Last month we wrote here about a report published by Rainforest Network Action (RAN) which connects children's books to the destruction of endangered rainforests in Indonesia. The report explained that the connection was made via paper that was sold to Chinese printers by two paper companies, APP and APRIL, which are described as controversial sources of wood.
Later on I read an interesting article on Environmental Leader of Ian Lifshitz, Sustainability & Public Outreach Manager at Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), entitled "Balancing Sustainability with Economic Development in Developing Countries – The Case Study of Indonesia".
I share the concerns brought up by RAN and I also don't agree with Ian Lifshitz on some of the points he made on his article. Nevertheless, I believe in the importance of an open dialogue, especially with those whom you don't agree with. I think this is an important path to achieve positive progress and that's why I asked Ian to interview him on our blog, an offer which he gladly accepted.
I was hoping to use this platform to enable other people who have concerns regarding the practices of APP in Indonesia or want to learn more about the environmental and social dimensions of the company's operations, to get their questions answered.
Therefore, if you have a question to Ian Lifshitz, please add a comment with your question to this post. We'll be receiving questions until this Friday (July 2nd), 5pm EST. The interview itself will be published here in a couple of weeks so stay tuned!
We look forward to hearing from you, so please send us your question and become a part of the dialogue with APP.
Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: Promoting Sustainable Reading!
1 comment:
The impact of paper seems to be much less than that of palm oil production. (See: http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/03/why-biofuels-are-rainforests-worst-enemy)
There's kind of a Western arrogance with us telling Indonesia how they should manage their forests. If we want lands preserved, particularly rainforests, which we think benefit the global climate, we need to be paying them direct subsidies to not use those lands. We pay U.S. farmers to not plant crops to keep the prices of certain commodities up, so why not pay Indonesians to literally sit on their forests, rather than developing them into some sort of paper tree or palm oil plantation?
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