Decades of suspicion and enmity between the conservation organisation and the Indonesian paper maker mean it will take some time before anything is taken on trust.
The World Wildlife Fund urges businesses in a statement to maintain a ban on APP paper until it can deliver truly independent confirmation that APP has stopped draining peat soils and pulping tropical forests with high conservation value. WWF hopes that APP’s new commitments will do more than just stop its own bulldozers, including protecting the natural forests in its concessions from all illegal activities. The organisation gave a veiled welcome to the announcement that Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) has stopped clearing Indonesia’s tropical forests and peatlands to allow an assessment of their conservation and carbon values. It accused the papermaker of failing to live up to previous commitments. APP runs two of the world’s largest pulp mills on Sumatra, where it produces the pulp for the toilet paper, tissue, copy paper and packaging that it sells worldwide. According to WWF the company and its wood suppliers are responsible for clearing more than 2 million hectares of rain forest on the island since beginning operations in 1984. Last year APP announced a move to clean up its act
The company’s latest announcement came as part of APP's new Forest Conservation policy during the quarterly update to its ‘Vision 2020' Sustainability Roadmap. Teguh Ganda Wijaya, (pictured) Chairman of Sinar Mas Group-APP and head of the family’s pulp and paper business, was present when the announcement was made. It affirmed that no member of his APP group operating in Indonesia or China will accept any tropical timber felled in Indonesia after 31 January 2013 until company consultants have completed a full “high conservation value” and a “high carbon stock” assessment of their forest concessions.
According to reports he cited recent natural disasters such as the flooding of Jakarta and Hurricane Sandy in the US as reasons why the company is changing its practices.
“Climate change is a fact and we need to take action now in protecting the forests we already have and by planting more trees. We currently plant more than a million a day. At APP we have a saying that if you ‘use more paper, we plant more trees', let's make the world a botanical garden," he is reported to have said.
A statement on the company's website has him saying, “This is a major commitment and investment from APP Group. We are doing this for the sustainability of our business and for the benefit of society. We hope our stakeholders will support our new Policy, help us along the way and urge other industry players to follow.
“APP is a world leader in the pulp and paper business, and we will act as leaders are expected to do.”
Greenpeace, another long-term critic of APP has warmly welcomed the news, describing the new policy as a major breakthrough. It immediately suspended its campaign against the company to allow it to deliver on its commitments.