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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Indonesian Rainforests Pulped to Extinction
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February 24, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
Indonesia’s rainforests are on their deathbed. A new report from FOE
UK indicates that the Indonesian pulp and paper industry
is
liquidating ancient forests at such a rate that shortly
they will be
gone. Given the
scale of Indonesia’s logging industry, the crass and
flagrant flaunting of the rule of law, and the diminished
state of the
resource, it is meaningless to pursue reform of
commercial forestry as
the primary forest conservation strategy. It is too late. Yet
powerful and well financed conservation efforts continue
to stress
“sustainable” commercial scale forestry as the means to
conserve
Indonesia’s and the World’s remaining ancient
forests. Corporate NGOs
emphasize commercial scale certified forestry of primary
old-growth
forests as a key part of the solution, and the World Bank
continues to
pursue failed efforts to improve policing and monitoring
of the
rainforest liquidation sale.
Commercial scale logging of Indonesia’s primary
old-growth rainforests
must come to an end.
This is the case for all the World’s remaining
ancient forests, but is particularly true in Indonesia,
which is
likely to soon lose essentially all intact and contiguous
lowland
rainforest expanses.
Such logging can end now, while there are still
substantial rainforests to provide critical ecosystem
services; or
logging can end when there are no large, contiguous,
intact
rainforests and the country is ecologically destitute and
without
hope. Indonesia’s
rainforests will only be conserved to any
meaningful extent if all commercial scale logging ends
now. The
World’s conservation organizations and financiers should
stop aiding
and abetting the final destruction of the World’s last
rainforests.
FOE has formulated a good campaign that highlights the
pure evil and
idiocy of making paper from ancient rainforests. This must end.
g.b.
Paper Tiger, Hidden Dragons 2: APRIL Fools
Briefing –
http://forests.org/pdf/april_fools_briefing.pdf
Full Report -
http://forests.org/pdf/april_fools_report.pdf
More information:
Indonesia and Malaysia Rainforest Conservation News &
Information
http://forests.org/indomalay/
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
ITEM #1
Title: Indonesian
rainforests pulped to extinction
Illegal logging
is threatening wildlife and environment
Source: Copyright
2002 The Guardian
Date: February 11,
2002
Byline: Paul
Brown, environment correspondent
The Indonesian pulp and paper industry is destroying
rainforest at
such an astonishing rate that it will run out of wood in
five years,
according to a report being published today.
Environmental groups are concerned that rare wildlife,
such as
Sumatran tigers and a sub-species of elephant, in some of
the most
biodiverse rainforests in the world is threatened with
extinction.
They also warn western investors that they may lose
hundreds of
millions of pounds as pulping companies run out of trees
to fell.
The report, by Friends of the Earth, focuses on Asia
Pacific Resource
Holdings Ltd (known as April), whose pulp mill in the
Sumatran
province of Riau is the biggest in the world. The British
construction
company Amec built the mill. April, which is based in
Singapore, has
borrowed heavily from western banks to finance its
operations.
Wood and paper companies in Indonesia are given
concessions to clear
timber and are supposed to replace them with plantations
of fast-
growing acacia trees, so that the industry will
eventually be self-
sustaining.
Between 1988 and 2000, however, only 10% of the wood used
in Indonesia
was from plantations.
According to the report, trees are still not being
planted fast enough
to save the forests, although April says it is on track
to become 90%
self-sufficient by 2008.
The World Bank estimates that 2m hectares of forest a
year, an area
the size of Belgium, is being wiped out - the same rate
of
deforestation as the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.
Somewhere between
50% and 70% of Indonesia's rainforests have now been
destroyed,
experts estimate.
The WWF (formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature) has just
completed
an investigation of April's activities in the Tesso Nilo
area in
Sumatra, where logging is banned and which is the most
biodiverse area
of lowland forest in the world, containing tigers,
elephants, gibbons,
tapirs and a huge variety of flowering plants. A WWF
investigation has
tracked 110 logging trucks from this area to the April
pulp mill in
the past two months.
"This company is renegotiating £1.2bn in debts with
US, European and
Asian banks while facing a crisis at home of running out
of wood
supplies," said Ed Matthew, joint author of the
Friends of the Earth
report into April. "This report is a warning to
banks not to invest in
industries like this unless they check first that they
are
sustainable.
"The company claims it will eventually get its wood
from plantations
but the numbers do not stack up. The company will run out
of timber in
2005, a full three years before it claims it will be
sustainable."
The report is the second by Friends of the Earth into the
destruction
of forests by illegal logging in Indonesia. The first,
published last
year, investigated another company, Asian Pulp and Paper,
and the
environmental group persuaded some UK paper dealers to
stop buying its
products.
This time Mr Matthew is asking consumers to boycott
PaperOne, the main
brand of April, and the report names eight British
merchants that
stock it. Tony Vermot, the exclusive representative for
April's
products in the UK, said he could not comment. However, Roland
Offrell, a Swede appointed two months ago as April's
first environment
director, conceded that large areas of forest were still
being cut
down. They would, he said, be replaced with plantations.
The company had 300,000 hectares of forest concessions
from which it
drew wood, he said. Some wood also came from clearing
forest for
agricultural land.
Mr Offrell could not guarantee, however, that wood did
not come from
illegal sources, but if it was detected, loggers were
reported to the
police. The company refused to take any more wood from
the culprits,
he said, and was planning an external audit of the source
of its logs
to prove it was not using illegal supplies.
ITEM #2
Title: Worlds
Biggest Pulp Mill Destroying
Best Lowland
Rainforest on Earth
Source: Press
Release, FOE
Date: February 11,
2002
The Indonesian pulp and paper company, APRIL, is clear
cutting an area
of rainforest recently discovered by scientists to be the most
biodiverse lowland rainforest on earth, according a
report released by
Friends of the Earth today [1]. The Tesso Nilo rainforest
is home to a
large number of endangered species, including tigers,
elephants,
gibbons and tapirs. APRIL’s rainforest paper is being
marketed all
around the world.
FOE’s investigation into APRIL reveals that since
starting operations
in 1995, the vast majority of the timber sent to its pulp
mill has
been sourced by clear-cutting Indonesian rainforest. APRIL has
already cleared at least 220,000 hectares off Indonesian
rainforest,
an area almost twice the size of Greater London. APRIL admitted that
it will be destroying at least another 140,000 hectares
of rainforest
over the next six years.
The company has also been involved in a
number of high profile land disputes with indigenous
peoples.
APRIL sells its paper all over the world, mainly under
the PaperOne
brand, with sales offices in Indonesia, Singapore, Hong
Kong,
Malaysia, India and the Netherlands (selling to Europe). APRIL has
also set up distribution agreements with companies in the
United
States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea,
Cyprus, Taiwan,
Myanmar and Indonesia.
UPM-Kymmene, the Finnish pulp and paper giant
is also buying a huge quantity of APRIL’s rainforest pulp
for its
Changshu paper mill in China.
Several major financial institutions are supporting
APRIL’s
operations, according to the report. These include ING
Barings (UK /
Netherlands), UBS Bank (Switzerland), Bank Mandiri (Indonesia),
Bank
BNI (Indonesia), Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency and
Bank
Nasional (Indonesia).
Friends of the Earth is calling on paper merchants and
paper retailers
to cancel their orders of APRIL’s PaperOne paper until
APRIL can
independently prove that it has ended is destructive
activities.
Ed Matthew, Corporates Campaigner at Friends of the
Earth, said:
“The forests of Indonesia are under unprecedented attack
and APRIL is
clearing one of the last remaining area of unprotected
rainforest left
in Sumatra. We call on the global paper industry to take
immediate
action to stop trading with APRIL. If paper merchants continue to buy
APRIL’s PaperOne paper, they will be supporting the
destruction of
some of the most wildlife rich forest left on earth.”
Notes:
[1] Friends of the
Earth’s Report, “APRIL Fools” & further
information about FOE’s Corporates Campaign can be seen
on FOE’s
website: www.foe.co.uk
Contact:
Ed Matthew 020
7566 172026-28 Underwood Street London N1 7JQ
Media contact 020 7566 1649 (24 hour) Fax 020 7490 0881 Email
press@foe.co.uk
Website www.foe.co.uk
Friends of the Earth Limited Registered in London No
1012357
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