New Greenomics report on Asia Pulp & Paper

Greenomics Indonesia released today areport highlighting the case of a pulpwood concession associated with APP, with has been illegally established and eventually burned.
According to Greenmails, “a legally-established HCVF (High Conservation Value Forest) area, the size of more than a thousand football fields, has been developed as a pulpwood plantation on the concession of an APP-linked company, PT Rimba Hutani Mas (RHM), which operates in the province of South Sumatra, Sumatra Island, Indonesia. The HCVF area in question, which constitutes a riverine buffer zone, was partly burned during the uncontrolled land and forest fires in September-October 2015.”
The area, Greenomics explains, was protected by law, but it has instead been converted into an acacia plantation that supplies raw materials to APP.
APP continued to source from this illegally developed plantation also after the launch of its new forest policy.
According to the NGO, this is not the only case.

• APP - concludes Greenomics - should not claims the losses from for the fires that destroyed the plantation, since the plantation has been illegally developed, although inside the concession area. On the contrary, suggests the NGO, is the Indonesian State that should claim the damages to river buffer zones (protected areas by the law).
• APP should also cut any sourcing from plantations developed illegally, in order to give credibility to its own policy.
• Greenomics demands also to APP to collaborate with the Singaporean authorities. Recently the Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) sent a legal notice to PT Rimba Hutani Mas, suspected to be among the responsible of the haze crisis. APP, according to the Strait Times, said that it has has no links to concession land in Indonesia.