Fight deforestation, fight climate change

The report details how palm oil and wood pulp producers are wreaking havoc on important carbon sinks like peatlands and forests, with Southeast Asian regions particularly affected.

Greenpeace has released a new bombshell report in tandem with the COP25 Climate Conference’s dedicated forest day. The report details how palm oil and wood pulp producers are wreaking havoc on important carbon sinks like peatlands and forests, with Southeast Asian regions particularly affected.

The new analysis by Greenpeace puts substantial blame on industrial activity, including that carried out by the makers of global products from Kit-Kats to Oreos, Dove soap to Paseo tissue. While many international firms now purport to be “climate champions,” few have actually ended their dependence on palm oil.

Palm oil and pulp is ravaging Indonesia

Indonesia is one of the countries most affected by commodity-induced deforestation: from 2001 to 2018, the country lost 25.6Mha of tree cover, equal to a 16 percent decrease since 2000 and a 10.5Gt uptick in carbon emissions. The culprits? Palm oil and pulp producers, who are responsible for burning large swathes of forests every year.

“We are experiencing a climate and ecological emergency,” the Greenpeace report warns. “Companies that are unwilling or unable to do what is needed to fit the global commodity trade and keep forest destroyers out of their supply chains must instead avoid high-risk commodities entirely.”

Naturally, attempts have been made for years to get industry players to contribute solutions to the problem on their own accords. The approach sought to find a compromise that would work for all stakeholders involved and thereby make any policies realistic to implement. However, to no one’s real surprise, cooperation from industry players has not been promising.

Displaying how little these industries care about the natural environments in which they are operating, Greenpeace claims that it wrote to more than 50 retailers, producers and consumer firms earlier this year, requesting that they demonstrate progress toward combating deforestation by disclosing their commodity suppliers – mostly in vain. Only a handful replied, and, in combination with publicly available supply chain information, Greenpeace ruled that none of the 50 had taken any “meaningful” action to end deforestation.

Identifying the culprits

Considering the lack of responsiveness, the most affected countries, such as Indonesia, have changed tack and turned to more aggressive and prescriptive policies based on boosting regulation. For these countries, COP25 represents a vital opportunity to put the weight of the international community behind them and force progress on the issue.

As it turns out, ASEAN countries were quick to commit themselves to greater forest protection in the run-up to the event, pledging to promote the “sustainable management of forests,” enhance “biodiversity conservation,” and boost “forest carbon stocks.” These are great goals, indeed. But what this means in practice – beyond regulation – and how any efforts will be reinforced, remains to be seen.

Yet there is no doubt whatsoever that some progress is desperately needed: between 2015 in 2018 in Indonesia alone, burning peatland released as much as 1.87 Gt of CO2 into the atmosphere, a staggering amount equal to Russia’s annual emissions. Effective action needs to be taken sooner rather than later, particularly given that the industry is controlled by a handful of large pulp and oil firms.

Greenpeace has identified a number of bad actors, each with their share of blame in the unfolding environmental disaster. It’s singled out Astro Agro Lestari, Bakrie and Best Agro Plantation—all vast family-controlled conglomerates active in Indonesia’s agricultural sector and guilty of burning vast swathes of land. But one company has drawn especial criticism: Sinar Mas Group, owned by the Chinese-Indonesian Widjaja family.

Via subsidiary Asia Pulp & Paper, pulp producer Sinar Mas Group has been identified as being responsible for “the largest area of peatland burn within its concessions.” The company came especially to global attention in summer this year at a time when Indonesia was fighting its biggest forest blaze to date.

With Asia Pulp & Paper being linked to 27 other plantation companies implicated in the fires, it’s clear that Sinar Mas Group has a large stake in Indonesia’s deforestation and emissions failures. In the four years from 2015, the group oversaw the burning of 193,500 hectares of peatland for its own pulp and palm oil operations, emitting some 178.6 MtCO2 in carbon pollution in the process.

A large amount of these fires occurred at a time when Asia Pulp & Paper was ostensibly involved in a pact with Greenpeace, according to which it would refrain from engaging in harmful environmental practices. But an Associated Press investigation revealed in 2018 that Sinar Mas never stopped their traditional practices, leading Greenpeace to end the truce and cut all ties. This pattern repeated with the WWF as well: the company signed a partnership with the NGO in 2003 that fell apart after seven months. In 2006, WWF called on companies to boycott APP products

To make matters worse, Sinar Mas isn’t limiting its ecological damage to Indonesia—via subsidiary Paper Excellence, it has spread to overseas markets like Canada and France, where it’s been fined for multiple environmental violations. In Canada, for example, are now on the hook for $100 million for cleaning up the pollution spewed by the company in Nova Scotia. Furthermore, Sinar Mas Group is also active in palm oil production and is the owner of palm oil producer Golden Agri-Resources. This far-reaching involvement in both the paper and palm oil industries means that Sinar Mas Group is producing in excess of 40% of the emissions associated with the plantation sector.

Tackling the problem

Based on the primary goal of COP25 participants in Madrid, global leaders currently seem to favor carbon offsets to fund anti-deforestation initiatives. Under Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the world has committed to creating an international carbon market that includes nations, cities and corporations, all in a bid to incentivize emission-reduction efforts.

In theory, the idea of carbon offsets offers a rare win-win in the fight against climate change. Countries can swap emissions and pay to meet their climate goals, while funding is allowed to flow to conservation efforts where they are most needed. Yet whether this will make agricultural industries in Indonesia and other ASEAN countries fall in line is doubtful. Seeing how international scrutiny has not caused palm oil makers to reform their current destructive measures, a more stringently enforced regulatory regime must be instituted.

Indonesian authorities have begun to expand oversight, with the Indonesian Ministry of Environment suing palm oil firm PT Arjuna Utama Sawit over the fires that destroyed 970 hectares of Borneo forest in 2015. The company was forced to pay a fine of $18.5 million for environmental damages incurred. On the basis of a permanent moratorium on new forest clearance passed recently, Jakarta now has a solid legal foundation on which to move forward.

Nevertheless, the issue of enforcement remains. International, national and company pledges to curb deforestation ring hollow until the demonstrable change takes place. This is where the weight of the international community, including COP25, is most sorely needed.