Ensure Social Responsibility
- Recognise, respect and protect human rights, and comply with and proactively develop fundamental employment and social standards and relevant international agreements for the protection of human rights.
- Ensure free, prior and informed consent of local peoples and communities in the areas from which raw materials originate and where production takes place.
- Recognise, respect and protect indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ legal and customary rights to control their traditional lands and protect their cultural identity.
- Recognise, respect and protect local communities’ rights to a healthy environment, and rights to participation as a primary stakeholder in land-use planning.
- Recognise, respect and protect workers’, including subcontractors’ workers’, rights to beneficial employment and a safe working environment.
- Promote community-ownership, worker-ownership and the development of paper manufacturing facilities that are scaled appropriately for local communities, and a diversity of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the paper sector.
- Respect and support local economies on the basis of a long-term social and environmental
Relevant Resources
News and Resources related to Social Responsibility
Can certification save the world’s last remaining forests?
In the lead up to the International Day of Forests on 21st March, a new Greenpeace study goes beyond the discussion of specific failures and weaknesses of individual certification schemes, and raises the question of whether certification is still a useful tool in its...
188 groups say it’s time to ‘make the throw-away go away’
Before the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of the products we produced and consumed were built to last. Milk bottles made of glass were returned and sterilized for re-use, restaurants offered ceramic plates and stainless-steel cutlery and the plastic bag was yet to be...
The capture of policy-making by the pulp and paper industry is driving mega-fires in Portugal and land grabbing in Mozambique
This article is a guest post by Oliver Munnion, Global Forest Coalition, Portugal. It was originally published in Forest Cover 63, December 2020. Global Forest Coalition will host a webinar on Thursday 21st January at 3pm Amsterdam time (CET) to explore their new...
Paper giant APP evades voluntary forest protection pledges, binding safeguards by banks and buyers needed
Jakarta/Berlin, 3 December 2020 - New evidence indicates that buyers and banks’ ineffective due diligence systems have allowed Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), a global market paper supplier, to ignore its own forest conservation and human rights pledges, with the result...
Promising the moon: APRIL’s track record of empty promises and unmet pledges
On November 17th, Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL), the second biggest paper company in Indonesia, held a webinar to announce a new set of 10 year goals for social and environmental sustainability known as APRIL 2030. The webinar was led by...
Indigenous Mapuche Forest Activist Murdered in Chile by Police
Antonio Treuquil was a werkén, the traditional Mapuche spokesperson, in the We Newén community. Mapuche indigenous people are in a longstanding conflict with the forest industry that grabbed most of their land during the dictatorship. Also the We Newén community is...
Social conflict, abuses and intimidation in the Jambi region, Indonesia – a chronology of pulp industry actions and events
Tension is increasing around global paper giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) pulpwood concessions in Indonesia. Lately, Indigenous communities have been facing recurrent acts of intimidation, criminalisation and episodes of violence have escalated, contributing to a...
Statement in Solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives
The Environmental Paper Network joins with our member organizations to unequivocally speak and stand in solidarity and support of Black lives, and against racism, oppression and inequality in all forms. We join with those demanding action and justice and who are...
Civil society denounces Indonesia’s government siding with companies threatening Indigenous Peoples, endangered species and the environment
Jakarta, 4 June 2020 - The National Coalition to Preserve Natural Resources (GN-PSDA) has called on the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry to stop ignoring the environmental and criminal destruction caused by Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), one of the world’s...
New community rights violations by APP in Indonesia met by strong response from 90 environmental and human rights organisations
Following the latest case of the violation of communities’ rights in Indonesia by Asia Pulp and Paper, ninety environmental and human rights groups have published an open letter to investors and buyers
The cost of violence in Indonesia – new data indicate USD 1.2 to 10 billion risk from social conflicts involving pulp and paper suppliers
When they went to work in their gardens, the residents of Lubuk Mandarsah village in the Indonesian province of Jambi found drones flying over their crops and spraying poison. This is the way the pulp plantation company PT Wirakarya Sakti, a subsidiary of Asia Pulp...
Earth Day Food-for-Thought: Development Funds Dissolving into Pulp
Today is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a symbolic date celebrated around the world to show support for environmental action. But this year is different. 2020 carried high expectations in the fight against climate change, but people were caught by surprise by the...