Every summer for the past couple of decades, a thick cloud of smoke has swept through parts of south-east Asia. Originating from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the forest fires are an annual ritual. But this year, the public outrage in Singapore reached a crescendo, fueling a heated blame game between governments and companies.
It's no coincidence that the fires mostly started in large sections of cleared forest while preparing plantations for global commodities such as palm oil, pulp and paper. It's also no coincidence that stopping forest destruction is part of the solution. Until companies and governments act to protect forests and peatlands rather than destroy them this annual crisis will reoccur.
Sustainable palm oil?
According to official Ministry of Forestry maps, Indonesia lost 1.24m hectares of forest between 2009 and 2011, equivalent to 620,000 hectares per year. Greenpeace International recently revealed in new mapping analysis that the palm oil sector was the single largest driver of deforestation in Indonesia between this period, accounting for about a quarter of the country's forest loss.
The analysis shows that significant deforestation took place in concessions currently owned by members of the palm oil industry's largest sustainability organisation, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), including companies such as Singapore-based Wilmar International.
More damning is the revelation from the mapping analysis that RSPO concessions accounted for 39% of the fire hotspots on palm oil concessions in Riau between January and June this year. While the blame game played by regional governments gave way to promises of tougher action, little has been done to hold the companies accountable for their role in years and sometimes decades of forest destruction.
Companies that operate massive holdings of land or work through a complex system of third party supply chains simply pointed to their zero burning policies, the complexity of Indonesia's opaque mapping systems, and the role of smallholders in lighting the fires to avoid responsibility.
The long road to transparency
The RSPO wants its members to be industry leaders in sustainability, but its current standards leave them free to destroy forests and drain peatland. While RSPO members might have no-fire policies, the peatland they have cleared and drained is like a tinderbox. Why? The choking haze is the result of decades of forest destruction and clearance on peatland: a carbon-rich, naturally moist mass of organic material. But when this peatland is cleared and drained – mostly by large plantation companies – it dries out. One spark is all it takes for it to flare up.
Traders, such as Wilmar International, are part of the problem. It controls much of the palm oil trade from Indonesia. The palm oil traded through its refineries is a mix of both responsibly produced oil and oil that has resulted from deforestation and destruction of critical wildlife habitat and peatland.
While the RSPO has stated that the mapping analysis is wrong, it knows that concession boundaries are not an exact science, given the conflicting data and lack of a central mapping system in Indonesia. The RSPO should make public the maps provided by the companies and the legal status of those maps to better aid stakeholder scrutiny.
In response to the mapping analysis, the RSPO has reviewed its member's operations. Of the members reviewed, only one has had a formal complaint raised against it. Greater transparency and openness will force companies to be accountable for the fires that are claimed to be in their concessions.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
While it has received bad PR, palm oil does not have to be synonymous with forest destruction. The link can be broken and some companies are starting to move in the right direction. When Greenpeace campaigned over the sourcing policies of big brands such as Nestle and Unilever, they committed to zero deforestation, which in turn pressured one of Indonesia's largest producers, Golden Agri-Resources, to commit to a forest protection policy.
Other big palm oil players have joined the Palm Oil Innovation Group (POIG), a coalition of NGOs and palm oil producers, which aims to stretch the RSPO principles to break the link between deforestation and palm oil. The RSPO has its uses, but to really break the link with forest destruction, companies must go beyond it.
To claim to be sustainable means more than nice words. It also means being accountable and being transparent to all your stakeholders; it means being proactive and enforcing rules. The people across south-east Asia who suffered from choking air pollution and environmental destruction have a right to know where these fires originated and how they intend to tackle the root causes. Transparency is just the first step towards greater forest protection, and a cleaner, healthier planet.
Bustar Maitar is head of the Indonesia forest campaign at Greenpeace International.
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