THE STORY of 2013 FIRES

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PETRUS GUNARSO PhDSustainability Director

CIFOR’s Workshop on “Fires, Haze and Landscapes”Jakarta, 29 January 2014

Outline

• Introduction to our operation

• APRIL’s No-Burn Policy

• Causes of Fires

• On the ground fire detection

• Eco-Hydro Water Management

• Strategy and Collaboration

OUR OPERATIONS• One of the largest pulp and paper companies in the

world.

• Global customer base, with sales offices in over 75

countries.

• Integrated fiber, pulp & paper operation located in

Pangkalan Kerinci, Riau Province, Sumatra

• ISO 9001:2000, ISO 14001 & OHSAS 18001 certified

• Flagship brand Paper One – sold in over

70 countries worldwide

OUR OPERATIONS We adopt Sustainable Forest Management;

We plant only on approximately 50% of our concession,

while the rest is used for community (e.g. agriculture, villages,

etc) and conservation zones (ie. High Conservation Value

Forest - HCVF).

Certified for Sustainable Forest Plantation Management by the

Indonesian Ecolabelling Institute (LEI) and PEFC for Chain-of-

Custody.

Certified for wood legality through SVLK (Indonesian

Government requirement) and OLB (Bureau Veritas certification).

No-burn policy since the start of operations in 1994.

First company in Indonesia to publish a Sustainability Report

from 2002

NO BURN POLICY

Why we won’t start forest

fires?

No commercial sense for APRIL to burn

our own forests

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NO BURN POLICY• Burning forests is equivalent to burning our raw

materials. Burnt land/trees damages our assets and

reduces our commercial return.

• Burning forest reduces/eliminates the biomass in the

land which leads to loss of nutrients, affects

sustainable plantation development.• It’s also why we act fast to detect and extinguish fires

in our concessions and near our concessions

• Fibre from trees is the central raw material in the pulp and paper business

• We are the ‘victim’ of forest fires, with losses in the millions of dollars.

Fires in concession• Fire Accident

• When fires in land belonging to the community living inside

our concessions spread into our plantation and

conservation areas.

• When fires outside our concession spread into ours.

• Neighboring Fires

• Burning is widely used by farmers to clear land because it

is the cheapest way to prepare their land for farming

activities.

• During dry season, land clearing for agriculture, e.g. palm

oil is intensified, which causes the fires to be

uncontrollable, particularly on peatland.

Fire Started by Others

“Puskopol Area”:

On June 2013, 115 Firemen with fire fighting equipment

Community Occupied

Land (disputed area)

APRIL plantation

Fire Started by Others

Photos of land clearing activities for palm oil by local community, around the outside border of HTR Kerinci

FIRE SQUAD

Eco-Hydro

Hydro buffer zones to minimize the negative impact to conservation zones

Water control dams to optimize the water level height and minimize carbon emission

COLLABORATION AS A SOLUTION

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Short Term Solutions:

1. Fire FightingWorking with Indonesia’s National Disaster Agency

(BNBP)

2. Reporting on fires near our concessionsDone beyond call of duty – while patrolling our own area

– we also report all fires happen in the vicinity of our

concession and often we send fire squad to help to fight

the fire.

COLLABORATION AS A SOLUTION

Long Term:1. Legality and Licensing

• Indonesia government - coordination and support needed due to land

tenure issues

• Land boundary demarcation of operable areas viz a viz community land

• Dispute resolution process for overlapping land claims

• Enforcement for land burning

2. Improving correlation between hotspots and actual fires• Collaboration with WRI

3. Understanding real situation on the ground

• Centre for International Forestry Research – CIFOR

• ASEAN Peatland Forest Project

4. Provide alternatives to land clearing• Sustainable development to create livelihoods and jobs

• Multi-stakeholder private-public-partnership initiative with CIFOR,

Norway Embassy, Indonesian Government, and private sectors

Thank You