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For Immediate Release
July, 06 2010, 12:06pm EDT
Contact:
San Francisco: Rolf Skar, Greenpeace Senior forest campaigner:
415.533.2888
Jakarta: Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace Southeast Asia
Forest Team Leader:
+62.8134.4666.135
New Report Links Sinar Mas Group, Major Brands to Rainforest Destruction
Palm Oil and Paper Giant Sinar Mas Set to Undermine Indonesia’s Plan to Curb Deforestation and Climate Pollution
JAKARTA, INDONESIA/SAN FRANCISCO
A new Greenpeace report
shows how global brands are fueling climate change and pushing Sumatran
tigers and orangutans towards the brink of extinction by using paper
made from Indonesian rainforest destruction.(1)
The report, How Sinar Mas
is Pulping the Planet, traces the connection from Asia Pulp and
Paper (APP)(2), the paper subsidiary of the notorious Sinar Mas group,
to major international brands.
Rolf Skar, Greenpeace senior forest campaigner, said "Our new investigation shows Sinar
Mas is selling paper products from rainforest and peatland destruction
to major brands all over the world."
The Greenpeace documents how Sinar Mas
is wreaking havoc in two important rainforest areas on the Indonesian
island of Sumatra: the Bukit Tigapuluh Forest Landscape and the
Kerumantan peat forest. Bukit Tigapuluh is one of the last refuges for
critically endangered Sumatran tigers and orangutans. Kerumutan's carbon
rich peatlands are a key defense against climate change; some Kerumutan
peat is deeper than three meters and illegal to clear under Indonesian
law. Despite this, APP uses the logs from these rainforest areas to feed
its Sumatran based pulp mills, which export pulp and paper products
worldwide.
"Kerumutan and Bukit Tigapuluh are just two of
many endangered forests being decimated by Sinar Mas for paper and palm
oil plantation expansion" said Skar. "Indonesian President Yudyohono's
new commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation
will be undermined unless he extends the moratorium on new deforestation
licenses to cover all forest and peatlands that are currently slated
for destruction by Sinar Mas and other companies," he concluded.
Several leading
companies have already responded to Greenpeace evidence of the Sinar
Mas group's destructive practices by cancelling their contracts with the
Indonesian palm oil and paper giant (3). Kraft has confirmed that is
phasing out APP paper and packaging, (4) whilst Kimberly- Clark, Nestle
and Unilever are implementing new policies that will also rule out
supplies from APP, unless the company and its suppliers make substantial
changes. Unilever, Kraft, and Nestle have also dropped contracts with
Golden Agri Resources (GAR), the Sinar Mas group's palm oil arm,
following recent Greenpeace campaigns. (5) In the financial world, HSBC
Global Asset Management announced it dropped all holdings in GAR.
"It's time for companies like Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts
and Kentucky Fried Chicken to catch up. We're calling on companies in
this report to stop doing business with Sinar Mas immediately. In
addition, we urge them to publicly support the immediate protection of
Indonesia's peatlands and back a moratorium on rainforest destruction,"
continued Skar.
The destruction of rainforests and
peatlands is the key reason why Indonesia accounts for around a quarter
of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation. (6) According
to recent government estimates, Indonesia ranks as the world's third
largest greenhouse gasemitter. (7)
Notes to Editor
NOTES TO EDITORS
(1) Greenpeace report "How Sinar Mas is
Pulping the Planet", July 2010 https://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/SinarMas-APP
(2) APP has major facilities in Indonesia and China and is expanding in
Australia, Canada and the US. It has sales networks in the US, the UK
and Spain.
(3) Between November 2007 and April 2010, Greenpeace released a series
of reports documenting Sinar Mas' rainforest and peatland destruction
for palm oil including Illegal forest clearance and RSPO greenwash: Case
study of Sinar Mas at https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/forests/sinarmasRSPOgreenwash.pdf.
(4) Letter from Kraft Foods to Greenpeace UK, 1 July 2010.
(5) A number of major corporations including Staples, Office Depot and
Woolworths (Australia) have dropped paper contracts with Sinar Mas due
to its environmental bad practises.
(6) For full reference see 'How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet p.32
Endnote 6
(7) For full reference see 'How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet p.32
Endnote 7
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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Defenders of the planet took aim at President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday for transferring approximately 1.4 million acres of public lands along the Dalton Utility Corridor from the US Bureau of Land Management to the state of Alaska.
"This corridor encompasses some of Alaska’s most critical transportation and energy assets, including portions of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System corridor, the Dalton Highway, and proposed routes for the Ambler Road and Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects," the US Department of the Interior noted in a statement, framing the move as part of DOI's commitment to the Alaska Statehood Act, as well as orders issued by Trump and the agency's secretary, Doug Burgum.
As Burgum and Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy cheered the development on Wednesday, Andrea Feniger, director of the state's Sierra Club chapter, declared that "this is less a transfer to Alaskans than a massive giveaway to out-of-state corporations that don't want to be burdened by the federal protections that safeguard our lands, waters, wildlife, and communities."
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While Alaska filed a motion to dismiss the case on Wednesday, Bridget Psarianos, senior staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska, told Bloomberg that the land transfer is illegal. She also said that "the interior secretary broke the law when removing federal protections for over 2 million acres of public lands in February without hearings in local communities, without a public comment period, and without addressing that decision's impacts on land, water, and subsistence users."
Other groups supporting that suit include the Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, and Sierra Club, whose director of conservation, Dan Ritzman, condemned Wednesday's transfer.
"This action will only help corporate polluters transform Alaska into an industrial wasteland—destroying irreplaceable landscapes for the sake of expanding the portfolios of mining and oil and gas companies that will never have to live with the consequences of this destruction," Ritzman stressed. "This decision completely ignores the wishes of local communities and tribes that depend upon these untouched areas for their livelihoods, cultures, and regional identities."
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Rebecca Noblin, an Alaska senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, similarly told E&E News that "handing this incredible stretch of federal public lands over to the state puts the communities, fish, and wildlife who live there in danger."
"Alaska officials envision bulldozing the area for a private industrial mining road and the LNG pipeline boondoggle," Noblin said. "We're fighting this transfer of our federal public lands in court, and we'll keep standing up for Alaska's wild places."
Climate and conservation groups have also recently sounded the alarm about Interior's forthcoming fossil fuel lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's Coastal Plain, and warned—in the words of Kristen Monsell, the oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity—that that Trump's "ridiculously reckless" plan to dramatically expand offshore drilling, including near Alaska, "could cause thousands of new oil spills, threatening almost every US coast."
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Voting rights defenders in Tennessee on Wednesday condemned a racially rigged congressional map proposed by Republican state lawmakers in the wake of last week's US Supreme Court decision limiting challenges to discriminatory redistricting.
Tennessee Republicans unveiled a US House map that breaks Memphis—one of the nation's largest majority-Black cities—into three districts in a bid to make it likely for GOP candidates to flip the 9th Congressional District, which has been represented by Democrats for half a century.
"These maps have just been released that look like some coloring book from the Republican Party, without any clarity at a precinct level, of where these new districts are gonna be," state Rep. Justin Pearson (D-86) said Wednesday. Pearson—who is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen in the 9th District—drew national attention in 2023 when Republican legislators expelled him and Rep. Justin Jones (D-52) following their protest for tighter gun laws after the deadly Covenant School shooting in Nashville.
Tennessee Republicans just unveiled their post-VRA congressional gerrymander.It would eliminate the one majority-Black and solidly Democratic district by splitting Memphis 3 ways to install a 9-0 Republican majority.It also splits Nashville several ways to protect scandal-tarred Rep. Andy Ogles
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— Stephen Wolf (@stephenwolf.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 8:34 AM
"This whole process has been a sham," Pearson added. "It's been done in secrecy, behind closed doors, with backroom deals. This is just wrong. And everyone knows why this is happening. This is an attack on our Black majority district, this is an attack on our democracy."
US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) weighed in Wednesday on the proposed gerrymander, writing on X, "MAGA Republicans are taking a blowtorch to Black representation in the American South."
Jeffries said that President Donald Trump "and Supreme Court extremists are responsible for this carnage," vowing to "crush them at the ballot box in November" during midterm elections.
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), said in a statement, “This proposal takes an already egregious gerrymander to an even greater extreme by carving up Memphis into three districts, connecting it to rural areas hundreds of miles away, stretching as far as middle Tennessee—communities with needs far different from those of Memphians."
Bisognano added that the GOP proposal "robs Black voters of the ability to elect a congressional candidate of their choice—reversing a right that Black Memphians fought for with blood, sweat, and tears."
Democratic state lawmakers, civil rights leaders, and concerned citizens rallied outside the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville Tuesday to protest the proposal as a two-day special legislative session on the issue began.
HAPPENING NOW… marching on the Capitol…. #NewJimCrow @GovBillLee
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 12:33 PM
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called the special session just two days after the US Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais decision ordering the state to redraw its 2024 congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district to mitigate persistent barriers to equal representation.
Lee's move came a day after a phone call from Trump, who has urged him and other Republican governors to follow the lead of Texas, the first salvo fired in a redistricting war prompted by Republican fears of a midterm loss of one or both houses of Congress. Democrat-controlled California followed Texas' move, with other blue states including Virginia, Maryland, and Washington in various stages of enacting or considering redraws.
Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry subsequently suspended his state’s scheduled May 16 US House primary election, a move that drew rebuke from liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and legal challenges from Louisianans who already cast ballots in the contest.
The Louisiana v. Callais decision, which the court's 6-3 right-wing majority framed as limiting the role of race in redistricting, is now being used to defend maps where race still plays a decisive role, not only in Tennessee but also in other states that are moving to redraw their congressional maps to dilute Black voting power. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week signed a rigged congressional map into law.
“The ink was barely dry on the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision to gut the Voting Rights Act before Tennessee Republicans rushed to be the first to shamelessly capitalize on it by proposing a gerrymander that systematically targets Black voters in Memphis... and ensures all of the state’s congressional districts are majority-white," Bisognano said.
Bold, blatant f*cking racism. They're gleeful about it.
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— catnan.bsky.social (@catnan.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 7:58 PM
Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-25) said in a statement that “the Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be colorblind—the decision indicated states like Tennessee can redistrict based on partisan politics."
“Tennessee’s redistricting will reduce the risk of future legal challenges while promoting sound and strategic conservatism," Sexton added.
Black Memphians weren't having it. Protesters interrupted the second day of hearings Wednesday as a House committee discussed the proposal, chanting, "Memphis is Black, there's no denying that!" and "Hands off our vote!"
“Memphis is Black! There’s no denying that!”House committee disrupted after Speaker sexton presents the racist Republican maps and claims race has nothing to do with how they carved up the city to dilute black representation with white power 🤔(From @gabbysalinas)
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 3:06 PM
"Voters pick our leaders, not the other way around,” Memphis resident Amber Sherman told WREG. "Slicing up Memphis’ congressional districts across a state map will make it impossible for us to get fair representation in Congress because we know that adding a chunk of rural voters to urban cities will never give us fair representation.”
Nashville students confronted Sen. Joey Hensley (R-28) inside the Capitol on Wednesday about how the proposal will disenfranchise voters affected by the redistricting. Hensley's attempt to gaslight the students was caught on camera by The Tennessee Holler, which has provided extensive coverage of the gerrymandering effort.
HENSLEY: “Their vote will still count the same.”STUDENTS: “Then why not leave it the way it was before?”🤔🔥Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) tries to gaslight NASHVILLE students about the Republican push to strip representation from MEMPHIS… and gets immediately owned.
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 6, 2026 at 7:09 AM
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"I never thought in my lifetime as the youngest African American to ever serve in this body, in the history of this state, that I’d be standing in a body surrounded by my colleagues who are going to erase the vote of my city and Black people in Memphis,” state Sen. London Lamar (D-33) said, according to Democracy Docket.
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“This is an opportunity for you to have some courage, show some courage. Y’all know this is wrong,” Lamar added. “You don’t have to do it.”
State Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-29) said: “There’s no way to sugarcoat eliminating a district that is 61% Black and breaking it up into three different districts. You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community. You cannot call it anything but racism.”
“History will not look back kindly on you when you had an opportunity to do what was right and you chose to do something else,” she added.
MEMPHIS SENATOR @raumeshakbari : “This is an act of hate. You cannot call it anything but racism. You cannot sugarcoat this.”Tennessee Republicans are diluting Black representation with white power, stripping their seat in Congress. #JimCrow @GovBillLee @MarshaBlackburn
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 4:31 PM
As Democracy Docket reported: "The debate repeatedly returned to personal history. Black lawmakers invoked ancestors who had fought in wars, lived through segregation, and struggled for the right to vote, placing the proposed map squarely in the lineage of those battles."
The fight for civil rights in Memphis spans centuries, from the Reconstruction-era Memphis Massacre to the Ida B. Wells-led anti-lynching campaign to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. to ongoing struggles over police violence, inequality, and economic justice.
Martin Luther King III warned in a letter to legislative leaders that the redistricting would "dismantle the only congressional district that provides Black voters in Memphis a fair opportunity to have a voice in our democracy."
“Do not take this nation back to the days of Jim Crow," he implored, adding that the “resulting disenfranchisement of Black voters would run contrary to everything that my father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for.”
Bisognano vowed to fight the GOP rigging attempt, saying that "Republicans are doing this because they think they can get away with it without consequence."
"But they are wrong," he added. "Tennesseans from across the state are already rising up against this un-American attempt to deny Black voters their voice at the ballot box, and, if enacted, this map will be challenged in court.”
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