Guest Post: Commitment and Perseverance in Pursuit of People and Planet

One of the reasons I took on the role as APRIL’s advisor in 2021 is because I was deeply impressed by their 10-year sustainability agenda, APRIL2030. Launched a few months earlier, in late 2020, it comprises 18 targets, covering everything from carbon emissions reduction to poverty alleviation, and serves as a catalyst for integrating sustainability into APRIL’s business strategy and operations.

I viewed it as a comprehensive vision of sustainability, with its carefully benchmarked, meaningful commitments on climate, nature, social development, and circularity to reduce pollution. The ambition of this vision still stands out five years later, especially in the context of Indonesia where recruiting and retaining expertise, attracting finance, navigating regulations, and infrastructure and public financing are more challenging than for many of APRIL’s competitors in other regions.

I’d known APRIL’s leadership for a couple of decades dating from my previous roles as CEO of the Rainforest Alliance and Global Director, Forests Program, of the World Resources Institute (WRI) and I had been quite critical at times of their efforts to address sustainability concerns. This started to change in 2015, with the company’s landmark commitment to zero deforestation across all suppliers and the start of its highly successful partnership with villages to prevent fires.

The no-deforestation commitment really stood out for me. In 2014, at the United Nations headquarters in New York, I had witnessed firsthand dozens of major global companies, including leading retailers, commodity traders and consumer goods global brands, promise to be deforestation-free by 2020. They almost all failed to meet this goal by a wide mark. Many are still struggling to do so. According to third-party assurance by KPMG, APRIL has been deforestation-free since 2015 a decade ahead of companies seen by many as global sustainability leaders.

The company reports annually on its sustainability goals, but a special report published recently – entitled Progress & Pathways: An Update on APRIL’s 2030 Sustainability Commitments and Targets – takes stock of the successes and challenges at APRIL2030’s halfway mark. Progress has been notable, especially on the key environmental targets related to climate, nature, and circularity.

My expectation is that APRIL will be able to exceed a few of the targets before 2030, placing it in a small group of global firms that are breaking through in some of the most important industrial sustainability challenges and innovations needed this decade.

Compared to other companies with similarly large, direct footprints on the land in forestry, palm oil, mining, and agriculture, APRIL is ahead of most particularly in conserving and restoring nature and in piloting approaches to foster partnership with communities to protect forests.

APRIL also shares challenges with many of these companies, including meeting the level of emissions reduction that is required by the global climate target and addressing, in a fair and just manner, land claims, some from Indigenous communities, which date back to the early 1990s when the Government of Indonesia first issued forest plantation licenses to APRIL. The company has made addressing these claims one of its top priorities, but this will not be easy.

Circularity and increasing the use of recycled fiber will also be challenging with limited market support and collection infrastructure. Finding more effective ways to partner with government agencies to address poverty and other social challenges, especially for the most vulnerable people, around and beyond APRIL’s estates will also be hard. But I have no doubt that solid progress will be made.

This guest post is published in conjunction with the release of Progress & Pathways: An Update on APRIL’s 2030 Sustainability Commitments and Targets.

Nigel Sizer is CEO of BioDiverse. He was formerly President and CEO of the Rainforest Alliance and Global Director, Forests Program of the WRI.