Indonesian Palm Oil Company Commits to Restore Forest

A palm oil plantation owned by PT Agrinusa Persada Mulia is planning to restore forest in Indonesia as part of a remediation plan, Oils & Fats International reported on July 02 citing Eco Business report last month. KPN Plantation, known as Gama Plantation until 2019, said it would remediate 38,000 hectares of forest in Papua and West Kalimantan, provinces that had undergone mass deforestation between 2013 and 2018, the report said.  In KPN’s recovery plan, the company had committed to restore three times the area of forest it believed it was liable for clearing. The remediation efforts would include peatland rewetting, reforestation, conservation, and social forestry, the report added.

In 2018, an investigation by Greenpeace had revealed that the Gama company, a group of plantation firms with common ownership, had cleared 21,500 hectares of rainforest in Papua and West Kalimantan during the previous five years.  A Greenpeace campaign targeted at Singapore-listed palm oil trader Wilmar International, which had been using Gama as a supplier in violation of its no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation (NDPE) policy, set in 2013.