JAKARTA — Asia Pulp & Paper, one of the world’s biggest forestry groups, has effectively been given the green light to seek ethical certification from the Forest Stewardship Council — a stamp of approval that it was stripped of 18 years ago for deforestation and other violations. In a decision announced in July, the FSC, the world’s leading certifier of sustainable forestry practices, lifted a suspension to allow APP to resume its remedy process — a series of remedial and restorative measures for past violations that would eventually make the company eligible for FSC certification. Watchdog groups say the move caught them by surprise, especially given that a key legal review into the company’s web of corporate holdings remains unfinished. They warn this lets one of the world’s most notorious forestry firms fast-track its return to the ethical timber trade, and also exposes communities in conflict with APP-linked companies to further harm. “We were led to believe that the outcome of the legal review would inform whether APP was eligible to re-enter the remedy process,” the Forest Peoples Programme, a U.K.-based campaign group, told Mongabay. “Proceeding in advance undermines trust in the process and diminishes the credibility of the review itself.” Log yard of Sinar Mas Group/Asia Pulp and Paper’s Indah Kiat pulp’s paper mill in Riau Province, Sumatra. In 2003, a lot of the logs used by the mill was obtained by large scale clearance of natural forest. Tangled corporate web APP is the main pulp and paper arm…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed