The Japan­ese NGOs reject APP prod­ucts. LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is con­sid­ered unre­li­able. Vested inter­est to block Indone­sian pulp and paper products?

GATRA, Decem­ber 9, 2009: Twelve peo­ple bravely climbed a crane oper­at­ing at a dock in Riau last Thurs­day. The Green­peace activists protested ille­gal log­ging activ­i­ties per­formed in Sumat­eran forests by PT Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper, the busi­ness unit of a giant com­pany Asia Pulp & Paper (APP).

The com­pany is deemed as tak­ing a great part in trop­i­cal forests defor­esta­tion lead­ing to global warm­ing accel­er­a­tion process.

The activists spread a ban­ner “For­est destruc­tion: You can stop this”. This action has drawn the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity atten­tion of which are look­ing for­ward to wel­come the Global Cli­mate Con­fer­ence planned to be held in early Decem­ber 2009 in Copen­hagen. “Defor­esta­tion is the root of cli­mate prob­lems. We are stop­ping the export of one of the world’s largest pulp mills stand­ing at the front­line of forests destruc­tion,” said a Green­peace activist, Shai­lan­dra Yashwan.

But the action did not run smoothly. Accord­ing to Green­peace spokeper­son, Mar­tin Baker, at least 18 activists, includ­ing 12 for­eign­ers, were arrested by Riau police.

APP Group Direc­tor of Sus­tain­abil­ity and Stake­holder Engage­ment, Aida Green­bury, explained that APP Group would not stop their export despite the pres­sure from the world’s envi­ron­ment activists. APP exports around 1 mil­lion met­ric tons of paper processed from wood extracted from forests in Jambi and Riau annually.

As com­pen­sa­tion, APP runs con­ser­va­tion pro­gram in other parts of Sumat­era. The con­ser­va­tion pro­gram is per­formed also within the frame­work of car­bon off­set trade for the future envi­ron­ment sus­tain­abil­ity. APP is a mem­ber of Sinar Mas Group, a con­glom­er­a­tion owned by the Wid­jaja family.

The Thurs­day morn­ing action by Green­peace was a fol­low up of a sim­i­lar action in Tokyo, Japan. The pre­vi­ous action was con­ducted dur­ing APP’s first launch­ing of LEI-certified wood prod­ucts in Octo­ber 20. APP chooses Japan as the first mar­ket for LEI-certified prod­ucts due to LEI’s pop­u­lar­ity in var­i­ous sec­tors in Japan such as in Japan­ese gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and communities.

In addi­tion, Japan has a good rep­u­ta­tion in nature con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­able man­age­ment. “We are in Japan to show that a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem for nat­ural resources can meet the world market’s increas­ing demand of environmentally-friendly prod­ucts gen­er­ated from sus­tain­able sources,” explained Agung Prase­tyo, LEI Exec­u­tive Director.

Five APP Group pulp and paper mills obtained Chain of Cus­tody cer­ti­fi­ca­tion under LEI’s plan­ta­tion for­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram. In addi­tion, one of APP’s wood raw mate­r­ial sup­plier, PT Wirakarya Sakti, also obtains cer­ti­fi­ca­tion after com­ply­ing LEI’s plan­ta­tion for­est sus­tain­able man­age­ment sys­tem standard.

Asia Pulp & Paper will mar­ket its LEI-certified paper prod­ucts to the inter­na­tional mar­ket by the end of the year. APP’s total paper pro­duc­tion will serve 10% of Japan­ese mar­ket niche demand.

Accord­ing to Aida, Asian mar­ket will be their first dis­tri­b­u­tion focus. They will grad­u­ally expand the mar­ket to other regions, in line with the tar­get of pro­duc­ing paper con­tain­ing 100% raw mate­ri­als gen­er­ated from LEI-certified sources.

The prod­uct launch­ing was held in a sem­i­nar in Tokyo fol­low­ing the announce­ment that five of APP’s pulp and paper mills had obtained LEI’s certification.

LEI is a constituent-based orga­ni­za­tion that pro­motes sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment through a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem to link social and envi­ron­ment inter­ests with the market’s demands. Apart from Japan­ese and other Asian coun­tries, Euro­pean Union coun­tries and USA have acknowl­edged the cred­i­bil­ity of both LEI as an insti­tu­tion and LEI-certified prod­ucts. After launch­ing its prod­ucts to Asian mar­ket, APP plans to mar­ket its LEI-certified prod­ucts to Euro­pean market.

How­ever, before enter­ing the hus­tle and bus­tle of world mar­ket churned by con­sumers’ demand for environmentally-friendly prod­ucts, APP’s cer­ti­fied prod­ucts were protested by world envi­ron­ment activists. Sev­eral activists led by Green­peace and WWF demon­strated out­side the sem­i­nar venue to show rejec­tions towards APP prod­ucts. They ques­tioned LEI’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion on APP’s indus­trial plan­ta­tion for­est prod­ucts.
Accord­ing to the activists, LEI stan­dard needs to be strength­ened because APP prod­ucts are not sup­port­ive to envi­ron­ment sus­tain­abil­ity. The demon­stra­tors would like to warn inter­na­tional buy­ers to avoid risks caused by the trade of APP/SMG prod­ucts and LEI-certified prod­ucts. They also urged LEI to strengthen its plan­ta­tion for­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dard and audi­tor require­ments to ensure the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion quality.

Rejec­tion from the world class activists is sup­ported by sev­eral NGOs in Riau, includ­ing Walhi and WWF. From the per­spec­tive of local NGOs, APP has a long his­tory of con­duct­ing ille­gal log­ging prac­tices in Indone­sia, includ­ing of forests with high con­ser­va­tion value. APP activ­i­ties are also linked with local com­mu­ni­ties’ human rights vio­la­tion as well as the dry­ing out of carbon-rich peat land for­est; thus, caus­ing global glasshouse gases emission.

“The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is not reli­able and trans­par­ent because they don’t take the inputs from the promi­nent NGOs and com­mu­ni­ties into con­sid­er­a­tion,” said Dicky Kur­ni­awan of KKI Warsi.
Lead­ers of local NGOs warned that plan­ta­tion for­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dard allow forests destruc­tion and con­ver­sion as well as cre­at­ing social prob­lems related to for­est con­ces­sion. LEI is also con­sid­ered as not pay­ing atten­tion to the ever increas­ing large-scale social and envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems caused by APP in Indonesia.

Respond­ing to the accu­sa­tion, Agung Prase­tyo revealed that the root of the prob­lems lied in the dif­fer­ences between LEI and For­est Stew­ard­ship Coun­cil (FSC) cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. Accord­ing to him, FSC refused to cer­tify indus­trial plan­ta­tion forests estab­lished after 1994; whereas LEI stan­dard can be applied for the prod­ucts of plan­ta­tion forests on crit­i­cal land, as allo­cated by the Gov­ern­ment of Indonesia.

The prob­lem is, the pulp and paper con­sumers are wor­ried that they pur­chase prod­ucts con­tain­ing raw mate­ri­als extracted from con­served nat­ural forests. “Thus, we assure that LEI only processes the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of prod­ucts extracted from plan­ta­tion forests not from nat­ural for­est con­ser­va­tion,” said Agung.
LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dard is devel­oped based on con­stituents agree­ment, “We have NGOs, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties, and emi­nent per­sons (experts con­sid­ered as hav­ing pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions to envi­ron­ment). There­fore, organization-wise, LEI is very cred­i­ble,” explained Agung.

LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion itself is one of the mar­ket instru­ments employed to facil­i­tate environmentally-friendly prod­ucts in reach­ing the “green prod­ucts” con­sumers of which are increas­ing in num­bers. Agung firmly stated, “For­est cer­ti­fi­ca­tion should not pose as an obstruc­tion to trade.”

Agung needs to make the state­ment because there seems to be a con­tro­versy on LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dard of which is focus­ing on prod­ucts of plan­ta­tion forests – includ­ing in APP case – is resulted from the rec­om­men­da­tions and agree­ment of LEI’s con­stituent, includ­ing WWF and other NGOs. Sur­pris­ingly, sev­eral of those NGOs are now reject LEI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. “Such rejec­tions should be brought for­ward through the organization’s inter­nal mech­a­nism,” said Agung.

Aida Green­bury stressed that LEI’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion can be seen as a com­mit­ment of Indone­sian pulp and paper indus­tries. “The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a good start for APP to intro­duce the first LEI-certified papers to global mar­ket as well as to demon­strate our efforts in pro­mot­ing Indone­sian prod­ucts cer­ti­fied under a trans­par­ent and multi-party engag­ing scheme,” she stated.