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Report clears SMART of deforestation
An environmental audit into palm oil producer PT SMART, paid for by the company, has cleared the company of the destruction of rainforests and orangutan habitats in Indonesia as alleged by a Greenpeace report
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n environmental audit into palm oil producer PT SMART, paid for by the company, has cleared the company of the destruction of rainforests and orangutan habitats in Indonesia as alleged by a Greenpeace report.
The audit, however, found that a fraction of the company’s plantation areas were located on peatlands — a violation of the law and the company’s own best practices.
Launched Tuesday, the audit report showed that 11 concession areas located in Central and West Kalimantan controlled by the company were degraded land and no longer primary forests prior to the conversion of the areas into palm oil plantations.
The audit was carried out between May and June by the Control Union Certification and BSI Group. Two forestry conservation experts from the Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Bambang Hero Saharjo and Yanto Santosa, contributed to the audit. Both audit agencies were commissioned by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), but paid for by SMART.
“The Greenpeace claims are either exaggerated or wrong,” SMART president director Daud Dharsono said at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Jakarta.
Daud said all the concession areas in Central and West Kalimantan were affected by earlier activities such as logging and slashing and burning by other parties, before the company won government permits for the areas.
The audit report says SMART had completed all required land development permits, including timber utilization permits (IPK) and the environmental impact assessments (Amdal) before obtaining concessions for five areas in West Kalimantan.
In the case of areas in Central Kalimantan, Daud admitted that the Amdals from the government were issued only after land clearing had been carried out. “Moving forward, the company will ensure that an Amdal will be obtained before land clearing,” Daud said.
He also acknowledged another audit finding, which said that 1.8 percent of plantations areas controlled by the company in Central and West Kalimantan were located on peatlands.
“That was unintentional. We didn’t know about the more-than-3-meter-deep peatlands in our concession areas when we conducted a soil survey before clearing the land,” Daud said, adding that the company would restore the areas back to peatland.
Market analysts said the environmental audit would challenge Greenpeace’s findings on the company’s operations, and thus influence palm oil buyers such as Nestle SA — the world’s largest nutrition and food company, Unilever — the world’s second-largest consumer goods company, and Spanish energy company Abengoa SA to resume their contracts with SMART.
All three companies stopped buying palm oil from SMART after launching a verification report into another report by Greenpeace, which stated that the company was contributing to climate change and destroying the habitat of orangutans and Sumatran tigers.
Unilever said Tuesday the company would consult with the RSPO on the environmental audit prior to making any final decision on whether to resume buying palm oil from SMART.
Responding to the audit, Greenpeace said it confirmed the group’s findings that SMART had been clearing forests and peatlands and operating without necessary permits.
“The SMART spin is a poor attempt at brand protection that does nothing to challenge Greenpeace findings. We’ve repeatedly shown that SMART says one thing and does another,” Greenpeace Southeast Asia forest team leader Bustar Maitar said. (rdf)
