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Revealing Asia Pulp & Paper’s trail of disputes across Indonesia

Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s largest paper companies, is mired in more than one hundred active conflicts over land rights with rural communities across the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo, resisting repeated demands from activists to be transparent about progress made towards settling its disputes, a new study has found. While APP claimed last year it had resolved 49 per cent of the conflicts related to its operations, the report, by a coalition of Indonesian organisations and the Environmental Paper Network (EPN), highlights the firm has not publicly disclosed information on its clashes with villagers and conflict-resolution processes to date.