Pulp and paper giant APP moves closer to regaining FSC stamp despite pending review

JAKARTA — Asia Pulp & Paper, one of the world’s biggest forestry groups, has effectively been given the green light to seek ethical certification from the Forest Stewardship Council — a stamp of approval that it was stripped of 18 years ago for deforestation and other violations.

In a decision announced in July, the FSC, the world’s leading certifier of sustainable forestry practices, lifted a suspension to allow APP to resume its remedy process — a series of remedial and restorative measures for past violations that would eventually make the company eligible for FSC certification.

Watchdog groups say the move caught them by surprise, especially given that a key legal review into the company’s web of corporate holdings remains unfinished. They warn this lets one of the world’s most notorious forestry firms fast-track its return to the ethical timber trade, and also exposes communities in conflict with APP-linked companies to further harm.

“We were led to believe that the outcome of the legal review would inform whether APP was eligible to re-enter the remedy process,” the Forest Peoples Programme, a U.K.-based campaign group, told Mongabay. “Proceeding in advance undermines trust in the process and diminishes the credibility of the review itself.”

Tangled corporate web

APP is the main pulp and paper arm of Indonesian conglomerate the Sinar Mas Group. It lost its FSC certification, a process known as dissociation, in 2007, after evidence emerged of large-scale deforestation and land conflicts with Indigenous and local communities. Under the FSC’s remedy framework, APP can apply for certification if it first repair past environmental and social harms.

But the FSC froze APP’s remedy process in January 2025, after a corporate reshuffle put the company under the direct control of Jackson Wijaya, grandson of Sinar Mas founder Eka Tjipta Widjaja.

Jackson also owns Paper Excellence, recently rebranded as Domtar, which in the past decade has spent billions of dollars acquiring pulp and paper assets in Canada and the U.S., making it the largest player in the industry in North America.

For years, APP and Paper Excellence denied being part of the same corporate group, despite persistent reports from NGOs linking both to the billionaire Widjaja family.

Investigations by Mongabay and watchdog groups have in the past found evidence of APP disguising its ownership of controversial suppliers and secretly controlling most of the companies that feed its mills — practices that, according to NGOs, allow it to deflect blame for deforestation, fires and other environmental harms committed by this constellation of companies.

In 2020, WWF urged APP’s buyers and investors to cut ties with the group, citing its refusal to fully disclose all associated companies and warning that this secrecy conceals the true scale of impacts that must be remedied.

In November 2024, a filing to European regulators confirmed APP and Paper Excellence share the same beneficial ownership, raising alarms among Canadian lawmakers.

“We got completely played for suckers by a very dubious company,” Charlie Angus, a member of the New Democratic Party, said at the time. “I don’t think the Canadian government would have ever allowed Asia Pulp & Paper [to buy Canadian mills] because of its dubious record. So the family sets up another company. The family says, ‘Oh, we’re not connected in any way.’ Despite the obvious connections, they get … to buy Canadian resources. So we are in a position that was entirely predictable.”

Unfinished review, big implications

The revelation about the links between APP and Paper Excellence prompted the FSC to commission a legal review to determine what this shared ownership means for its rules.

If it concludes that APP and Paper Excellence/Domtar are part of the same corporate group, the Canadian operations could lose their FSC certification — which currently covers more than 7 million hectares (17 million acres) of forests and multiple mills — and be brought into the same remedy process as APP.

Despite that review not yet being concluded, the FSC has now lifted the suspension on APP’s remedy process, saying it had “sufficient information” to proceed after confirming what it called a “concentration of beneficial ownership” within APP — a phrase critics say is vague and evasive, and appears to be a way of avoiding explicitly stating that APP and Domtar are part of the same corporate group.

“The concentration of beneficial ownership within APP has now been confirmed. However, this development does not alter FSC’s expectation: APP remains obligated to implement full remedy,” the FSC told Mongabay.

APP said it welcomes the FSC’s decision, calling it “an important step forward” in addressing past environmental and social harms through the remedy framework.

“We recognize the urgency expressed by stakeholders to accelerate progress. APP is currently in the initial phase of conducting environmental and social baseline assessments, and remains fully committed to delivering credible, inclusive, and transparent outcomes at scale,” APP wrote in a statement.

However, the FPP, the campaign group, said it felt “blind-sided” by the FSC’s decision, calling it “premature” and a violation of the precautionary principle — a core norm in human rights and environmental due diligence that requires halting action when material risks remain unresolved.

It also pointed to the inconsistency in the FSC’s argument behind its decision. The FSC claims to have “sufficient information” to understand the impacts of the concentration of beneficial ownership and to proceed with APP’s remedy process. And yet it also simultaneously admits that the legal review, which is needed to understand the full scope and implications of ownership changes, is still in progress.

“If the review has not yet assessed the full implications of the ownership change, it is difficult to understand how FSC can claim to have ‘sufficient information’ to move forward,” the FPP said. “This inconsistency calls into question the FSC’s decision-making.”

Grant Rosoman, senior adviser for forest solutions at Greenpeace, also criticized FSC’s choice of language, saying the term “concentration of beneficial ownership” appears to be a legal or strategic attempt to avoid explicitly acknowledging that APP and Domtar are part of the same corporate group before the review wraps up.

Procedural gaps

Several NGOs criticized the FSC for not consulting stakeholders before lifting the suspension. But the FSC said it based its decision on “substantial and reliable documentation” and on feedback from stakeholders at a forum in June to discuss the remedy process, which groups including the FPP also attended. The FSC said “the strongest and most frequent calls [at the forum] were to accelerate progress.”

That portrayal is hotly disputed by attendees, who point to written statements from the forum calling for a temporary pause until systemic safeguards were in place. “This framing misrepresents the documented sentiment of many attendees,” FPP said.

In this context, it said, lifting APP’s suspension risks further eroding trust among rights holders and civil society and may leave communities vulnerable to further harm.

Among those communities is the village of Lubuk Mandarsah in Jambi province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In May 2025, eight excavators from APP subsidiary PT Wirakarya Sakti (WKS) rolled into farmers’ oil palm plantations in the village and flattened thousands of trees on contested land, despite protests by the villagers.

WKS denied carrying out evictions, saying it was “clearing forest area.”

The clash is the latest flashpoint in a dispute stretching back more than a decade. Villagers say WKS has long tried to push into their farmland, using intimidation, heavy machinery and even herbicide-spraying drones — tactics that in 2015 culminated in the fatal beating of farmer Indra Pelani by company security guards.

Tensions have risen this year as a government task force, set up to crack down on “illegal” activities in forest areas, began seizing land in villages like Lubuk Mandarsah — more than 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) in that community alone, according to the Indonesian NGO Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA).

Roni Septian, head of advocacy at KPA, alleged that WKS is using the task force as a proxy to remove farmers who have long resisted its expansion.

“Since [WKS has] struggled to suppress or evict farmers and seize their lands, they’re now using the task force as an extension of their efforts — outsourcing the evictions,” Roni said at a recent press conference.

The FSC said WKS is under a moratorium on operations until the conflict is resolved, and that any breach could trigger APP’s removal from the remedy process.

Rights groups, however, want independent verification and safe channels for communities to report violations, warning that without them, the moratorium is little more than words on paper.

Calls for stronger oversight

With many issues raised by NGOs and affected communities, the FPP and other groups are calling on the FSC to implement a number of corrective actions.

For one, the FSC should pause APP’s remedy process until the legal review is completed. The review should clarify the scope of APP’s corporate group, including any Paper Excellence/Domtar entities, and be published in full, with redactions if necessary.

The FSC said it would publish a summary of the legal review once completed, but couldn’t give a date, citing unforeseen delays.

The FPP said publishing just the summary won’t be enough, and demanded the FSC commit to full publication of the legal review to ensure transparency and accountability.

“Vague promises and the absence of a timeline only deepen concerns about selective disclosure,” the FPP said.

A coalition of NGOs has also called on FSC to revoke Paper Excellence/Domtar’s certification until APP demonstrates verifiable compliance with its no-deforestation and social responsibility pledges.

“By prematurely resuming the remedy process with APP, the FSC is not just undermining its own standards and credibility — it is enabling a massive greenwash for one of the world’s most destructive forestry companies,” the coalition said.

Banner image: Rainforest beside cleared and drained peatland in the PT Bina Duta Laksana concession. The Sinar Mas group affiliated concession, a supplier of pulpwood to Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), is located within the Kerumutan Peat Swamp Forest in Riau, Sumatra. Image courtesy of © Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace.

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