The Devil went down to Georgia. Where did Gunns go?

Neo Conned

I am sure that it is not coincidental that a company with as little integrity as Gunns Ltd would be wooing APP (Asian Pulp and Paper) and APRIL (Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited). APP doesn’t mind running at a loss. It was happy to default on $US14billion in 2001. Both companies are caught up in the Indonesian Forestry Corruption inquiry. They not only appear to be buying from illegal loggers, which APRIL has claimed in the past to be actively preventing (Guardian,2002), but have questionable licences themselves (EoF News, 2008).

And if financial integrity is lacking, perhaps there is some social conscience as APP claimed twenty years ago. Indonesians were promised that the expanding pulp industry would bring prosperity, that it would provide jobs and that it would save the forests by providing an economic use for wood. They promised the Chinese as APRIL also did to the Indonesians that their pulp mills would be fed primarily by plantation timbers.

These have been proved to be untrue – with swathes of forest taken from Riau province in Sumatra, threatening the Sumatran Tiger (192 individuals left), reducing the Sumatran Elephant numbers to 210 individuals as of February this year. The province has lost 65% per cent of its forests over the last 25 years and in recent years has suffered Indonesia’s fastest deforestation rates (WWF, 2008). Areas of Wuzhishan Mountain of Wuzhishan City, Limushan Mountain of Qiongzhong County and Bawangling Mountain of Changjiang County have similarly experienced the care, generosity and honourable conduct of APP, despite the protestations of the Qiongzhong County governor (Pulpmillwatch.org 2007).

Perhaps the funding of the mill will be conditional on an easement to the Tasmanian timber resource.