The Asia Pulp and Paper Group launched on Thursday its Forest Conservation Policy (FCP) Anniversary Report, calling on governments, businesses and non-government organisations to collaborate more if meaningful forest protection in Indonesia is to be achieved.
Marking the one-year milestone of its FCP, APP’s report noted that there still remains ‘complex issues’ surrounding forest conservation.
The report identified four priority areas to address in 2014 in order to bring about tangible results and achieve zero deforestation. These include overlapping licenses, community and land conflict issues, landscape management and market recognition.
In the overlapping of issued licenses, the APP group wants to develop a system of governance for all concession holders in Indonesia. It is also looking to establish an agreed and consistent mechanism in negotiation processes when addressing community and land conflicts, particularly in situations when the needs of communities are at odds with the no-deforestation policy.
Paper and pulp firms, plus palm oil companies, have been known to have disputes with rural and indigenous communities. A recent report by the Forest Peoples Programme details how a palm oil subsidiary of Golden Agri-Resources group, the sister company of APP under the Sinar Mas conglomerate, allegedly abused the rights of a local community by grabbing land unjustly.
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We are creating management plans to ensure the viability of the 2.6 million hectares that our suppliers are responsible for. However, unless all of Indonesia’s land is properly managed too, then the forest landscape will continue to be at risk from further degradation
Aida Greenbury, APP’s managing director of sustainability and stakeholder engagement
Thirdly, APP seeks a cross-sector approach to manage the entire Indonesian landscape, since such a broad conservation movement would ensure the conservation of peatlands and the habitats of key species, as well as protection from forest fires, across various concession areas of different land uses.
Lastly, the company calls on market recognition of forest protection policies as a necessary condition for it to become economically viable. This recommendation comes a week after a new report urged the international community to inject financing and boost the market demand for REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) projects, an initiative under the United Nations.
So far, APP has been able to impose a moratorium on forest clearance in all its suppliers and it has resolved a number of social conflicts one year in to its FCP, said Scott Poynton, executive director of The Forest Trust, a non-profit that is assisting APP to implement its FCP on the ground.
The group, which has Indonesia- and China-based operations and has an annual combined pulp, paper, and converting products capacity of over 18 million tonnes, owns 2.6 million hectares of forest concessions in Indonesia.
The FCP launched in February 5 last year seeks to protect this land and put an end to natural forest clearance.
Currently, the company has nearly completed its assessments of their entire supply chain, including a study of whether there are High Conservation Value (HCV) forests and High Carbon Stock (HCS) areas to be protected.
APP has begun processing their findings into Integrated Sustainable Forest Management Plans or ISFMPs, which will indicate how the concessions will be operated and conserved.
Aida Greenbury, APP’s managing director of sustainability and stakeholder engagement, said: “In 2014, we will finalise the largest integrated biodiversity and conservation assessments that have ever been conducted.”
However, she noted that the sustainability journey opened “many opportunities and obstacles that cannot be realised or resolved by a single company”.
“We are creating management plans to ensure the viability of the 2.6 million hectares that our suppliers are responsible for. However, unless all of Indonesia’s land is properly managed too, then the forest landscape will continue to be at risk from further degradation,” she added.
Greenpeace International, which has been campaigning heavily against erring firms, noted the positive changes APP has taken. Bustar Maitar, head of the NGO’s Indonesia Forest Campaign, said, “One year on, APP is making progress in implementing its conservation commitments, despite the many challenges here in Indonesia.”
“APP’s work in the last year has put the spotlight on the challenge of overlapping concession licenses, where the same forest land has been allocated to different industry interests. Government action is urgently needed to resolve this if forest conservation is to succeed in Indonesia,” added Maitar.
