5. Importance of UPM-Kymmene

This book has concentrated on describing problems created by APRIL and their backgrounds. Citizens' organisations from Friends of the Earth in Finland and Indonesia to Greenpeace International have criticised UPM-Kymmene besides APRIL because of the alliance. This is due to several reasons:

UPM-Kymmene should bear moral responsibility of APRIL's operations especially in Riau, because UPM has entered into a strategic alliance with APRIL and is financing APRIL. UPM owns already half of the Chinese factories that are using pulp from Riau (JP March 7, 1998). Constantly ignored demand of NGOs has been that co-operation with APRIL should only be continued, if it can be made certain that

• the company no longer clearcuts rainforest or buys wood that has been clearcut
• workers of the company are guaranteed rights they have according to ILO conventions
• the company operates only in areas, where local communities have handed over the land to the company after fair negotiations and mutually agreed compensation

UPM-Kymmene says that its co-operation enhances APRIL's way of operating in Riau. However, he biggest problems related to APRIL's operations - destruction of rainforest, land grabbing from the locals - are a direct result of exploitation of company's present concession areas. UPM has never questioned exploitations of the present concession areas. From the point of view of forest dependent people of species it is insignificant how soft methods are used while cutting down the forest. When the company is establishing plantations in farmers' land, it destroys their livelihood regardless of the style a pr-officer of APRIL is announcing this. If APRIL's operations are compared to cutting down the tree, UPM-Kymmene has announced it will consider pressuring APRIL to cleaning up after sawing. Cutting down the trees is not questioned.

Instead financing, marketing networks and partnership offered by UPM-Kymmene make possible expansions of APRIL's Riau operations. APRIL has had troubles finding financing and partners, especially after the severe financial crisis in Southeast Asia. Consequently, UPM is more important for APRIL to keep the company going. Without the alliance and direct financing APRIL could not expand its production capacity and plantations in the same rate as while it is UPM's partner. Without UPM the problems it is creating in Riau would not increase as rapidly or would sees entirely if the company would go bankrupt. And what difference would this make? In the course of time a more democratic government could develop in Indonesia. In a more open society people of Riau, citizens' organisations and other instances present in a democratic society could affect the ways of building pulp industry, like decisions of situating factories and concessions. This would mean an end for APRIL's present kind of operations.

There's no lack of alternatives for areas where pulp plantations could be established without destroying forests and creating social problems in a similar scale due to deforestation. Other western or Japanese companies operating in Indonesia such as Nippon Paper and Enso have first started to establish pulp plantations in deforested areas dominated by alang-alang grassland which often are unsuitable for agriculture and poor in biodiversity. In 1980s American Scott Paper Company planned to start clearcutting large tracts of rainforests for its pulp mill in co-operation with PT Astra International in West Papua (Irian Jaya). Scott Paper withdrew as a result of severe criticism before the project really got going. Although many social problems are related to projects of western companies, those projects never the less show that pulp production in Indonesia is possible in a clearly less harmful manner for nature and people than what APRIL represents.

As the first western forest giant directly involved in rainforest clearcutting UPM can be seen to lower the minimum standard for other western companies. Because growth of Indonesia's forest industry is regulated by western financing this could result in other western companies following the example and large negative effects on Indonesian forests.