JAKARTA, (Reuters) – Greenpeace yesterday issued fresh accusations that palm oil firms linked to Indonesian agribusiness giant Sinar Mas have bulldozed rainforest and destroyed endangered orangutan habitats in Kalimantan.
Sinar Mas group’s palm oil unit, PT SMART Tbk lost top customers Unilever and Nestle after earlier Greenpeace allegations of virgin forest destruction.
SMART has promised to stop clearing high conservation value forests, a technical forestry term meaning forests that shelter endangered species or provide valuable natural services such as trapping climate-warming greenhouse gases. SMART said it will publish an audit of its operations on August 10. SMART manages Indonesian palm oil firms, PT Agro Lestari Mandiri (ALM) and PT Bangun Nusa Mandiri (BNM). The parent company for SMART, ALM and BNM is Singapore-listed Golden Agri-Resources, which is part-owned and led by the Widjaja family that controls Sinar Mas.
Greenpeace said in a report released on Thursday that aerial photographs taken in July by their own photographers, as well as by a Reuters photographer, showed that ALM was still clearing carbon-rich peatland forests in Ketapang district, in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province.
