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
Domtar Deal, Deforestation and Abuses: Whose Side are Banks On?
Last July, Andrea Paul received a letter containing a drawing of an Indigenous person and a Black person hanging from a tree. The caption said, "This is what I think of Natives and Blacks. You think you rule the world." Miss Paul is the traditional Chief of the First...
Walking for forests: local communities’ weeks long march to protest their land destruction
Togu Simorangkir lives in North Sumatra. A postgraduate from Oxford University, he is an author and environmental activist. Over the past weeks, he marched for 42 days, walking with friends across Sumatra for approximately 1500 km, and reaching Jakarta a few days ago....
Indonesian paper giant APP takes over North American Domtar, putting the company’s credibility at risk
For the pulp and paper industry, it is the take-over of the decade. Domtar shareholders decided today to sell their shares to Paper Excellence and delivered the major North American uncoated freesheet paper producer (with 21 manufacturing facilities around the world,...
Activists protest first eucalyptus shipment from Mozambique to Portugal and ask World Bank to stop funding ‘afforestation’/operating company
Conversion of forests and land to plantations doesn’t solve climate change The first delivery of eucalyptus trees to Aveiro in Portugal from the port of Beira in Mozambique has been received with strong criticism by Mozambican and Portuguese groups and two...
New violence by an Asia Pulp and Paper controlled company against indigenous women in Sumatra
What started as a normal, quiet day in the country village of Suluk Bongkal (in Sumatra), turned into a horrific afternoon and evening. On December 18th 2008, a small army of policemen, private security and paramilitary groups attacked the village, and suddenly, all...
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...