Thursday, April 8, 2010

Verification over Forest Destruction

In 2008, international environment organization Greenpeace announced that some producers of Crude Palm Oil(CPO), including PT. Sinar Mas, had converted natural forest and peat land as habitats for Orangutan, Tigers, Rhinoceros, into oil palm plantations.

As a result, Unilever, as the world's largest buyer of CPO, has stopped buying from PT. Sinar Mas.
Due to which fact, according to The Jakarta Post, PT. Sinar Mas has assigned two international surveyors i.e. Control Union Certification (CUC) and British Standard Institute (BSI) to clarify this matter.

I hope that the above international surveyors would clarify this matter based on the truth.

Verification over forest destruction claims to be completed in June 
Mustaqim Adamrah ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 04/07/2010 8:22 PM  |  Business 

Publicly listed crude palm oil (CPO) producer PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (SMART) expects to have a verification work over forest destruction claims finished by June’s end.

“We have delivered the term of reference (part of the verification work) to the two consulting (firms) … we still need to arrange some details,” SMART president Daud Dharsono told reporters on Wednesday after a meeting with Trade Ministry officials and the Netherlands-based consumer goods producer Unilever executives.

“We hope the verification will complete within the next eight to 12 weeks – by the end of June.”

For the verification, SMART has appointed the Netherlands-based Control Union Certification (CUC) and British Standards Institute Group (BSI) headquartered in London through their representative offices in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in Singapore, respectively.


Results of the verification are expected to, as SMART says, “clarify” issues raised by environmental non-governmental organization Greenpeace in the latter’s report.

Meanwhile, Unilever Indonesia corporate secretary Sancoyo Antarikso said Unilever would wait for the results before deciding to whether resume buying CPO from SMART or not.


In a 2008 Greenpeace report, the organization indicated that CPO producers, including SMART, had converted peat lands, natural forests and habitats of Indonesia’s indigenous Orangutan into oil palm plantations. The report was later supported by a field investigation and satellite data.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

start your own little way to help our mother nature.....

jan said...

start your own little way to help our mother nature.....

colson said...

Clean businessmen, civil servants and politicians demand integrity, organizations with checks and controls and strict maintenance of laws and rules. And ultimately criminals deserve punishments.

However in no modern country, there should be mediaeval punishments. Capital punishment is way over the top.

colson said...

OMG - my this previous comment of course was meant to be after the other, previous post ... ( Ashamed I will abstain from any more comments today)

Unknown said...

@Jan and Anonymous,
Yes, we should all start with our own way to help mother nature.

Unknown said...

@Colson,
It's okay, don't stop you are welcome to comment anytime.

Corruption, like terrorism, are done by people who do not care about other people's suffering they have caused. They robbed state's money which are supposed to be used for public purposes.
It is very difficult how much robbed just at the Tax Offices around Indonesia. Not to say other agencies.
If only conventional punishment is used as in the past, the impact would not be different than before.
It's just for shock therapy.

Unknown said...

we all have a role to play in environment issues...collectively we do make a difference.

Unknown said...

Umihoney,
We should work collectively to maintain environment.

Unknown said...

That is not only disappointing news, but is ominous for the future for a number of reasons.

Unknown said...

Peter/Kiwi,
It is endangering the future world's environment i.e. unstable climate change, global warming, which could lead to harvests failure and famine.

Mel said...

And so man continues to destroy the natural habitat of our animals - for oil? Get a life will you?!

Unknown said...

Bobi,
We are facing a dilemma, on the one hand we must keep forests, however in order to develop country we need money, and the easiest way would be to give license to businessmen to cut forest trees and develop commercial plantations, and or mining. If this is not stop, all the forest in Indonesia would be like those in Kalimantan/Borneo island. we are now suffering famine failure caused by unstable climate forcing us to import rice etc.