Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company, has become the latest major multinational to cancel their palm oil contract with Sinar Mas, one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates and a leading producer of both palm oil and wood pulp for paper and packaging products. A string of reports have shown that Sinar Mas is actively clear [...]

Aida Greenbury, Director of Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement at Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), took the stage today at the 12th Annual RISI pulp and paper conference to promote APP’s products and “corporate responsibility.”  At the same time, leading Indonesian NGO’s called on buyers and investors of APP to reject the company’s misinformation and stop [...]

Here in Copenhagen (Day 5, 5:00 PM), delegates from all over the world are not surprised that the U.S. is playing a disappointing role in the climate negotiations, after all the science calls for 40% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the U.S. climate legislation calls for only 4%. This past summer, RAN [...]

This blog was posted first on Grist. In the midst of decreasing expectations over a global climate deal, saving forests has been held out as the one thing that might be achieved over the next two weeks in Copenhagen. Says Newsweek: “One of the few tangible achievements expected from the climate talks in Copenhagen this month [...]

I am happy to announce that forests continue to be this year’s fashion trend. Just this week, PAK 2000, packaging supplier to fashion’s finest companies, including Versace, Coach, Calvin Klein, and Marc Jacobs, has rejected rainforest destruction! PAK 2000 announced that they will cut all financial ties with their majority shareholder Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), [...]

Human Rights Watch has just released the report: Wild Money: The human rights consequences of illegal logging and corruption in Indonesia’s forestry sector. Talking to allies in Riau, Sumatra, where Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is logging tropical forests, it is clear that APP engages in corruption and utilizes a complete lack of transparency to profit [...]

Yesterday the New York Times featured the plight of Indonesian rainforests and the relevance of stemming deforestation in order to address global climate change on the front page. While the article correctly identifies the global importance of rainforests and peatlands for the climate, it leaves the reader inadequately informed on the potential for perverse outcomes [...]

As negotiations wrapped up in Barcelona at the UN Climate Talks, the opportunity for a robust agreement to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) is dangling from a wire. The latest negotiating text, which parties will be working on at the opening of the Copenhagen UNFCCC COP15, contains no provisions to [...]

The world’s forests are a critical piece of the climate change puzzle. Covering over 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface, forests play a huge role in regulating weather patterns and absorbing the carbon that we release into the atmosphere. Not to mention, global deforestation is a huge contributor to climate change – emitting more [...]

Last week I was in Sumatra, Indonesia, traveling with representatives from the local NGO Warsi, investigating the impacts of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinar Mas, on forests and forests peoples. Two days of 4×4 travel over dirt roads brought my team to PT Wirakarya Sakti (WKS). There, I spoke to [...]