Lafcadio Cortesi - who has written 9 posts on Rainforest Action Network Blog.
Currently the Forest Campaign Director at RAN, Lafcadio has more than 20 years of experience working in a variety of roles and institutions in North America and the Asia-Pacific region on market-based conservation approaches and private sector sustainability, policy analysis, institutional development, community-based natural resource management and conservation economies, and biodiversity conservation.RAN has been campaigning since 2009 to persuade Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) to reform its destructive business practices. To that end, we have worked with dozens of major companies to develop policies that eliminate paper associated with rainforest destruction from their supply chains, including, most recently, Disney and HarperCollins. With APP’s newly announced Forest [...]
Continue reading...By Lafcadio Cortesi, February 5 2013
Today is a day many of us only dreamed would come. Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), the controversial paper giant once referred to by the UK Guardian as “one of the most destructive companies on the planet,” claims it has silenced its bulldozers and pulled them from the most endangered rainforests of Indonesia. After years [...]
Continue reading...By Lafcadio Cortesi, January 15 2013
While Asia Pulp and Paper’s (APP) questionable financial dealings and destructive impact on rainforests and the climate have been widely reported, the human rights violations and social conflict associated with the company’s expropriation of community lands are less well known. Last week, RAN proudly joined with several Indonesian and international human rights and environmental organizations [...]
Continue reading...By Lafcadio Cortesi, May 24 2012
On May 15th, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) announced several “new” commitments that appear to have the potential, if implemented, to address some of the numerous controversies surrounding the company’s notoriously destructive operations. It is encouraging to see APP acknowledging many of the negative impacts associated with its business model that the company has, at [...]
Continue reading...By Lafcadio Cortesi, September 8 2011
Today’s announcement that John Boehner will host Gibson Guitars CEO Henry Juskiewicz in the speaker’s box during President Obama’s jobs speech as a victim of over-regulation run amok is an example of cynical fact-twisting at its worst. Gibson Guitars, maker of the iconic Les Paul electric guitar, is under investigation for violating a law that [...]
Continue reading...By Lafcadio Cortesi, January 28 2011
It’s disappointing that Habitat for Humanity — a group I have a lot of admiration for — didn’t do its homework before partnering with Indonesia’s most destructive pulp and paper company, Asia Pulp and Paper. Not only is Habitat getting used to fuel APP’s massive PR machine, but Habitat is soiling its own reputation and [...]
Continue reading...By Lafcadio Cortesi, January 13 2011
It’s become clear this week — between Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s comments on tackling corruption and reducing negative environmental impacts of deforestation and Al Gore’s speech extolling the business case for rolling back deforestation and commending Indonesia’s emerging leadership on the issue — that industry elites with a vested interest in maintaining business as [...]
Continue reading...By Lafcadio Cortesi, October 7 2010
Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), Indonesia’s largest and most controversial logger, made another promise this week. APP announced that one of the rainforest logging and conversion permits it controls (located in the globally significant peatland forests of the Sumatra’s Kampar Peninsula) will be re-licensed as a carbon conservation project. However, given the [...]
Continue reading...By Lafcadio Cortesi, July 10 2009
Sinar Mas Group, one of Indonesia’s largest business cartel’s and, between its holdings in the pulp and paper and oil palm sectors, perhaps the nation’s biggest forest destroyer, has once again proven that it operates outside responsible business norms by detaining journalists in the Sumatran province of Jambi. In fact, given its atrocious record on [...]
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By Lafcadio Cortesi, February 14 2013
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