by Muhklas Setiabudi
Indonesia’s haze issue has been the buzz word in news and political circuits ever since the black smog from the country’s blazing forest fires, which have, as science has proven, been further fanned by the monster El Nino.
Add to this the fact that these fires are mostly smoldering on land that is peat and is meant for palm oil and / or paper plantations, and the big Indonesian conglomerates have a heated economic and environmental issue at hand.
Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), the mammoth paper and pulp producer, has been at the receiving end of this haze from the green warriors of Greenpeace and family. The NGOs have been repeatedly claiming that a comprehensive map is needed. Specifically, that a ‘One Map’ kind of solution is what Indonesia needs to tackle all its ills; a possibility that is rather unlikely. APP has come under pressure because of the large number of fires on land both it and its supplier companies own. NGO data says 39 per cent of all high-confidence hot spots in Sumatra and 53 per cent of all high-confidence hot spots on Sumatra's peatlands were on APP concessions.
What has brought further embarrassment to APP is the shocking comment from one of its executives claiming that the company does not know which land belongs to whom. In Indonesia, land conflict is a longstanding and recurring problem, one that just adds to the misery of the deforestation and haze pollution. This conflict stems from rapid expansion of agriculture, forestry and mining, on the back of a rising demand for commodities.
At the same time, APP’s managing director of sustainability went on record to speak about the land conflict issue and said, “For example in Indonesia, we recently called upon the Government to extend and enhance the Indonesian Forest Moratorium to give more time to finalize the development of Indonesia’s One Map program to provide legal clarity on ownership.”
A classic case of too many cooks spoil the broth? Or, in the parlance of the corporate sector, APP needs to rein in its too many spokespersons who speak off the record and cause the company to red faced every time something appalling like this happens.
The fact is that APP has become so big that one side of the brain doesn’t know what the other is thinking, or worse, planning to implement.
This presents a couple of problems. First, does this mean APP has lost control over its businesses and is no longer able to differentiate what part of the kingdom belongs to its family?
Or, worse, does it mean it APP continues playing stupid again, but actually sounds like Greenpeace – and the rest of the NGOs – by chanting the same green slogans to avoid being hammered by Greenpeace again?
Ironically, even though it seems that Greenpeace is anti-APP, it remains amazingly mum about the fires on APP concessions. The frustrations about the hypocritical stance caused on the grande dames of Greenpeace in Asia to call on APP to discontinueconstructive engagement and change the strategic direction of Greenpeace cancelling the corporate relationship with APP, Wilmar and others.