movement to change how they define forest.
- Remote sensing technology currently doesn’t provide the ability to differentiate the canopies of forests and tree plantations. But researchers say that within a decade, technological advances will make this a reality.
- A representative of FAO said the organization is unlikely to change its definition since it is already well established and accepted by governments and other stakeholders.

Clothing giant VF Corporation adopts sustainable forestry policy
- The policy, announced late last month, lays out purchasing guidelines for materials that go into the company’s clothing and packaging, especially wood pulp, paper, and wood-based fabrics like rayon and viscose.
- It also commits VF Corp to using products made with recycled fiber whenever possible, and to promoting the use of Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper and fiber when sourcing virgin materials.
- VF Corp owns such brands as The North Face, Timberland, Vans, and Wrangler, and is said to be the largest clothing conglomerate in the United States, with 2016 revenues topping $12 billion.

Where the forest grants went
- With a view to providing a map of forest philanthropy, the Environmental Funders Network’s Forest Funders Group – an affinity group for foundations focused on forest conservation – has developed a methodology for describing forest grants by geography, focal issue, and approach.
- The mapping has been piloted on grants data submitted by five European-based foundations that made 652 grants between them in the study period (2011 to 2015), averaging £3.1m per year.
- Although this captures just a fraction of the forest grants made worldwide, it yields tantalising points for reflection.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Greenpeace slams paper giant over loophole in fire-prevention policy
- APRIL is Indonesia’s second-largest paper firm. It sources pulpwood from a vast network of suppliers in the archipelago country.
- It has come to light that APRIL’s fire-prevention policy exempts short-term suppliers. These compose a major portion of its supply base.
- Some suppliers defined as “short term” by APRIL have actually been supplying the company for years, according to Greenpeace.

Deforestation-free commodities represent a major investment opportunity: Report
- Agricultural commodities — especially beef, palm oil, soy, and pulp and paper — have become an increasingly important driver of deforestation over the past couple decades, particularly in the tropics.
- While there’s a lot of work left to be done, WEF and TFA 2020 see momentum building toward a sea change in the global supply chain for these much-in-demand commodities.
- Overcoming the barriers to sustainable production of the big four commodities and supporting the transition to deforestation-free supply chains represents an investment opportunity that will “roughly total US$ 200 billion annually” by 2020, per the report.

Green groups want paper giant to stop using drained peat in Indonesia
- Indonesia’s vast peat swamp zones have been widely drained and dried for agriculture. The practice underlies the devastating annual fires that in 2015 burned an area the size of Vermont and sickened half a million people.
- Asia Pulp & Paper is Indonesia’s largest paper company. About a quarter of its vast holdings consist of peat.
- The government has banned any new development on peatlands. NGOs want the company to go farther, rewetting and restoring all of the peat in its concessions, even that which has already been planted with acacia.

Scientists ‘impressed and delighted’ by animals found in remnant forests
- A new study finds promising conservation value in forest corridors along rivers in Sumatra’s plantation-dominated landscape.
- But government regulations require areas of forest that border rivers — called “riparian” forests – be left standing to safeguard water quality for downstream communities.
- In the first study of its kind conducted in the tropics, researchers set camera traps in riparian forests through tree plantations near Tesso Nilo National Park. They found a significant mammal presence, including tapirs, tigers, bears, pangolins, and elephants.
- The researchers say their findings indicate Sumatra’s forest remnants could help keep wildlife populations afloat in areas with lots of habitat loss. However, they caution that these corridors are threatened by lax regulation enforcement, and can only work in tandem with larger forested areas.

How local elites earn money from burning land in Indonesia
- Members of political parties and local figures are organizing farmers to burn land for sale to a variety of large and small buyers, a new study shows.
- These elites pocket most of the profits from this destructive and illegal activity. Village officials who administer land documents and the workers who carry out the burning also receive a cut.
- For the fires to stop, the study says, these actors must be disempowered through law and policy.

New study analyzes biggest threats to Southeast Asian biodiversity
- Deforestation rates in Southeast Asia are some of the highest anywhere on Earth, and the rate of mining is the highest in the tropics.
- The region also has a number of hydropower dams under construction, and consumption of species for traditional medicines is particularly pronounced.
- A new study published in the journal Ecosphere analyzing all of the threats to Southeast Asia’s biodiversity concludes that the region “may be under some of the greatest levels of biotic threat.”

The year in tropical rainforests: 2016
- After 2015’s radical advancements in transparency around tropical forests between improved forest cover monitoring systems and corporate policies on commodity sourcing, progress slowed in 2016 with no major updates on tropical forest cover, resistance from several governments in releasing forest data, and some notable backtracking on zero deforestation commitments.
- But even without the pan-tropical updates, we know that deforestation increased sharply in the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for the world’s largest area of tropical forest.
- Low commodity prices may have bought some relief for forests.

Top climate stories to watch in 2017
- Renewable energy use has never been higher — but on the other hand, 2016 brought with it news of record fossil fuel consumption, as well.
- Meanwhile, the Paris Climate Agreement went into force on November 4, far sooner than anyone ever expected, signaling a new era of international climate action — but just a few days later, the U.S., the second-largest emitter in the world, elected a new president who has called global warming a hoax and pledged to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement as soon as possible.
- Here, in no particular order, are some of the top stories to keep an eye on in the new year.

As accusations fly, paper giant appears to stand by its replanting of burned peat in Sumatra
- After the 2015 fire and haze crisis, the Indonesian government barred plantation firms from replanting the peatlands that had burned in their concessions. Instead, the companies were ordered to restore the dried-out peat soil to prevent future fires.
- Some agribusinesses, however, are said to be resurrecting their drainage-dependent acacia and oil palm estates in violation of the directive from President Jokowi’s administration. One of them is Asia Pulp & Paper, an arm of the Sinar Mas conglomerate.
- APP declined to comment substantively for this article, except to imply that everything it does is in accordance with the rules. But a director in the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry explained that the company had been authorized to replant burned peat with acacia trees because, he said, it would serve to mitigate certain fire risks.
- NGOs surveyed by Mongabay rejected the contention that planting peat with drainage-dependent acacia constitutes a valid means of peatland restoration, although some were more understanding of the government’s position than others.

Companies are underestimating the risks of deforestation in their commodities supply chains
- London-based non-profit CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, released a report earlier this month, produced on behalf of 365 investors representing $22 trillion in funds, that analyzes data disclosures by 187 companies regarding their deforestation risk management strategies.
- Despite the significant share of their income that is dependent on cattle products, palm oil, soy, and timber products, just 42 percent of the companies surveyed by CDP have evaluated their supply chains in order to determine how their growth strategies for the next five years will be impacted by the availability or quality of those raw materials.
- In its third annual ranking of what it calls the “Forest 500,” the UK-based think tank Global Canopy Programme (GCP) determined that, given the current rate of progress, ambitious deforestation targets for 2020 and 2030 such as those committed to by the Consumer Goods Forum and signatories to the New York Declaration on Forests, aren’t likely to be met.

Green groups raise red flags over Jokowi’s widely acclaimed haze law
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo last week codified a much-praised moratorium on peatland development into law.
- Though widely reported as a permanent ban on clearing and draining the archipelago’s carbon-rich peat swamps, the prohibition will only last until the government finishes mapping and zoning the nation’s peatlands, although stronger protections have been put in place.
- Norway praised the policy’s legalization, announcing it would release $25 million to support the sustainable management of Indonesia’s peatlands.
- Some environmental groups tell Mongabay that the regulation pays insufficient heed to the scientific evidence of what is required to prevent the wholesale collapse of peatland ecosystems.

69m people breathed toxic smoke from 2015 Indonesian fires: study
- The study was led by a researcher from Newcastle University and published in the journal Scientific Reports.
- The findings support an earlier study which concluded that 100,300 people are likely to have died prematurely as a result of last year’s fires.
- Researchers said they could have drawn more reliable conclusions if local hospitalization data had been available, but such data is scarce.

Parents who say Indonesia’s haze killed their children testify in citizen suit
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo has promised to prosecute companies linked to last year’s fire and haze disaster.
- In July, though, the Riau Police terminated investigations into 15 companies the environment ministry had listed in connection with the burning.
- At least two lawsuits challenging the dropping of the cases are now underway.

139 scientists shoot down ‘misleading’ reports from Malaysia peat congress
- The researchers issued an open letter in response to certain newspaper articles about the 15th International Peat Congress, held recently in Malaysia, a top palm oil producer.
- One article erroneously portrays an IPC executive as endorsing new studies finding drainage-based peatland agriculture to be not necessarily unsustainable, when the executive made no such comments.
- More broadly, the articles in question portray as fringely held the view that drainage-based peatland development is unsustainable, when in fact it is backed by an extensive body of research and held by a large number of scientists, not just by “militant environmentalists” and “green NGOs” as implied by the articles.
- The articles were published in The Jakarta Post and The Borneo Post.

Indonesia seeks foreign funds to aid peat restoration drive
- The head of Indonesia’s peat restoration agency said corporate social responsibility and donor funds would not be enough to meet the country’s target.
- Indonesia’s finance ministry is preparing a reform package to provide incentives to invest in peat rehabilitation.
- The environment ministry has moved to issue five timber companies with administrative sanctions for complicity in wildfires burning on their concessions.
- Three companies had their licenses altogether revoked; land from two of those concessions will be converted into a buffer zone for Tesso Nilo National Park.

SE Asian governments dismiss finding that 2015 haze killed 100,300
- On Monday, researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities reported that 100,300 people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are likely to have died prematurely from haze produced by last year’s devastating agricultural fires in Indonesia.
- Government officials from the three countries cast doubt on the findings.
- One of the study’s authors suggested the figure was actually conservative, as it only accounted for adults and for deaths that could occur within one year of exposure to the haze.

Pulp and paper supplier denies draining peat on island near Singapore
- Haze-causing fires are continuing to burn in Indonesia, especially in West Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo.
- The CEO of PT RAPP, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s second-largest pulp and paper company, said the canals his firm was accused of digging recently in order to drain peat soil for planting were actually meant to serve as reservoirs to aid firefighting in the burned-out concession.
- Indonesia’s peatland restoration agency is investigating the company’s activities.

‘A major concern’: plantation-driven deforestation ramps up in Borneo
- Researchers analyzed satellite data and historical land cover maps to determine how much forest was cleared for plantations between 1973 and 2015.
- In total, they found 18.7 million hectares of old-growth forest was cleared between 1973 and 2015. Of that, they concluded 4.5 to 4.8 million hectares were cleared for plantation expansion – mostly for palm oil production.
- They found less plantation-driven deforestation on the Indonesian side than they were expecting, but a big jump from 2005 to 2015. Malaysia has remained relatively constant since the 1970s.
- The researchers recommend their findings be used to increase transparency and accountability.

These banks are pumping billions into Southeast Asia’s deforestation
- The new Forests and Finance database was launched on Tuesday by a coalition of research and campaign groups.
- The data show that in 2010-2015, banks in Asia and the West pumped over $50 billion into Southeast Asian forest-risk companies.
- Many banks lack policies to prevent their money from being used to harm the environment.
- Even the policies that do appear strong on paper are often of little effect, experts say.

Indonesian military plans anti-haze operation in Sumatra
- Indonesian daily Kompas reported that military officers on Thursday used a speedboat to access a four-hectare fire burning in Simpang Tiga village, Ogan Komering Ilir district.
- This week the newly appointed police chief criticized Singaporean law for the latitude it gave the city state to sanction Indonesian citizens complicit in burning land.
- The Singapore Environment Council continues to push retailers to remove product lines sourced from companies complicit in wild fires.

Another Indonesian court convicts a company of causing fires
- In December 2015, plantation company PT Bumi Mekar Hijau was acquitted in a civil suit the government had filed against it for letting fires ravage its land in 2014.
- Now, an appeals court has reversed that decision, ordering the company to pay $6 million in compensation.
- Environmentalists wished the company had been made to pay a higher penalty, given that the government was asking for more than $600 million. The 2015 Southeast Asian haze crisis cost Indonesia $16 billion, according to the World Bank.

Indonesian parliament to investigate fire-linked firms in Riau

Fire set for peatland clearing in Riau Province, Indonesia in July 2015. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

The Indonesian parliament will form a task force to look into the cancelling of investigations against 15 companies alleged to be complicit in fires in Riau, the country’s top palm oil producing province. Legislators made the announcement on Friday as burning in Sumatra and Kalimantan continued to spread, prompting emergency responses from authorities there. The fires are an […]
Indonesia’s peat restoration chief calls for protection of all peat domes

Drainage canal dug through peat swamp in Riau Province. Photo by Rhett A Butler

The Indonesian agency set up to prevent a recurrence of last year’s devastating forest and peatland fires is calling for all peat domes in the country to be designated as protected areas. Indonesian law already prohibits development on deep peatlands, where the carbon-rich peat soil can extend for many meters below the surface. But the country’s vague peat […]
Company ordered to pay record $76m over fires in Sumatra
- The case concerned fires that burned across PT National Sago Prima’s concession in Indonesia’s Riau province in 2014.
- The company was deemed to have been negligent in failing to prevent the fires because it did not have the proper firefighting equipment and infrastructure on hand.
- The fires were also deemed to have damaged the environment and the economy.

Fires begin to appear en masse as Indonesia’s burning season gets going
- Nearly 300 hotspots were detected over Sumatra and Kalimantan on Monday.
- By Wednesday, that number had dropped somewhat, though authorities said they expected the fires to increase as Indonesia enters the dry season.
- Police in Riau arrested a man for burning a small plot of land, while the NGO Walhi said authorities should focus on burning by large companies.

What are South Sumatrans doing to prevent another haze crisis?
- Residents are still digging canals to drain peatlands, which dries out the soil and makes it prone to burning in the dry season.
- Villagers near pulp and paper supplier PT Bumi Mekar Hijau’s concession, much of which burned last year, say they are upset with the company.
- A small number of residents have been enlisted to serve as part of a Fire Care Community Group to patrol the area, but a local official says it needs to be expanded.

Many commitments, little transparency in cutting deforestation from corporate supply chains
- Out of 566 companies that collectively represent $7.3 trillion in market capitalization and were identified by Forest Trends as having some deforestation risk from at least one of four commodities in their supply chains, 366 have committed to sustainable sourcing.
- Just over 60 percent of companies active in palm oil have adopted pledges, compared to only 15 percent and 19 percent of companies active in cattle and soy, respectively.
- Companies have only reported quantifiable progress toward the goals of one in three commitments to go deforestation-free.

Recent plantation expansions on peatlands came with huge carbon costs
- Draining peatland for tree plantations is considered one of the main drivers of Indonesia’s 2015 fire and haze crisis.
- Even if they aren’t burned, drained peatlands release huge quantities of CO2.
- New research and analysis finds oil palm and wood fiber plantations have continued to expand into peatlands in recent years, with consequential carbon emissions equating to more than 6,000 gallons of gasoline burned for every hectare of peatland drained.

Grim forecast for paper giant’s wood supply raises deforestation fears
- Asia Pulp & Paper spent decades eating through Indonesia’s vast rainforests. Then in 2013, it promised to stop logging natural forests and rely on plantation timber exclusively.
- The company’s huge new mill in Sumatra, though, will require vast quantities of wood when it starts operating this year.
- A new NGO report suggests the company will have to resume deforestation or risk shattering financial losses. APP has dismissed those concerns, promising to import wood chips if needed.

Another pulp and paper supplier suspended for role in Indonesian haze crisis
- After last year’s devastating fires, the Indonesian government is cracking down on companies thought to have played a role in causing them.
- Many of the fires occurred on land belonging to pulp and paper giant APRIL.
- The recent suspension of PT Rimba Lazuardi follows a similar action against PT Sumatra Riang Lestari, another APRIL supplier.

Companies asked to pitch in to Indonesia’s peat restoration drive as early fires flare in Sumatra
- Twenty-two hotspots were spotted in Riau province on Thursday, with rain expected to quell them in mid-April.
- Central Kalimantan province, the worst-hit of last year’s fire and haze crisis, continues to suffer an urgent shortage of doctors, a local politician said.
- A prominent NGO official called on Jakarta to establish a dedicated agency to see through the all-important One Map initiative.

A bleak future for the U.S. ‘wood basket’? Southern forests under threat
- The forests of the southern states have been providing much of U.S. lumber for centuries, with 12 percent of the world’s wood products sourced from the region in 2011.
- A new publication from the United States Forest Service shows the number of lumber mills in the South has been greatly reduced in the past few decades.
- But the head of a major conservation organization working in the area warns that logging is still a big issue in the region, one that is likely to grow in the coming years as demand increases for renewable energy.

New study finds insufficient degraded land for further strong oil palm expansion in Kalimantan
- Major palm oil companies say they can increase production without destroying more forests, in part by expanding into degraded lands only.
- A new study, though, finds that may be easier said than done in Kalimantan, which lies at the center of the industry’s boom in Indonesia.
- If palm oil demand keeps growing at a high rate, degraded land alone won’t be able to accommodate the expansion that will be necessary to satisfy it, the researchers found.

Breakthrough: Indonesia’s highest court orders release of mining data
- The ruling is the result of a freedom of information request filed by NGOs in 2014.
- It pertains to Kutai Kartanegara, a district in East Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo.
- It could set a precedent for other freedom of information requests in the natural resources sector, whose opacity has come under increasing assault by civil society.

Emergency declared as fires reappear in Sumatra
- A state of emergency has been declared in six areas of Riau province where fires are flaring.
- The fires are nowhere near as bad as they were last year, but the emergency status will activate additional resources for fighting them.
- Smoke from the fires has not drifted into Singapore or Malaysia because the winds are blowing in the other direction.

$1m for devising best way to map Indonesia’s peatlands
- Bad maps have undermined Indonesia’s development for a long time.
- For one, they have made it tough to fight the annual forest and peatland fires.
- Now, the government wants to establish a national standard for mapping the country’s peat. It will do so through a competition, the Indonesian Peat Prize.

New tool seeks end to Indonesian paper giants’ secret links
- The Sinar Mas and Royal Golden Eagle conglomerates are connected with dozens of companies in Indonesia’s pulp and paper sector.
- The Environmental Paper Network has created a database that aspires to list these connections, many of which are hidden from public view.
- Sinar Mas’ most prominent holding in the sector is Asia Pulp & Paper, while RGE’s is APRIL.

Indonesia’s peat peninsula being drained into oblivion, study finds
- The practices of agribusiness are causing the Kampar Peninsula to sink below flooding levels, according to a new report by the consultancy Deltares.
- 43.4% of the peatlands on the carbon-rich peninsula have been drained and converted to acacia plantations, mainly by APRIL, and also by Asia Pulp & Paper.
- APRIL disputes the notion that its practices aren’t sustainable, arguing that it has worked hard to protect the remaining forest there.

Norway pledges $50m to fund Indonesia’s peat restoration
- The pledge follows last year’s fire and haze disaster, which burned 2 million hectares of land, mostly peat, in the archipelago.
- The money will support the newly created Peat Restoration Agency.
- The U.S. government also pledged $17 million for peatland restoration in Indonesia’s Jambi province.

Fires burned 26% of forestry giant’s South Sumatra plantations in 2015
- Peat fires burned 293,065 hectares of land within concessions managed by Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) suppliers during last year’s haze crisis, finds a new analysis released by a coalition of Sumatra-based environmental groups.
- The findings, say the coalition, put APP’s fiber supply for its new OKI Mill in question since the Indonesian government has indicated that it will prevent replanting of areas burned in 2015.
- For its part, APP has repeatedly stated that its zero deforestation policy applies to all current and future suppliers.

With haze threatening return, Indonesian forestry giant pushes peatlands restoration model
- APP took a direct hit last year when several of its suppliers were identified as having fire “hotspots” in their concessions.
- While APP steadfastly denied that its companies set the fires, it was nonetheless singled out in Singapore, resulting in some stores removing its products removed en masse from shelves and the government threatening multi-million dollar fines.
- APP’s Aida Greenbury discusses the company’s efforts to turn its business model away from deforestation toward better managing natural ecosystems.

APP to work with 500 villages to combat deforestation
- Forestry giant Asia Pulp & Paper to put $10 million toward agroforestry cooperation with villages in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
- One NGO worker is cautiously optimistic about the plan.
- APP has been criticized for its alleged role in last year’s fire and haze disaster, which afflicted 500,000 Indonesians with respiratory problems.

Indonesia seeks re-do on court decision absolving company for haze-causing fire
- A district court in South Sumatra recently rejected the government’s lawsuit against PT Bumi Mekar Hijau, an Asia Pulp & Paper supplier accused of causing peat fires.
- The government will appeal the ruling. Siti Nurbaya, the environment minister, plans to personally oversee the case as it moves forward.
- The case is important to the ministry, which hopes a victory against BMH will set the tone for its campaign to prosecute companies accused of burning.

Indonesia loses flagship case against company accused of burning
- A district court in South Sumatra threw out the Indonesian government’s case against PT Bumi Mekar Hijau.
- The pulp and paper company had been asked to pay a record sum in fines and reparations for causing peat fires in its concession.
- The ruling is a bad omen for those who hoped the decision would herald a raft of guilty verdicts against plantation companies seen as prime movers behind the annual pollution crisis.

50+ companies being investigated or punished for Indonesia’s haze crisis
- More than 50 plantation companies are being punished or investigated by the Indonesian for fires linked to the choking haze that polluted skies across Southeast Asia this fall.
- A week ago Monday, Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya announced that 23 companies have been punished to date.
- Another 33 companies are being investigated.

Jokowi to oversee Indonesia peat restoration agency but details thin on the ground
- Indonesia’s forestry minister says a government agency to manage the archipelago’s peat restoration plans will be overseen by the president.
- The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki) announced new policies at a palm oil conference in Bali on Thursday.
- A shipping trade publication in Singapore surveyed 250 people in the city state and found 18% of them would relocate if the haze “became an annual norm.”

Scientists turn up haze heat on Indonesia ahead of COP21 Paris talks
- Singapore’s deputy prime minister Teo Chee Hean met with the Indonesian president in Jakarta on Wednesday.
- An indigenous group in South Sumatra called on the local government to restrict development in the Musi River basin.
- Fires continue to burn in Merauke regency in Papua, the archipelago’s easternmost province.

Riau emergency status to end as S. Sumatra pledges peat clampdown
- Indonesia’s Riau province will drop its official state of emergency at the end of the month.
- The South Sumatra provincial government pledged to stop the granting of licenses on peat.
- Central Kalimantan’s acting governor said the local government did not have adequate plans in place to mitigate the risks of fires.

Haze compensation to poor stalls as Indonesia spends on new palm oil cartel
- Rain has reduced the number of hotspots in Kalimantan and Sumatra but fires continue to rage in Papua and West Papua provinces in Indonesia’s east.
- Indonesia’s finance ministry has yet to approve a budget for cash payments to low-income families affected by the haze.
- Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to form a palm oil producers council.

New ‘Forest 500’ report finds both public and private sector have long way to go on deforestation
- Just 31 companies adopted new deforestation policies or strengthened existing policies in the past year, though two titans of their respective industries, McDonalds and Bunge, did commit to zero net deforestation across all of their commodities supply chains.
- Just 1 percent of the financial institutions among the Global Canopy Programme’s “Forest 500” have pledged to eliminate deforestation from their lending portfolios.
- Financial institutions and governments play a vital role in creating the right market conditions to drive a transition away from commodities that put forests at risk.

VP Kalla fans flames in Manila as Indonesia presses on with water bombing
- Kalla made the exact same comments blaming foreign companies during a forestry summit in Jakarta in April.
- Satellite data from Global Forest Watch show more than 20 fires burning close to the mouths of the Lumpur and Mesuji rivers.
- Indonesian government water bombing operations continue to target smoldering peat fires in South Sumatra province.

From fires to floods: Indonesia’s disaster agency prepares for rain
- Singapore’s health ministry said it would end a government subsidy scheme for people in need of treatment from haze-related illnesses.
- Environmental pressure groups and NGOs met in Jakarta on Monday to discuss the government’s draft pledge to the UN climate summit.
- Researchers at King’s College London have been awarded a six-month grant by the Natural Environment Research Council.

Singapore calls end of haze this year as Indonesia continues to push peat plans
- The Indonesian government continues to work on enacting regulations to address the underlying causes of the annual fires.
- Vice president Jusuf Kalla said Indonesia would target 2-3 million hectares of peatland restoration by 2020.
- The government intends to form an agency for peatland restoration but has yet to decide on the specifics.

Indonesia losing billions from illegal logging
- A new report finds that unreported timber sales have dwarfed those reported by the central government.
- As a result of black market timber sales, Indonesia lost an estimated $6.5-8.9 billion in potential state revenue from taxes and levies.
- The investigation was conducted by Indonesia’s antigraft agency at the behest of President Joko Widodo.

APP pumps South Africa specialists to join haze fire fight
- Working on Fire’s managing director for Asia-Pacific expressed confidence fires on APP supplier concessions could be extinguished soon.
- The South African program has hundreds of additional firefighters on standby.
- An NGO said it had seen more sightings of raptors over East Java after a slow October migration east.

Jokowi pledges Indonesia peatland ‘revitalization’ to stop the burning
- President Jokowi and minister Luhut Pandjaitan have made increasingly robust pledges over the last week.
- The governor of East Java told Mongabay he had instructed officials to get on top of fires burning in areas hit by drought.
- Jambi Mayor Syarif Fasha said all health centers would be open 24 hours a day and equipped with oxygen cylinders that can be used or 20 minutes free of charge.

Indonesian wildfire disaster threatens virgin forest in Borneo
- Jokowi arrived in South Sumatra on Thursday to monitor the humanitarian and firefighting operation.
- Environment ministers from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) grouping met in Vietnam on Thursday.
- In the U.S. a petition has been created calling on the Obama administration to send additional firefighting assets and relief workers.

Raja Ampat fires destroy livelihoods; Sumatrans suffer from drought amid haze
- Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla called on all Muslims to pray for rain on Wednesday and to ask God for “forgiveness, guidance and mercy.”
- An aide to Kalla said companies could announce force majeur if the government declared a national disaster.
- Malaysia continues to push Indonesia to adopt tube wells in its peatlands in Kalimantan and Riau.

Under-fire Jokowi prepares biggest shift yet in Indonesian haze
- Details are unclear on Jokowi’s policy on a moratorium for Indonesia’s peatlands.
- A draft commitment to ban drainage canals on peatlands will require adequate enforcement resources.
- Indonesia yet to hand Singapore information on companies it believes responsible for fires.

Indonesia hesitates on emergency status for haze; Islamic council sees ‘warning from God’
- Local police arrested five men in semi-remote parts of Central Kalimantan on suspicion of using gasoline to start fires.
- The spokesman of Indonesia’s disaster agency said he thought fires in Papua were started deliberately to clear land.
- The highest clerical body in Muslim-majority Indonesia called on adherents of the faith to pray and said the fires could be a warning from God.

Indonesia readies shelter ships as haze last resort after #EvacuateUs hits Twitter
- #EvakuasiKami, or EvacuateUs, is the latest haze-related to topic to trend on Indonesian Twitter amid the country’s haze crisis.
- Pekanbaru has reopened shelters in the city in a desperate bid to provide some respite from the smoke.
- Local officials are specifically calling on parents to bring infants and young children to three 24-hour centers in Riau province..

Jokowi hints at company crackdown as Kalimantan residents prepare haze class action suit
- Residents in West Kalimantan have banded together to file a lawsuit against the government over pollution.
- Jokowi has said companies need to take “greater responsibility.”
- An Indonesian resort plans to offer “more underwater activities” to manage the impact of annual pollution from fires and hotspots.

Kalimantan politicians wear facemasks inside parliament as Palangkaraya suffers in silence
- Indonesia’s measure of pollution recorded air in Palangkarya at more than 10 times the level regarded as dangerous on Tuesday.
- Schools in the Central Kalimantan capital were closed again on Tuesday.
- Politicians in the provincial parliament sat in silence wearing face masks after smoke entered the building.

In the shadow of a metropolis, a community revives Java’s lost forests
- The year following strongman General Suharto’s fall was a period of intense deforestation for Mendiro village in East Java.
- Years later, locals formed an organization to reverse the damage.
- Ten thousand seedlings were planted. The villagers have since been awarded a prestigious conservation prize from the central government.

APRIL clearing forest in breach of sustainability policy: NGO
- Greenomics used satellite imagery and the company’s operating documents to identify its clearing of legally established HCV forest areas.
- The clearing appears to contravene APRIL’s no-deforestation commitment.
- APRIL expressed “serious concern” about the findings and promised to follow up.

Plantation companies challenged by haze-causing fires in Indonesia
- Six major plantation companies spoke with Mongabay about their efforts to battle haze-causing fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
- All acknowledged challenges in battling peat fires. All blamed illegal encroachers or fires that spread from outside their concession areas.
- All six companies – Asia Pulp & Paper, Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL), Golden Agri Resources (GAR), Cargill, Wilmar, and Musim Mas – contacted by Mongabay responded.

New research shows just how much better recycled paper is for forests
- The analysis revealed that the recycled paper had less than one percent of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change and ocean acidification as the virgin paper, while using one-fourth of the water.
- The harvesting of the wood fed into just one of the virgin paper mills disturbed the habitat for 115 different endangered species.
- Virgin paper makers are attempting to rebrand their product as just as climate-friendly as recycled paper, while better suited to fine printing tasks.

Greenpeace releases dramatic drone video of Indonesia’s fires
- Greenpeace has released footage from a UAV showing burning forests and smoldering peatlands in Borneo.
- The video shows fires burning on peatlands, rainforests, and oil palm plantations surrounding Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan.
- Vast areas of Gunung Palung’s buffer zone forests and swampy peatlands have been drained and cleared for rubber, palm oil, timber, and pulp production.

One year after New York Declaration on Forests, less progress on cattle and soy than on palm oil and timber
- A new report analyzes the forest commitments made so far by 41 of the companies that signed the New York Declaration on Forests at the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit.
- 94 percent of companies with palm oil in their supply chains and 79 percent active in timber, pulp and paper markets have committed to reducing deforestation tied to commodities production.
- Companies that signed the New York Declaration on Forests are 60 percent more likely than non-endorsing companies to have publicly committed to zero deforestation or zero net deforestation.

Will REDD+ help save Indonesia’s forest, or create ‘carbon cowboys’ instead?
- Various studies show corruption continues to mar the effective management of Indonesia’s rainforests.
- Indonesia is a major frontline country in attempts to introduce REDD+.
- Critics express concern that using the market to promote forest-stored carbon will fuel another commodity bubble.

Haze chokehold spurring efforts to save Indonesia’s forests
- Haze from Indonesian fires is causing regional health problems and potentially contributing to climate change.
- Many fires are destroying valuable wildlife habitat.
- The impending El Nino weather pattern may make this year’s dry season – and subsequent fires – worse than usual.

APP to clear plantations to restore peatlands
- Indonesian forestry giant Asia Pulp & Paper announces a peatland management program.
- APP will retire 7,000 ha of acacia plantations in five sensitive peat areas, allowing forests to recover.
- APP has also commissioned LiDAR work that will produce a 4.5 million ha map of Sumatran peatlands.

After long battle, big swath of Sumatran rainforest wins protection

In what conservationists are hailing as a major breakthrough in efforts to protect Sumatra’s fast-dwindling lowland rainforests, the Indonesian government on Wednesday finally approved an ecosystem restoration license for more than 44,000 hectares (110,000 acres) of forest bordering Bukit Tigapuluh, a national park renowned for its rich wildlife. After a long-running tug-of-war between plantation companies […]
‘Sea change’ in clothing industry means more protections for forests

A rainforest river in Malaysia’s Sabah state. Photo: Rhett A. Butler Sateri has become the latest major viscose producer to adopt a new wood- and pulp-sourcing policy aimed at removing deforestation from its supply chain. The company, the world’s third-largest viscose producer, joins Aditya Birla and Lenzing, the two biggest, in making commitments to stop […]
Do we need to move ‘beyond certification’ to save forests?

Over the past two years dozens of companies have established “zero-deforestation” or “deforestation-free” policies for the commodities they source, trade, and produce. The pace of adoption has been staggeringly fast for a business that have been historically slow-moving relative to other industries. Some sectors, like the Indonesian palm oil industry and the Brazilian soy industry, […]
Controversy emerges over alleged deforestation policy breach by APRIL supplier

Less than three weeks after APRIL unveiled a sustainability policy that is supposed to protect natural forests, an environmental group is alleging that one of the Indonesian forestry giant’s subsidiaries is already breaching the commitment. But APRIL refuted the claim and says it continues to stand by the policy. The controversy is centered in a […]
Pulp giant APRIL updates sustainability policy with Greenpeace’s tentative approval

Peat drainage canal and stacks of MTH harvested from forest clearance by APRIL wood supplier PT. RAPP in Kampar peninsula. Some CITES-protected ramin trees were “saved” and left standing. Photo taken by Eyes on the Forest at N°17’52.36” E102°43’22.29” on 10 February 2012. Indonesia’s second-largest pulp and paper producer has announced a new sustainability policy […]
Greenpeace re-engages with APP after response to activist’s killing

Acacia plantation in Riau. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Greenpeace is re-engaging with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) after the Indonesian forestry giant quickly responded to the killing of a community activist on one of its suppler plantations. In a letter published today, Greenpeace said it would resume its involvement in helping APP implement its […]
Tennis star responds to rainforest advocates

Roger Federer has responded to two Indonesian activists
Indian fabric giant adopts forest policy

One of the world’s largest fabric makers for the fashion industry today announced a policy to exclude fiber produced at the expense of endangered forests, reports Canopy, an environmental group that helped broker the commitment. Aditya Birla, an Indian conglomerate with operations in 36 countries and 120,000 employees, accounts for about a fifth of global […]
Activists target Roger Federer as brand ambassador for bank linked to deforestation

Cleared peat forest and a drainage canal in PT RAPP’s concession on Pulau Padang, Riau. Courtesy of the Bruno Manser Fund. Environmentalists are asking tennis star Roger Federer to deliver a message to Credit Suisse over the banking giant’s continued financing of a logging company linked to ongoing destruction of wildlife habitat in Indonesia. According […]
McDonald’s to address deforestation across all commodities it sources

Fast food giant McDonald’s will combat deforestation across its main commodity supply chains, including palm oil, beef, paper and packaging, coffee, and poultry. The commitment is the most comprehensive of any major restaurant chain. The policy, announced today, follows the company’s decision to sign the New York Declaration on Forests last September. Like commitments increasingly […]
Who’s to blame for forest loss in Borneo timber concession?

Google Earth image showing GPS points where forest loss occurred within the past year in a West Kalimantan concession held by PT Bumi Mekar Hijau (BMH). The apparent loss of some 4,000 hectares of forested peatland in Indonesian Borneo is raising questions on who bears responsibility for forest clearing in un-utilized concessions. On Monday, Greenomics-Indonesia […]
Paper or paperless? Navigating the ecological impact strait between Scylla and Charybdis

In this commentary, Fred Bercovitch, wildlife conservation biologist at Kyoto University, challenges the conventional wisdom that a paperless workplace is more environmentally friendly than one is using paper. The views expressed are his own. Mining in Australia. Where would we be without cell phones? According to the United States Census Bureau, the USA has about […]
Tracking companies’ zero deforestation commitments

Brazil’s Atlantic Forest has been severely reduced in extent from agriculture and urban expansion. Over the past three years dozens of companies have made ‘zero deforestation commitments’, establishing policies that set social and environmental safeguards for commodity sourcing and production. However these agreements are highly variable — some policies are quite strong, while others aren’t […]
APRIL suspends contractor after environmentalists expose ongoing deforestation

An excavator piles natural forest logs at a log pond inside a PT. Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (PT RAPP) pulpwood concession on Pulau Pedang, Bengkalis Regency, Riau Province located at 1°0’51″N 102°19’50″E. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace. Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL) has suspended a contractor and a plantation manager after environmentalists […]
APRIL violates sustainability policy by clearing peat forest after Jan cut-off

An excavator piles natural forest logs at a log pond inside a PT. Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (PT RAPP) pulpwood concession on Pulau Pedang, Bengkalis Regency, Riau Province located at 1°0’51″N 102°19’50″E. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace. New data shows Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL) is continuing to destroy rainforests on deep […]
APP to end relationship with security contractor over villager’s killing

Asia Pulp & Paper’s supplier Wirakarya Sakti Sakti (WKS) will end its relationship with a security contractor implicated in the killing of a villager in Jambi, says the Indonesian forestry giant. In a statement issued Monday, APP said it has halted operations in and around the “conflict area” where Indra Pelani, a 22 year-old from […]
Police investigate villager’s murder in pulp and paper concession

An acacia plantation that was burned in Riau by villagers seeking to establish an oil palm plantation. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Indonesian police are investigating the brutal killing of a villager in Jambi at the hands of security guards contracted by Wira Karya Sakti (WKS), a plantation company owned by forestry giant Asia Pulp […]
Santander Bank cuts off APRIL due to deforestation

An excavator piles natural forest logs at a log pond. Photo © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace Banking giant Santander says it will not extend further financing to Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) due to evidence that the Singapore-based pulp and paper company is continuing to destroy rainforests in Indonesia. The move comes after Greenpeace […]
Illicit timber feeds Indonesia’s industrial forestry sector, alleges new report

Illegally logged rainforest tree in Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Amid government schemes to curb illegal land clearing and systematically enhance a struggling legal wood certification system, a new report analyzing Indonesia’s forestry industry alleges that more than roughly 30 percent of wood used by the country’s industrial […]
Chinese banks funding rainforest destruction in Indonesia

Recent large-scale clearance of peatland forest inside a PT. Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (PT RAPP) pulpwood concession on Pulau Pedang, Bengkalis Regency, Riau Province. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace. While Santander Bank has made headlines in recent days for financing an Indonesian forestry giant’s ongoing clearance of carbon-dense forests in Sumatra, Chinese banks among […]
Banco Santander targeted over deforestation link

Ranking the best and worst companies in terms of deforestation

Zero deforestation yet to go mainstream Deforestation for woodpulp production in Sumatra, Indonesia While a number of high profile companies have adopted policies designed to exclude deforestation from their commodity supply chains, such commitments remain outside the norm, indicating that most companies still lack forest-friendly safeguards, finds a comprehensive survey conducted by the Global Canopy […]
Forestry giant’s zero deforestation commitment put to test

First of its kind audit of world’s largest pulp and paper producer yields mixed results Arara Abadi acacia plantation near Pekanbaru, Riau, Sumatra. All photos by Rhett A. Butler. An independent audit of the world’s largest pulp and paper producer found that the company had achieved a wide range of results in meeting promises to […]
Pulpwood company may be denying Sumatran community rights to their land

Sumatra is home to many threatened and unique species, such as the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii). Photo by Rhett A. Butler. For over a decade, a conflict has been brewing between the local community of Senyerang in Sumatra, Indonesia, and a major pulpwood plantation company, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), according to NGOs […]
Despite green promise, Indonesian forestry giant continues to destroy forests

Excavators beside a canal cutting through recently deforested peatland. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace A year after it pledged a dramatic shift in how it operates in Indonesia’s fast dwindling native habitats, Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd (APRIL) continues to destroy forests and peatlands in Sumatra, allege environmentalists. On January 28th, 2014 — just days […]
Indonesia’s moratorium not enough to achieve emissions reduction target

Deforestation in Riau, Sumatra in 2014. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. When Indonesia’s former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared a moratorium in May 2012 on the issuance of new permits for logging in primary forests and on peat lands, it was widely hailed as an important, albeit far too limited, step in clamping down on […]
Indonesia to weaken peatlands protection to support plantations

Acacia plantation on a peat soils Riau, Sumatra. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. The Indonesian Ministry of the Environment and Forestry has announced it will further hobble its peatlands protection law to allow plantations to continue operating on a business as usual basis. Indonesian law number 71/2014 on the protection of peatland ecosystems was passed […]
Half of Indonesia’s deforestation occurs outside concession areas

Deforestation in Riau. Photo by Rhett Butler Roughly half of Indonesia’s natural forest loss occurs outside officially designated concession areas, concludes a new assessment that also finds higher deforestation rates in places with worse forest governance scores. The report, released last month by Forest Watch Indonesia, is based on analysis of satellite data spanning the […]
Activists call out ‘one of the worst actors in pulp and paper’

While Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL) has made some strides towards becoming more environmentally conscious, conservation organizations are still concerned about continued deforestation as demand for dissolving pulp grows. Graffiti on the side of a building not far from TPL’s switch mill in North Sumatra. It translates to “REJECT TPL,” according to Canopy Executive Director Nicole […]
Pulp and paper giant violating its sustainability policy

Recent large-scale clearance of peatland forest inside a PT. Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (PT RAPP) pulpwood concession on Pulau Pedang. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace. Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRRIL) is violating its own sustainability policy by continuing to source fiber produced via the destruction peatlands on the island of Pulau Padang in […]
Indonesia to audit licenses of palm oil companies that clear peatlands

Peat forest in Riau, Sumatra. Photo by Rhett A Butler. New Indonesian president Joko Widodo has ordered the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to review licenses for companies that have converted peatlands for oil palm plantations, reports Antara. Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, announced the move after a visit last week to Sungai […]
Only place where rhinos, tigers, elephants, and orangutans coexist is under threat

Adult male Sumatran orangutan in Gunung Leuser NP. Photos by Rhett Butler. A forest that is the only place where rhinos, tigers, elephants, and orangutans coexist is under threat from planned infrastructure, mining, logging, and plantation projects, warns a new report from the Rainforest Action Network (RAN). The report, issued Monday, looks at one of […]
Dissolving pulp: a growing threat to global forests

100 million trees are cut down every year to make dissolving pulp for clothing, toothpaste, food Dissolving pulp is not just a threat to the forests of Indonesia. It is a growing industry across the globe, and it’s putting several of the world’s endangered forests in jeopardy. You might not have heard of dissolving pulp, […]
Fashion industry making progress in cutting deforestation from clothing

Pulp and paper plantation in Sumatra. Photo by Rhett Butler. Several more clothing companies have committed to eliminate fiber produced via destruction of endangered forests, adding momentum to a zero deforestation movement within the fashion sector, argues a new report published by Canopy, an environmental non-profit. This week Canopy announced Levi Strauss & Co., Marks […]
APP acknowledges historic land-grabbing in China, pledges reform

Excavator working an APP supplier plantation in Indonesia. Photo by Rhett Butler. While Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) has made considerable progress on addressing social and environmental problems associated with its operations in Indonesia, the forestry giant still has much to do to rectify historic social grievances in China, says a report published by Landesa […]
Plantation companies in Sumatra failing to meet fire prevention standards

Peatlands drained for a plantation in Riau. An inter-agency audit of 17 plantation and timber concessions in Riau Province, Indonesia, found that every company is failing to meet fire prevention and control standards. In addition, several companies are working in prohibited areas, including peatlands with depths over 3 meters. “Outrageous,” said Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, head of […]
Dissolving pulp: the threat to Indonesia’s forests you’ve probably never heard of

Forest clearing for plantations resulting in massive habitat loss If “dissolving pulp” evokes nothing for you, you’re not alone. Not many people have heard of it, and the very term “dissolving pulp” is so generic it’s hard to imagine it could be a threat to anything. But pull out some of your favorite items of […]
Plantation companies agree to process to define zero deforestation commitments

Deforestation for oil palm in Sumatra A group of palm oil and timber companies that have pledged to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains have agreed to establish a standard for determining what constitutes “forest” in terms of carbon storage. Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), Cargill, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), Golden Veroleum Liberia, Wilmar, Agropalma and […]
APP can meet projected pulp demand without clearing more forest

APP supplier concession in Riau Province, Indonesia. Photos by Rhett A. Butler Indonesian forestry giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) won’t need to clear additional forests to meet pulp requirements for current and forecast mill expansion, finds an independent assessment conducted by The Forest Trust (TFT) and Ata Marie. The results, which were disclosed this […]
Greenpeace alleges SLAPP suit tactic by logging company

Greenpeace Canada has filed a Statement of Defense in response to a $7 million lawsuit by Resolute Forest Products (NYSE:RFP) over allegations that the logging company destroyed forests in Quebec and Ontario. Filed Thursday in Ontario Superior Court, the Statement of Defense argues that Resolute Forest Products is using the suit in an attempt to […]
Indonesia’s forests so damaged they burn whether or not there’s drought

Fires on deforested land trigger massive GHG emissions, haze Light haze over a drained and deforested peat forest in Riau, Sumatra in February 2014. Photo by Rhett Butler. Air pollution caused by fires set for land-clearing on Sumatra has become a regularly occurrence in Southeast Asia, spurring hand-wringing in Singapore and Malaysia over health effects […]
Indonesia cracks down on illegal burning, investigates more suspect companies

Forest fires displacing wildlife, endangering human lives across Southeast Asia Every year, thousands of hectares of Indonesian forest are illegally burned by development companies. However, Indonesia’s Minister of Environment, Balthasar Kambuaya, is optimistic that legal charges over such fires can be completed – even though he has just three months left in office. “I hope […]
APP won’t acquire companies that continue to destroy forests

APP supplier concession in Riau Province Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) will not acquire companies that continue to destroy forests, according to a new procedure for association introduced by the Indonesian forestry giant. The procedure, developed after months of consultations with NGOs, effectively closes a loophole some environmentalists feared would allow APP to sidestep its […]
Do Indonesians really want more big plantations?

New forest clearing for an oil palm plantation in Sumatra. Photo taken in May 2014 by Rhett Butler. How to best use Indonesia’s land resources? This is one of the more crucial questions facing the Presidential candidates in Indonesia’s upcoming elections. Both candidates seem to agree that Indonesia needs to increase its food security, for […]
Despite moratorium, Indonesia now has world’s highest deforestation rate

Indonesia now has the highest deforestation rate in the world, topping even Brazil which has more than five times the natural forest cover. Background photo: rainforest in Sumatra. Despite a high-level pledge to combat deforestation and a nationwide moratorium on new logging and plantation concessions, deforestation has continued to rise in Indonesia, according to a […]
Indonesian logger: cleared peat forest doesn’t have high conservation value

APRIL to continue clearing carbon-dense forests it says lack high conservation value. An excavator piles natural forest logs at a log pond inside a PT. Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (PT RAPP) pulpwood concession on Pulau Pedang, Bengkalis Regency, Riau Province located at 1°0’51″N 102°19’50″E. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace An Indonesian logging company says […]
Environmentalists launch push to make paper less damaging for the planet

Actor Ian Somerhalder in a public service announcement for #WhatsInYourPaper. An alliance of more than 120 environmental and human rights organizations today announced a global push to transform the paper industry. The Global Paper Vision sets a series of goals its says could drive the paper industry toward more sustainable practices. These include reducing consumption; […]
APRIL’s forest policy failing to stop rainforest destruction, say green groups

Recent large-scale clearance of peatland forest inside a PT. Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (PT RAPP) pulpwood concession on Pulau Pedang. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace. Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited’s forest policy allows the Singapore-based pulp and paper giant to continue destroying rainforests and peatlands for industrial plantations, argues a letter published by […]
Logger continues to destroy Indonesian rainforest despite green promises (Photos)

Active clearance of peatland forest inside a PT. Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (PT RAPP) pulpwood concession on Pulau Pedang, Bengkalis Regency, Riau Province taken 05/20/2014. PT RAPP is a subsidiary of APRIL, the pulp & paper division of the Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) Group, a conglomerate owned by Singapore-based businessman Sukanto Tanoto. On 28 […]
Indonesia’s haze from forest fires kills 110,000 people per year

Forest destruction in Riau Province, Indonesia on 06/23/2013. © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace. Haze caused by burning peat forests in Indonesia kills an average of 110,000 people per year and up to 300,000 during el Niño events, while releasing hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warns a new report from […]
Indonesian activist: strong company commitments, media push government on forest issues

Zamzami in Siak, Riau on May 23, 2014. Photos by Rhett Butler. Indonesia has become notorious for its high rate of forest loss, but there are nascent signs of progress. The central government has implemented a moratorium across some 14.5 million hectares of previously unprotected forest and peatlands, while a handful of predominantly Indonesian companies […]
WWF accuses APRIL of breaking sustainability commitment by logging rainforest in Borneo

Two heavy equipments operating in PT. Adindo Hutani Lestari (AHL) Sesayap Sector concession. Photo taken by GAPETA Borneo at 3°33’21.7948″N, 117°4’25.8401″E on 19 April 2014. Environmental group WWF has accused Singapore-based pulp and paper giant Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) of breaking its recent conservation commitment by destroying rainforest in Indonesian Borneo. APRIL has […]
Timber concessions in Sumatra have high conservation value, according to report

Five industrial plantation forest concessions that supply timber to PT Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) in South Sumatra – locally known as HTI concessions – are areas of high conservation value inhabited by endangered Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) and other endemic wildlife, according to a report issued at the end of March. The research, […]
Publishing industry dramatically reduces reliance on rainforest fiber

Cleared acacia plantation in Riau, Sumatra, with native peat forest in the background. The pulp and paper sector has been one of the biggest drivers of deforestation in parts of Sumatra since the early 1990’s. Riau, Jambi, and South Sumatra have been particularly affected. The world’s largest publishing companies have adopted policies that significantly curtail […]
Special Report: Lake Toba indigenous people fight for their frankincense forest

(reporting by Ayat S Karokaro, Indra Nugraha and Sapariah Saturi) Felled logs with eucalyptus trees in the background. Photo: Paragraph S Karokaro It was a cool and foggy day in Dolok Ginjang forest, but that did not stop villagers of Pandumaan and Sipituhuta in North Sumatra from heading to work to extract frankincense from the […]
Clothing brand Stella McCartney pledges to use deforestation-free fabrics

Harvested plantation with rainforest in the background in Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Luxury fashion brand Stella McCartney has pledged to eliminate fabrics sourced via destruction of old-growth and endangered forests from its supply chain by April 2017. The move, announced last week, follows similar commitments from H&M and Zara, which also joined the […]
APP commits to conserve, restore 1M ha of Indonesian forest; WWF pledges support
- Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), Indonesia’s largest pulp and paper company and a long-time target of environmental campaigners, has committed to protect and restore a million hectares of forest across Indonesia.
- The pledge, which represents an area equivalent to the total plantation area from which it sourced pulp in 2013, was immediately welcomed by WWF, which until today has remained one of APP’s staunchest critics.

APRIL continued destroying high conservation rainforest up until January pledge

Natural forest that has been cleared by PT Triomas FDI on the Kampar Peninsula. All that remains are young ramin trees. The rest of the timber was transported to APRIL’s pulp mills in Pangkalan Kerinci. Location GPS: N 0 33′ 49.600″ E 102 56′ 48.180″. Courtesy of Eyes on the Forest. Plantation giant Asia Pacific […]
Forests in Indonesia’s concession areas being rapidly destroyed

1/3 Indonesia’s land mass allocated for industrial development Forest clearing within areas zoned for timber, logging, oil palm, and mining accounted for nearly 45 percent of deforestation in Indonesia between 2000 and 2010, finds a new study that examined forest loss within industrial concessions. The research, published in the journal Conservation Letters, used a combination […]
Is deforestation-free clothing possible?

H&M, Zara commit to cutting rainforest destruction out of clothing production Borneo rainforest H&M and Zara/Inditex, two of the world’s largest clothing companies, today pledged to eliminate old-growth forest destruction from their products. The commitment lends support to a new front on efforts to cut deforestation from supply chains of global brands. Until now, most […]
Community’s push to clear forest for plantation challenges efforts to conserve in Indonesia

This is part of a series of articles on market transformation in the pulp and paper and palm oil sectors in Indonesia. Drainage canal that forms the boundary between the remaining peat forest and the area cleared for the group led by Caliph Hasan Basri. Photo by Ridzki R. Sigit In the swampy peatlands of […]
Photos: Forests, peatlands, plantations, and deforestation in Riau

This is part of a series of articles on market transformation in the pulp and paper and palm oil sectors in Indonesia. Small-holder clearing for oil palm Indonesia’s Riau Province on the island of Sumatra has experienced rapid deforestation since the early 1990’s, with primary forest cover plummeting by 85 percent in twenty years. Most […]
APP pledges to restore forests, if given the opportunity

This is part of a series of articles on market transformation in the pulp and paper and palm oil sectors in Indonesia. APP acacia plantation in Riau, Indonesia in February 2014. Photo by Rhett A. Butler Over the past 20 years, Sumatra’s lowland rainforests have been destroyed at a virtually unmatched rate and scale. Since […]
Will zero deforestation commitments save Indonesia’s forests?

This is an expanded version of A New Leaf in the Rainforest: Longtime Villain Vows Reform, which ran on Yale e360 last week. This story was originally developed in January and finalized in February. Fragment of peat forest amid a landscape of land cleared for plantations in Riau, Indonesia in February 2014. All photos by […]
Logging giant suspends operations to fend off plantations from fires

Satellite image, taken on March 7, 2014 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows fires outlined in red burning on Sumatra. Indonesian Pulp & paper giant Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) says it has suspended operations at a concession in Riau Province in order to shift staff toward fighting […]
Sumatra on fire: burning spikes in Indonesia

Click image for interactive map Fires in Sumatra’s Riau province have spiked to levels unseen since last June, finds new analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI) that reveals widespread burning within concessions managed by pulpwood, palm oil, and logging companies. The fires, which have progressively worsened in recent weeks, are driving haze that is […]
Indonesia politician gets 14 years in jail for illegal permits, forest corruption

Acacia plantation in Riau Province, Indonesia. The former governor of Indonesia’s Riau province has been sentenced to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay almost $90,000 in fines for illegally issuing logging permits in Riau and bribes linked to construction projects for sports facilities. On Wednesday, the anti-corruption court in Pekanbaru found former Riau […]
Peatlands biosphere reserve facing severe encroachment in Sumatra

New oil palm plantation in the GSK landscape. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. An important reserve that contains a block of fast-dwindling lowland swamp forest in Riau Province is facing an onslaught of encroachment for illegal oil palm plantations, worsening choking haze in the region, reports Mongabay-Indonesia. Giam Siak Kecil Biosphere Reserve (GSK), a tract […]
Borneo monkeys lose a tenth of their habitat in a decade

Red Leaf-monkey (Presbytis rubicunda) in Sabah, Malaysia. Photos by Rhett A. Butler Four species of langurs monkeys that are endemic to Borneo lost more than a tenth of their habitat in just ten years, finds a study published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation. The study, conducted by David A. Ehlers Smith of Oxford Brookes […]
APP, environmentalists talk future of Indonesia’s forests

Indonesian pulp and paper giant talks forest conservation policy with critics Lafcadio Cortesi, Rainforest Action Network (RAN); Scott Poynton, The Forest Trust (TFT); Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace; Rhett Butler, Mongabay; Aida Greenbury, APP; Aditya Bayunanda, WWF-Indonesia; and Neville Kemp, Ekologika. Photo by Aji Wihardandi of Mongabay-Indonesia. In February 2013, one of the world’s most notorious forestry […]
APRIL’s green pledge falls short, say environmentalists

Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd (APRIL), Indonesia’s second-largest pulp and paper producer, has announced a new environmental policy that aims to stem criticism about its forestry practices, which include large-scale conversion of rainforests and peatlands in Sumatra. But environmentalists say the pledge falls far short of the commitment made by APRIL’s biggest competitor, Asia […]
Rainforest Alliance to independently audit APP’s zero deforestation commitment

Rainforest Alliance has agreed to conduct an audit of Asia Pulp & Paper’s progress in implementing the zero deforestation policy the forestry giant signed last year. The deal, announced Thursday in Jakarta, could help boost the credibility of APP’s policy, which while heralded as a breakthrough by several environmental groups, is still viewed with skepticism […]
Indonesian logger faces expulsion from business sustainability group

Peat canal drained by PT LUM, an APRIL supplier, following natural forest clearance in Pulau Tebing Tinggi. Photo by: Eyes on the Forest. Indonesian pulp and paper giant Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (ARPIL) faces expulsion from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a body of 200 large companies that have made sustainability […]
Court orders logging company to clean up pollution disaster in Chile wetlands

Chile is probably best known for its volcanoes, earthquakes and the formidable peaks of the Andes, but as a country that spans 4,300 km (2,670 miles) from top to bottom, it also boasts a huge variety of bird life. And, until recently, it was home to what was thought to be the largest population of […]
WALHI Jambi: Forestry giant allegedly evaded $15m in taxes

Protest staged by Walhi Jambi. Sinar Mas Group allegedly defrauded the Indonesian government of $15 million by avoiding reforestation taxes on 2,000 hectares in Jambi province. The land is reportedly managed by subsidiaries of Sinar Mas Group which do not have the proper concession permits. The discovery came after analysis of public reports and an […]
Company accused of logging endangered rainforest trees in breach of timber legality certificate

APRIL partner accused of clearing forests and felling endangered tropical hardwoods. Indonesian NGO says the wood supplier is linked to corruption and its legal timber certificate should be revoked Logging operations at PT Triomas FDI’s concession in Riau. Photo taken by Eyes on the Forest on 21 September 2013. An Indonesian wood supplier that was […]
Ongoing deforestation reported in Borneo concession held by APP supplier

Up to 1,400 hectares of forest have been cleared in a concession belonging to an Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) supplier in Borneo, potentially putting the company in breach of the forestry giant’s zero deforestation commitment, reports a coalition of local NGO’s. In a report released Tuesday, Relawan Pemantau Hutan Kalimantan (RPHK), a coalition of […]
APP’s Borneo expansion to be constrained by forest conservation policy

Rainforest in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) will not convert any blocks of forest found to have high conservation value or substantial carbon stocks as it expands in Indonesian Borneo, according the forestry giant’s managing director of sustainability. Responding to a report published by Greenomics, an Indonesian environmental group, Aida Greenbury said […]
Deforestation accelerates in Indonesia, finds Google forest map

Forest loss in Indonesia has sharply risen over the past 12 years, reports a new study published in the journal Science. The study, led by Matt Hansen of University of Maryland, finds that Indonesia lost 15.8 million hectares between 2000 and 2012, ranking it fifth behind Russia, Brazil, the United States, and Canada in terms […]
Greenpeace: APP making ‘encouraging’ progress on zero deforestation commitment

Rainforest in Sumatra. Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), an Indonesian forestry giant once notorious for destroying rainforests and peatlands, is making ‘encouraging’ progress in phasing forest destruction out of its supply chain, reports a new assessment from Greenpeace, which until recently was one of APP’s fiercest critics. The review, released today, evaluates APP’s progress on […]
Pulp and paper giant gets $1.8B loan from China for Indonesia’s largest mill
Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) secured a $1.8 billion loan from China Development Bank (CDB) to finance the development of what will be Indonesia’s large pulp mill, according to a statement released by the company. The total cost of the new mill, located in South Sumatra and run by APP affiliate OKI Pulp & Paper […]
In transparency push, APP self-reports breach of its deforestation moratorium

In what may be an unprecedented move in the Indonesian forestry sector, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) has announced two breaches of its moratorium on natural forest clearance. In a report published Wednesday, APP said an audit of its operations by The Forest Trust, the NGO charged with implementing the forestry giant’s forest conservation policy, […]
500 fires rage across Sumatra

Nearly 500 fires are burning across the Indonesian island of Sumatra, raising fears that choking air pollution could return to Singapore and Malaysia. The fires, set to clear land for agriculture, are concentrated in Riau, Jambi, and South Sumatra provinces. Like the fires that charred the region two months ago, much of the burning is […]
Fires burning again in Sumatra, triggering haze alerts in Malaysia

Deforested areas and degraded peatlands are again burning on the island of Sumatra, triggering haze alerts in nearby Malaysia, despite last week’s commitment by regional authorities to address the ongoing fire problem in Indonesia, reports the Agence France-Presse. On Monday, Malaysia’s Department of Environment reported three areas were suffering from “unhealthy” air quality. “Unhealthy” corresponds […]

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