Indonesia: controversial pulp and paper giant APP comes under scrutiny as it plans expansion but makes new promises

Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is coming under intensifying scrutiny over its renewed promises to bring its giant mills and supply chains into compliance with best practice norms for sustainability and its new promises that it will respect the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples. Recently, Marcus Colchester, as Co-Chair of the High Conservation Values Resource Network and Director of FPP, and Patrick Anderson, FPP's Policy Advisor in Indonesia, met with APP's Head of Sustainability, Aida Greenbury, and her team of advisers and consultants, to clarify the company's commitments. APP's new promises - to respect human rights, resolve land conflicts and respect communities' rights to give or withhold their free, prior and informed consent to operations on their lands - do provide a new basis for dialogue and engagement with the company, but given APP's past record most observers insist that proof must come from actions not words. In the interests of full transparency, we provide some relevant updates and briefs below:

• Notes from High Conservation Values Resource Network and Forest Peoples Programme's meeting with Asia Pulp and Paper

• Letter to Asia Pulp and Paper from RAN, CAPPA, HuMA, Scale Up, WBH and FPP about its human rights audit

• News reports from 'mongabay' and comments by Greenpeace Indonesia

• Independent Assessment by Eyes on the Forest.
• EEPN media release: Warning to Financiers - Don't Fund Forest Destruction, 6 November 2012
• Letter from Aida Greenbury (Asia Pulp & Paper Group's Managing Director) to Forest Peoples Programme in response to EEPN media release, 8 November 2012
• Letter of response to Aida Greenbury from Marcus Colchester (Director, Forest Peoples Programme), 18 December 2012
• Brief Notes of HCVRN meeting with Aida Greenbury of Asia Pulp and Paper and APCS team, Jakarta, 28 January 2013