Indonesian Rainforest Campaign Europe

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Published on Saturday, 29 October 2011 19:49

Around the world, the deforestation of natural forests progresses at an alarming rate. According to the FAO, around 13 million hectares of forests globally are converted to other uses or lost each year, and this figure is still very conservative, since the FAO also considers tree plantations to be forests and doesn't register the negative impacts of conversion from natural rainforests into industrial tree plantations.

One of the biggest worries of the EEPN today is the rapid expansion into the European market of paper products linked to deforestation in Indonesia. One of the major forest offenders, the paper giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), launched an aggressive market campaign to expand its business in Europe. As result, European paper imports from Asia rose by 14.1% in 2010 alone. APP and its fibre suppliers are estimated to be the single largest source of rainforest destruction in Sumatra and are pushing three highly endangered species - the Sumatran tiger, elephant and orang-utan - closer to extinction.

Several reports show how the company has also impacted the livelihoods and violated the rights of indigenous and traditional commaunities. Indonesia's rainforests are some of the most biologically diverse forests on the planet. Unfortunately the country, and in particular the island of Sumatra, has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world. Moreover, the rapid destruction of Sumatra's natural rainforest - much of which grows on carbon-rich peatlands - releases huge quantities of greenhouse gases. This contributes significantly to the position of Indonesia as the world's third largest global greenhouse gas emitter, behind the U.S. and China.

A further increase of the demand for APP products in Europe would inevitably lead to further conversion of valuable peat-forests into pulp plantations in Indonesia, to provide more and more fibres to APP mills in both Indonesia and China. EEPN believes that the market expansion for paper products directly linked to massive rainforest and peatland destruction in South-East Asia is unacceptable. It shows that some companies are still unable, or unwilling, to take seriously their responsibility for people and planet. EEPN will not endorse companies selling some recycled products and advertising themselves as “green companies” while at the same time trading in products or materials linked to deforestation. Asia Pulp & Paper represents exactly the opposite of the values and the solutions identified in the Common Vision for Transforming the European Paper Industry. This is a threshold which shouldn't be crossed.

For this reason, the EEPN decided to engage in a Europe-wide campaign to stop the expansion of such products into the European market, until APP will publicly commit to immediately stop natural forest conversion, and to adequately compensate local communities impacted by their practices. In July 2010, 40 European NGOs co-signed a letter to the paper industry  demanding to stop any eventual purchase of paper from the Indonesian-Chinese paper giant Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). NGOs from Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Portugal, Malta, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland joined to demand from the paper industry to adopt a responsible paper procurement policy.

EEPN will coordinate this pan-European campaigning effort, promoting grassroot campaigning activities, assuring communication and distribution of information, and facilitating strategic coordination. We will publish updates and further information on this campaign here on a regular basis. So stay tuned! If you or your organisation want to get active in this campaign, please drop us a line: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.