Palm oil group still destroying Indonesian forest, says Greenpeace

Indonesia’s largest palm and pulp group is still destroying critical habitats, claims Greenpeace in an investigation published today.

The non-governmental organisation (NGO) has published new photographic evidence, aerial monitoring and field analysis which seems to show that the Sinar Mas group is continuing to break its own environmental commitments on protecting forests and peat land.

And confidential documents obtained by the group indicate that the firm has ambitions to expand its pulp and palm oil operations into fresh tracts of rainforest and peat land in the province of Papua.

As well as destroying critical habitats, the deforestation is contributing heavily to the nation’s carbon emissions. Various estimates say deforestation is responsible for between 10 and 25 per cent of Indonesia’s carbon emissions.

Sinar Mas claims not to develop on peat land and to protect forests of ‘high conservation value’.

Earlier Greenpeace investigations have documented cases where Sinar Mas operations actively cleared rainforest and peat land areas, including tiger and orang-utan habitats.

Following the latest revelations Greenpeace is calling on Sinar Mas to come clean and make public its maps detailing all its landholdings, to enable analysis of which areas are critically important for biodiversity and climate protection, and what it is doing in those areas.

Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace forest campaigner, said the firm had been caught red handed.

"This is typical of a group that has an appalling record of environmental destruction,” he said. “Sinar Mas has to be reigned in if there is to be a future for what’s left of Indonesia’s rainforests.”

The disclosures come on the day Sinar Mas had planned to publish an audit it commissioned into its own activities in a small number of its palm oil operations, but the report has been delayed.

Several leading multinationals – including Unilever, Kraft and Nestle - have now ended contracts with Sinar Mas after pressure from NGOs and the media.

However, Greenpeace is calling on others, including trading giant Cargill, to take immediate action to remove rainforest destruction from their supply chain.

Sinar Mas has hired PR firm Bell Pottinger, which also represents oil trading company Trafigura.