UPDATE: Santander admits it's funding forest destruction

Posted by Richardg — 12 February 2015 at 4:04pm - Comments
All rights reserved. Credit: Greenpeace

We've forced Santander to admit that it's bankrolling the destructive paper company APRIL. But the high street bank says it's 'monitoring the situation' and will 'act accordingly'. It's a cop out - and here's why.

For months, Santander refused to admit that it was financing APRIL, Indonesia's number one forest destroyer. But after 75,000 of us took action Santander came clean.

Santander knows that it has a problem. But it's refusing to doing anything to resolve it. Instead, the bank wants to monitor the situation and give APRIL more time to sort the problem out. That won't cut it.

APRIL has been getting away with forest destruction for years

We don't know how long Santander has been bunging APRIL money. But APRIL's forest destruction has been a matter of record for years. Just a handful of examples:

APRIL has had more than enough time to get its act together, time its used to pulp even more of Indonesia's rainforests, including trashing Padang island.

APRIL's forest protection policy is a licence to pulp forests

Santander says it's waiting to see how APRIL progresses with the sustainable forest management plan that it announced last year. But that policy is not protecting forests. It allows APRIL to continue turning rainforest trees into paper and packaging until the end of the decade - five more years of rainforest destruction.

That's why all the major environmental NGOs have called on APRIL to stop greenwashing and start protecting forests and peatlands.

APRIL is great at making promises - but terrible at keeping them

It's true that KPMG assessed APRIL last year. Their report is not public (though you can find a leaked copy here) - but its headline finding was that not one of APRIL's suppliers had met its policy. It was the most epic fail imaginable.

Santander claims APRIL is coming up with a plan to address these failings. But all it's done so far is change the scope of its policy to exempt its existing suppliers. 

Besides, this is not the first time that APRIL has made and broken its promises. It originally pledged to stop destroying rainforests by 2009 (p17). It first agreed to protect High Conservation Value forests back in 2005, a promise it broke immediately but is still trying to claim credit for.

Santander should stop stalling and start acting

Years of campaigning have shown that companies like APRIL understand only one thing - the cold, hard reality of their customers and backers walking away in disgust. And we're not the only ones who think Santander should act.

Already, 20,000 of Santander's customers have told it to stop bankrolling APRIL. More are joining every day - and they won't be fobbed off with empty promises to monitor the situation.

Indonesia's rainforests are disappearing faster than anywhere else on earth. The sun bears, pangolins and gibbons whose habitat APRIL and its suppliers are destroying are running out of time. 

Santander needs to listen to its customers, seize the nettle and cancel these deforestation loans. 

Follow Greenpeace UK