Indonesia’s rainforests are some of the most valuable ecosystems on earth because of their immense biodiversity, unique forest peoples and their role as carbon reservoirs and sinks that help to prevent climate change. They are also quickly disappearing as unscrupulous companies cut down forests to produce cheap paper and other commodities such as palm oil for global markets.
Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Royal Golden Eagle Group’s Asia Pacific Resources International (APRIL) are among Indonesia’s most destructive corporations. Between them, they produce 80 percent of Indonesia’s pulp and paper. This comes from clear cutting rainforests and replacing them with monoculture acacia pulp wood plantations grown on these cleared rainforests and peatlands. Many leading international companies and consumer brands are contributing to this tragic pattern of destruction by, often unknowingly, purchasing paper products from affiliates of APP and APRIL.
APP is Indonesia and China’s largest producer of pulp and paper and is directly responsible for much of Sumatra and Borneo’s deforestation. The Sumatran province of Riau, where APP established some of Indonesia’s first logging and pulp wood plantations in 1984, is home to perhaps the most significant tropical peatland forest ecosystem in the world known as the Giam Siak Kecil – Kampar – Kerumutan biosphere. Composed of the world’s deepest peat lands and home to all of Sumatra’s most distinct and endangered species, these forests have become fragmented and are at the front line of forest and climate destruction. Expansion efforts by both APRIL and APP could eradicate this ecosystem and the communities and species that depend on it. Already, APP is responsible for the loss of approximately 24 percent of Riau’s natural forests.
Deforestation in Riau has been driving both Sumatran elephants and tigers to local extinction: as of 2007, Sumatran elephant and tiger populations in Riau had declined about 75 percent over the past 25 years to as few as 210 and 192 individuals, respectively. If forest clearing is not halted, both may become locally extinct in a few years’ time.
What’s more, the deforestation, degradation and destruction of peatlands and forests for fiber production and pulp wood plantation development by APP and APRIL is driving carbon emissions on a massive scale; Indonesia emits close to two gigatons of CO2 every year, over 80 percent of which is caused by deforestation. The deforestation and drainage of peatlands alone contributes half of Indonesia’s total emissions.
