This presentation by Petrus Gunarso, the Sustainability Director of April, focuses on how April was dealing with the Haze issue in Indonesia, what the causes of the fires were how they detected them and what kind of strategy and collaboration April had.

1. THE STORY of 2013 FIRES
PETRUS GUNARSO PhD
Sustainability Director
CIFOR’s Workshop on “Fires, Haze and Landscapes”
Jakarta, 29 January 2014
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2. Outline
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Introduction to our operation
APRIL’s No-Burn Policy
Causes of Fires
On the ground fire detection
Eco-Hydro Water Management
Strategy and Collaboration

3. 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

4. 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-ofCustody.
 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

5. NO BURN POLICY
Why we won’t start forest
fires?
No commercial sense for APRIL to burn
our own forests
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6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Fire Started by Others
“Puskopol Area”:
On June 2013, 115 Firemen with fire fighting equipment
Community Occupied
Land (disputed area)
APRIL plantation

9. Fire Started by Others
Photos of land clearing activities for palm oil by local community, around
the outside border of HTR Kerinci

10. FIRE SQUAD

11. 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

12. COLLABORATION AS A SOLUTION
Short Term Solutions:
1. Fire Fighting
Working with Indonesia’s National Disaster Agency
(BNBP)
2. Reporting on fires near our concessions
Done 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.
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13. 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
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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

14. Thank You