Finally! Palm oil companies recognise the value of forests

The annual RSPO meeting was held in Jakarta last week, and members voted in favour of our proposal. This means that the RSPO must now publish a position statement recognising the value of secondary and degraded forests, and make sure that plantation companies and auditors don’t just write them off as dead wood.

Whilst we’re pleased with the result of the vote, the RSPO is a voluntary initiative, representing less than half of Indonesian palm oil companies, and not all RSPO-member companies have been following the rules. To really safeguard these forests, the Indonesian government needs to recognise their value as well.

via Greenpeace UK.

Indonesia’s Forests Loom As Green Gold

All eyes are on Indonesia and its forest policy as climate- change negotiations continue in the upcoming global talks in Mexico, against the prospect of billions of dollars flowing from the planet’s major polluters to the developing world to slow global warming.

via IPS ipsnews.net.

RSPO celebrates first 25,000 certified palm oil family farms

As part of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil’s 8th Roundtable meeting, held this week in Jakarta, Indonesia, RSPO President Jan Kees Vis honored representatives from six smallholder communities and the palm oil mill owners which they supply. “These smallholders prove that RSPO is not and should not be just about large palm oil producers and users,” Mr. Vis said. “Over the next few years, hundreds of thousands more smallholders will become certified producers of sustainable palm oil.”

via GoodLight Natural Candles.

Indonesian plantation giant signs forest CO2 deal

Would truly be wonderful if this actually comes through and is well audited…. let’s keep watch.

Indonesian pulp and paper firm Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), accused by green groups of large-scale deforestation, has signed a deal to protect a large area of forest in return for carbon offset revenue.

The deal is the first privately funded project turning a pulpwood plantation concession into a carbon reserve, said APP.

The deal with APP and Singapore-based Carbon Conservation, which helps governments protect areas of forest, is to set aside 15,640 hectares (38,650 acres) of peat forest in a 33-year pilot project aimed at encouraging plantation firms to become greener.

The land on the Kampar Peninsula on Indonesia’s Sumatra island had been earmarked for clearing by concession holder PT Putra Riau Perkasa, a supplier to APP, but the two firms have agreed to work with authorities to preserve the forest instead.

APP said the deal was the first for the company as a way to save the forest and boost livelihoods from the sale of carbon credits

via Indonesian plantation giant signs forest CO2 deal | Energy & Oil | Reuters.

Indonesian Shorelines May Wash Away If Government Does Not Act: Experts

The government’s lack of comprehensive strategy in preventing erosion along the country’s coastlines will pose a threat to the livelihoods of those living along the shore, a Public Works Ministry official said on Thursday.

Making the situation worse is the high population growth rate and unsustainable groundwater extraction by industry.

“Twenty percent of Indonesia’s shores were damaged with abrasion, worsened by global warming that will magnify the intensity and magnitude of abrasion and tidal waves,” said Mochammad Amron, director general of water resources at the Ministry of Public Works.

via Indonesian Shorelines May Wash Away If Government Does Not Act: Experts | The Jakarta Globe.

Golden Agri refutes Greenpeace’s claims of harming the environment

It says contrary to Greenpeace’s claims, there are no orang utan habitats in SMART’s concession area in P-T Bangun Nusa Mandiri.

SMART also reiterates that before developing land, it conducts the necessary environmental assessments.

With regard to concession areas in the Papua province, SMART says it only manages a total of about 13,000 hectares, not 1 million hectares as stated by Greenpeace.

via Channel NewsAsia

Indonesia forests being ‘destroyed’

In a report on Tuesday, Greenpeace said it had confidential documents from a Sinar Mas subsidiary, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), suggesting that the company did not intend to fulfil a promise to source its wood from plantations alone after 2009.

“From analysis of Indonesian government and confidential Sinar Mas maps and data, as well as on-the-ground investigations … APP continues to acquire and destroy rainforest and peatland to feed its two pulp mills in Sumatra,” the environmental group said in the report, referring to the once forest-clad western Indonesian island.

Read more at Al Jazeera English.

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