The truth behind APP's greenwash - Pemerintah Kota Jambi

1. Background
In 1984, the Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp & Paper (SMG/APP), headquartered in Shanghai,
China, started to operate its first pulp mill in Riau Province in Sumatra 1 . The mill, Indah Kiat
Pulp & Paper, was Indonesia’s first ‘mega pulp mill’ with a 105,000 tons-per-year production
capacity. In 1994, APP opened its second pulp mill, Lontar Papyrus Pulp & Paper Industry, in
neighboring Jambi Province. Both mills exclusively pulped mixed tropical hardwood
(MTH) from clearance of natural forests. Both mills continued to expand.
That is why since 1999, customers, creditors, scientists, and civil society have been calling
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
on SMG/APP to not use wood from natural forests to produce its pulp and paper
and implement two main policies:
1. Operation according to the Forest Stewardship Council’s “Principle 9. Maintenance of High
Conservation Value Forests (HCVFs) defined as environmental and social values that are
considered to be of outstanding significance or critical importance 8 ” 1 .
2. No expansion of pulp production capacities or building of new pulp mills until sufficient
responsible and sustainable plantations have been established in already-deforested
areas.
SMG/APP has refused to commit to these requests and is continuing to expand its
pulp capacity, to pulp natural tropical forests, and to drain peat soils as documented
in detail by Eyes on the Forest and many other organizations. By 2010, SMG/APP’s total pulp
production capacity in Sumatra had grown to at least 2.7 million tons per year. In addition,
SMG/APP had added an additional 1 million ton per year pulp mill in China in 2005 9 .
SMG/APP does not have a sufficient plantation supply to feed any of its mills, but is
planning to build at least two new pulp mills in Indonesia soon.
While SMG/APP has been operating in Riau and Jambi provinces, the provinces’ and
Sumatra’s natural forest cover has shrunk to less than 30% of the island’s land mass; the
island’s tigers, elephants and orangutans have come ever closer to extinction through
intensifying human-wildlife conflicts and poaching pressure brought about by their
increasing loss of natural forest habitat; and more and more deep peatlands have been
drained, emitting the carbon stocks they had stored over thousands of years 10 . With
Sumatra’s accessible natural forest almost finished APP has now begun targeting the natural
forests and peatlands of Kalimantan and Papua.
The devastation caused by the Sinar Mas Group’s paper company has led to intense global
critique by civil society and customers. SMG/APP’s response has been classic, it continued
business as usual but put vast resources into a global green-washing campaign - financed by
the deforestation of Sumatra.
In 2006, SMG/APP published a full page advertisement “APP’s Commitment: Conservation
Beyond Compliance” in the New York and London Times – its first big global PR action –
falsely portraying itself as a responsible forest and wildlife protection company. A WWF
Indonesia point by point rebuttal detailed the company’s misstatements 11 .
Today, five years later, APP continues repeating the same false statements together with
some new twists, all trying to hide the ultimate foundation of the Sinar Mas Group/APP’s
operations: the continuing destruction of natural tropical forest and drainage of peat soils.
APP’s PR effort today is bigger and with more aggressive use of the media than ever before.
APP has recruited a wide variety of publicists, individuals and supposedly independent NGOs
to flack its allegedly green practices, including, Cohn & Wolfe 12 , Environmental Resource
Management 13 , Alan Oxley and his World Growth and ITS Global 14, 15, 16 , Mazars 17 , Carbon
Conservation 18 , Patrick Moore and his Greenspirit Strategies 19 , Bastoni and his Sumatran
1 In practice, this is to commission prior to any clearing of natural forest an independent and transparent
assessment with the “HCVF Toolkit for Indonesia 1 ” to identify High Conservation Value Forests, and to
protect and maintain all of them.
1