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| Monster blazes sent a pall of acrid smoke over Southeast Asia for weeks (AFP Photo/ADEK BERRY) |
A brutal Indonesian forest fire season that left Southeast Asia choking in smog has renewed scrutiny of major palm oil and paper companies, with activists accusing them of breaking promises to halt logging.
The monster
blazes sent a pall of acrid smoke over the region for weeks, closing schools
and airports and causing a spike in respiratory ailments.
Mostly lit
to clear land for agriculture, they were the worst seen in the country since
2015.
Leading
companies have in recent years pledged not to log any more pristine rainforest,
not to use burning to clear land and to cut ties with smaller suppliers who
don't abide by their rules -- but critics say such vows now ring hollow.
"They
do not live up to the commitments, and are not addressing the fact that we are
now in a climate crisis," Annisa Rahmawati, a senior forest campaigner at
Greenpeace, told AFP.
"They
are still doing business as usual."
Industry
players however insist they have gone to great lengths to stop burning and
trees being cut down in their operations.
Singapore-listed
Wilmar International, the world's biggest palm oil trader, committed in 2013 to
a no-deforestation policy and says it has stopped sourcing from 17 suppliers
that did not comply with their rules.
Production
of Palm oil -- used in numerous everyday goods from shampoo to biscuits -- has
been blamed by environmentalists for driving massive deforestation.
Consumer goods companies are paying more attention to where they source palm oil and other materials.
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Palm oil
production has been blamed by environmentalists for driving massive
deforestation (AFP Photo/WAHYUDI)
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Consumer goods companies are paying more attention to where they source palm oil and other materials.
Some of the
world's largest brands -- including Nestle and Unilever -- pledged in 2010 to
reach net zero deforestation within a decade through "responsible
sourcing" of cattle, palm oil, soya and other commodities.
But after
that pledge was signed, the pace of tree-felling linked to commodities
increased dramatically and at least 50 million hectares (123 million acres) of
forest worldwide has been destroyed Greenpeace said -- an area about the size
of Spain.
Firestarters
Fires are
used as a cheap way to clear agricultural land in Indonesia every year during
the dry season.
Experts say
it is hard to know who is responsible for the blazes in the hardest hit areas --
Indonesia's Sumatra island and the Indonesian part of Borneo -- which are home
to myriad companies of varying sizes and numerous small-scale farmers.
Big firms
insist they have "no-burn" policies in place and often blame
smallholders for starting fires they say then spread to their plantations.
Indonesia
has made some arrests over the blazes but in many cases it remains unclear who
started the fires -- and who ordered them.
While
larger companies have vowed not to source from smaller ones that break strict
environmental rules, critics say they are not monitoring their supply chains
carefully.
"The
biggest challenge is the industry-wide lack of traceability of the origins of
palm fruit," said Nur Maliki Arifiandi, from WWF Indonesia.
"This has allowed continuing deforestation, often caused by real smallholders as well as land speculators and rich, powerful people to open more natural forest areas and plant illegal oil palm plantations."
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Indonesia
has made some arrests over the blazes but in many cases it remains
unclear who
started the fires - and who ordered them (AFP Photo/WAHYUDI)
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"This has allowed continuing deforestation, often caused by real smallholders as well as land speculators and rich, powerful people to open more natural forest areas and plant illegal oil palm plantations."
Some
industry watchers say commitments by big firms have helped and official figures
show the rate of forest loss in Indonesia declined in recent years.
Burning
issue
But critics
say problems persist -- this week Greenpeace said in a new report that palm oil
and pulpwood companies with links to land burned between 2015 and 2018 rarely
faced serious government sanctions.
And last
year the NGO accused palm-oil giant Wilmar, as well as other consumer brands
including Colgate-Palmolive, Hershey, Nestle, and Unilever, of continuing to
buy from groups that were destroying the rainforest.
At the end
of 2018 Wilmar, Unilever and Mondelez committed to a mapping and monitoring
platform for the palm oil sector, which Greenpeace supported at the time as a
potential breakthrough in cleaning up supply chains.
But the NGO
pulled out of the project last month, saying the companies were not serious
about the project.
Wilmar
insists it sticks to its commitments and says it continues to work towards a
supply chain free from deforestation from 2020.
Activists
however doubt such goals are within reach.
"We
are asking companies to be more serious in implementing their targets on the
ground," WWF Indonesia's Arifiandi said.
