One Year Summary
FEBRUARY 2014
APP Forest
This booklet looks back at some of the most signiicant milestones reached in the past year, to remind us all how far we have come. It also takes a look at the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Introduction
It has been an extremely busy twelve months since last February,
when we announced our Forest Conservation Policy (FCP), marking
a permanent end to natural forest clearance in all our suppliers’
concessions. This was the start of what we believe is one of the world’s
most complex and ambitious rainforest conservation programmes.
“We are doing it, and
we mean to succeed.”
This is a proud moment for all of us at APP. There have been those who said we couldn’t do it and to them I say, ‘We are doing it, and we mean to succeed.’As ever, there is still more work to do, as our sustainability roadmap is a journey of continual improvement. However, we hope that the work we have done to date in cleaning up our supply chain, will mean APP is seen as an industry leader in the conservation of our country’s valuable rainforests.
Our successes to date are down to the thousands of individuals who have committed so much of their time, effort and enthusiasm to implementing the FCP, from APP staff to our partner companies and external advisors. This includes our technical and on the ground advisors and assessors – particularly The Forest Trust, Ekologika and APCS – and of course the many NGOs, in Indonesia and worldwide, who have advised, criticised and
sometimes praised us. They are many, but chief among them is Greenpeace, without whose robust critical friendship we would not be where we are today. We particularly appreciated the input they provided through their report into our progress, released in October.
Aida Greenbury Managing Director Sustainability &
Stakeholder Engagement Asia Pulp & Paper
APP’s Forest Conservation Policy in Numbers
Global output
Employees
million tonnes
million hectares
Area of land under the control of APP/APP suppliers:
Area of land subjected to the FCP:
million hectares
Area of land as football pitch equivalent:
area of land as a proportion of area
allocated for production forest in Indonesia
Area of land without established plantations
1.6 million hectares
Area of land with established plantations
1 million hectares
Independent organisations directly involved in HCV and HCS
Assessments
100%
completion of
plantation growth and
yield assessments
Completion of HCV Assessments due:
March 2014
Completion
of HCS
Assessments due:
Q3 2014
FPIC (Free Prior and Informed Consent)
Land Claim Conflict
mapping completed
Where it all began
In June 2012, we announced our Sustainability Roadmap Vision 2020.
This laid out targets in 10 environmental and social impact areas to be
achieved within eight years. Among these was a moratorium on natural
forest clearance, due to be implemented in 2015.
Critics said this wasn’t good enough. So in February 2013, we
announced we would be bringing this target forward by two years.
February 2013
On February 5th we announced a complete end to natural forest clearance throughout our entire supply chain. Our Chairman, Mr Teguh Ganda Wijaya, said in announcing the FCP, ‘We are doing this for the sustainability of our business and the beneit of society.’
This commitment applies to all our suppliers’ concessions in Indonesia, which cover 2.6m hectares of land. The moratorium we imposed at the time on all new development will remain in place until a series of assessments is completed to determine which areas of APP suppliers’ concessions are High Conservation Value (HCV) or High Carbon Stock (HCS); all such areas will be permanently protected.
‘We are doing this for the
sustainability of our business
and the benefit of society.’
Teguh Ganda Wijaya, APP ChairmanMarch 2013
Among our promises was a
commitment to complete transparency. We established a series of Focus Group Discussions to enable Indonesia-based NGOs to question, challenge, advise and inform our protocols and to learn about the progress we were making. It soon became clear that we would all beneit from more eyes on the ground. This has led to our Independent Observer (IO) programme, enabling local NGOs to see for themselves how the FCP is being implemented out in the forest. The IO programme was expanded to cover pulp mill inspections to verify that any Natural Forest Wood (NFW) arriving at the mill had been harvested prior to our February 5th announcement.
April 2013
An important issue raised by NGOs was the monitoring and processing of Natural Forest Wood (NFW) felled prior to the February announcement.
In April, Aida Greenbury posted a blog covering the issue, explaining how all NFW outside APP’s pulp mills would be located, identiied, quantiied and tracked through the supply chain using an inventory monitoring system developed by TFT. This system would ensure that only stocks of NFW felled prior to the moratorium would be processed. In that blog Aida Greenbury also addressed the question of how much natural forest the FCP itself might conserve. She explained that HCS assessments were ongoing, and that the company would publish hard data derived from satellite imagery of all supplier concessions once the assessments were complete.
Another issue raised by NGOs through FGDs was that of restoration. APP conirmed that the subject was and would remain on the table. The priority in the irst instance would of course be assessments and a comprehensive conservation plan, but restoration would be addressed as part of a long term approach to sustainable forest management.
May 2013
A second alleged breach of the FCP was reported by NGOs in PT. Riau Indo Agropalma (RIA), one of our suppliers in Riau, Sumatra. APP and TFT immediately launched an investigation. That investigation showed that 70 hectares of forest had been cleared after February 5th 2013. The land had been cleared as part of a community livelihood agreement made between APP’s supplier and the local community prior to the moratorium. Such agreements are a legal obligation for concession owners in Indonesia. The land clearing highlighted some of the complex tensions between local community development needs, regulatory obligations and forest conservation goals in Indonesia.
This breach of our FCP demonstrated that we had not established rigorous sign-off processes between local management teams and headquarters. Together with TFT, we undertook an immediate review to assess whether similar cases existed with other suppliers that could threaten the moratorium elsewhere.
July 2013
A long standing land tenure conlict was inally resolved in Jambi between Senyerang village and PT Wira Karya Sakti (WKS). With efforts to resolve this conlict dating back to 2002, APP requested mediation and facilitation support from TFT. Using a new conlict resolution approach, agreement was reached and a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by all parties. We completed an initial social conlict mapping exercise and training programme across all 38 of our suppliers’ concessions. The objective of the training was to familiarise staff and managers with APP’s new approach to identifying and managing social conlict in communities within and around our operations.
We also completed an initial review of our social conlict management system in China. This has resulted in a proposed action plan for social engagement and conlict resolution for our operations. July also saw the announcement of our plans to construct a new pulp mill in South Sumatra using best-available technology. We are fully committed to ensuring that this mill is compliant with our FCP, and will only use plantation wood. The mill will be located close to our concessions in South Sumatra, and we will ensure that the principles of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) are applied in determining the inal site of the mill.
June 2013
We trialled our online FCP monitoring dashboard developed by TFT. This website, whose development has been ongoing, allows interested parties, including customers, NGOs and media, to follow progress of the FCP on the ground as well as providing access to policies, maps, reports, and other critical documents.
August 2013
A deadline to complete the transport to our mills of any NFW felled prior to the moratorium was set for the end of August. On the 31st, the last truck entered our Indah Kiat mill. Since that day, we have only accepted wood from non-HCV/HCS areas, from our plantations, or chips from suppliers for which we have had clear veriication of compliance with the FCP.
Since that day, we
have only accepted
wood from non-HCV/
HCS areas, from
our plantations, or
chips from suppliers
for which we had
clear verification
of compliance with
the FCP.
September 2013
The European and North American Environmental Paper Networks (EPN/ EEPN) published a set of indicators and milestones against which stakeholders could assess our progress in implementing the FCP. We reviewed these in detail and expressed our conidence that our implementation of the FCP and Roadmap commitments was on course. EPN then hosted a global webinar to discuss the milestones and APP’s performance. Aida Greenbury was given the opportunity to present progress on the FCP. Participants mainly included companies and NGOs including Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and WWF.
Learning from previous NGO-reported grievances concerning our forest moratorium, we, together with TFT, carried out a comprehensive review of all our pulpwood suppliers’ activities to ensure that there would not be any further moratorium violations. As part of this review, we identiied two cases that we voluntarily reported on our website and directly to key stakeholders including the media.
The irst case took place in PT. Bina Duta Laksana (BD L) in Riau province. Like the PT. RIA case mentioned above, in this concession a community livelihood agreement had been made before the February 5th moratorium. It was not possible to determine if any of the 28 hectares developed, had been HCS. The second case occurred in PT. Bumi Andalas Permai (BAP), PT. Sebangun Bumi Andalas (SBA), and PT. Bumi Mekar Hijau (BMH) in South Sumatra province. Nearly 70 hectares of HCS forest was wrongly cleared in an area set aside from development, pending full HCV and HCS assessments.
The two cases resulted in additional sign-off procedures between local management and head ofice being put in place to prevent the recurrence of such breaches.
October 2013
Greenpeace released its FCP Progress Report. The 14-page report was thorough, objective and fair. We welcomed it, in particular the observation that our senior management were clearly wholly committed to the FCP, and that our transparent reporting and self-disclosure was commendable. The report acknowledged the challenges ahead, and made constructive recommendations for tackling them. Finally, it recommended that consumer companies wishing to re-engage with APP should closely scrutinize our progress in implementing the FCP.
The report acknowledged the
December 2013
We received the draft HCV reports for the irst 11 concession areas from the third-party auditor APCS. These have now been submitted for peer review and for NGO input.
In addition, work was completed by TFT and APP on a comprehensive assessment of our suppliers’ plantation growth rates and pulpwood yields (the so-called Growth and Yield assessments). This provides both us and our stakeholders with clarity on our ability to manage our pulp business for the foreseeable future using sustainable plantations.
January 2014
The Rainforest Alliance will undertake a third-party evaluation of the progress we are making in implementing our Forest Conservation Policy and related public commitments. The Rainforest Alliance will release its indings in a report in late 2014. A team of peatland experts has also been engaged. The team is being led by Wageningen University and Research centre (Alterra in collaboration with Wageningen University).
In a 3-month Inception Phase, which began in January 2014, the team will analyse current peat management issues and opportunities in APP supplier concessions, and propose an outline plan for a follow-up Second Phase of the work, in which, an approach for moving towards responsible peat management will be identiied.
Along with the results of the HCV and HCS assessments, recommendations from the team will be used to develop APP’s Integrated Sustainable Forest Management Plans (ISFMP).
This provides both us
Looking ahead
Looking back at what was achieved in 2013 and more importantly looking to the future, we are conident that by this time next year, our stakeholders – in particular the NGO community, and those many customers who have shown environmental leadership– will recognise just how far we have come.
Having done much of the groundwork in 2013, the year ahead will be about increasing engagement with the FCP as we will not be successful in our efforts to conserve the natural forest and biodiversity in our concessions, without the support of others.
We are appealing to businesses, Government, NGOs and communities to work with us as we seek to ind a real and lasting solution to Indonesia’s deforestation issues. We also want to ensure that all stakeholders are doing what they can to incentivise sustainability by supporting market recognition for pulp and paper products that have been produced using responsible forestry practices.
