Since the beginning of its forestry activities in 1993, APRIL has a long history of social impacts and human rights abuses. Indigenous people and other local communities have been continuously impacted by APRIL’s forest conversion. Communities that rely on cultivating rubber, sago, and other crops within the forest landscape have been at issue with APRIL since 2009, including on Riau’s Kampar Peninsula and coastal islands, causing some residents to resort to drastic protest measures, including sewing their mouths shut.

Despite a new policy that commits APRIL and its suppliers to respect Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) and to resolve all its social conflicts, there has been little change for communities embroiled in land disputes with the company. Hundreds of land conflicts remain. APRIL has failed to involve affected communities and other key stakeholders in the identification, analysis and resolution of these conflicts. According to APRIL, just one supplier (PT RAPP) and its partners have 880 unresolved conflicts, involving at least (in the few known cases) 21,000 hectares of land.

In April 2014, Eyes on the Forest documented apparent child labor at the timber plantation of PT Triomas (an APRIL supplier), in violation of national legislation and international standards.

Deforestation APRIL started its forestry activities in 1993 and commercial pulp production in 1998. Since then, it has expanded its business and its paper production has grown at the cost of Indonesian rainforests. The conversion of natural rainforests into tree plantations inevitably reduces the habitat of species, driving them to extinction. In 2005 APRIL started to clear the precious rainforests of Bukit Tigapuluh and Kerumutan landscapes, one of the last habitats of the Sumatran Tiger.

In 2013, FSC “dissociated” itself from APRIL for “being involved in large-scale deforestation activities in Indonesia and bringing negative social and environmental impacts to areas with high conservation values.”

In June 2015, after many years of campaigning to stop deforestation by APRIL and after many brands started to avoid their products, APRIL announced a Sustainable Forest Management Policy version 2.0 (SFMP 2.0). However, APRIL’s implementation of its own commitments has been unsatisfactory.

Violations of the company's zero-deforestation commitment were discovered soon after the new policy had been issued. NGOs have found that APRIL has been sourcing from plantation companies involved in deforestation. Since the adoption of its SFMP 2.0 commitment in 2015, the PT Adindo Hutani Lestari has ranked among the five largest suppliers of pulpwood to APRIL’s pulp mill operating company, PT Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (RAPP). Between 2015 and 2019, PT RAPP purchased over 2.3 million m3 of pulpwood from Adindo. Spatial analysis using satellite imagery indicates that within Adindo’s concession area an estimated 7,291 hectares of natural forest was cut down between June 2015 and August 2020, a majority of this forest loss has been on peatlands (over 50%, or 3,790 hectares). In November 2018, APRIL supplier PT Tanjung Redeb Hutani (TRH), was found still clearing the equivalent of 190,000 football fields to expand its pulpwood plantations in East Kalimantan.

In June 2020, an investigation conducted by the Indonesian NGO network Jikalahari identified a plan by APRIL to clear natural forests near the Dayun Village, Kabupaten Siak & Palalawan, province of Riau, Sumatra. According to the investigation, APRIL’s subsidiary PT RAPP is clearing an area of swamp-forest on thick peat, with a depth of more than 3 metres, on areas customarily belonging to local communities. The company cleared both community-owned palm oil plantations and young - however dense - forest stands, over an area of 675 hectares. Traces indicate that the area is a habitat for wildlife animals such as tigers, bears, and pigs.

As part of APRIL’s plan to expand access to land beyond its own concessions, the company allegedly resorted to setting up a “cooperative” to access community land and illegally clear peat swamp forests. In 2017, this cooperative (called Koto Intuok Cooperative) submitted a request for a permit to operate near the Pulau Padang Village, located in Sumatra, which included a plan to clear-cut natural forest on peatland. In 2018, the “cooperative” was granted 1,565 hectares of land. The exploitation has not started yet, but if it goes ahead, the activity would affect the ecosystem of the Bukit Rimbang Bukit Baling Wildlife Sanctuary, in a clear violation of APRIL’s own policy.

Forest Fires In autumn 2015, APRIL was identified as one of the top companies responsible for the fires occurring in Indonesia, burning 2.6 million hectares of plantations, forests and peatlands throughout Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua. An estimated 1.75 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide was released in just a few months, more than Germany's or Japan’s total annual emissions. Daily emissions during the peak weeks of the fires exceeded the daily fossil fuel emissions of the entire USA economy. The fires created a smoke and haze crisis affecting all of South East Asia, triggering national emergencies across Indonesia and into Singapore, Malaysia and other countries, resulting in diplomatic tensions between Indonesia and its neighbouring countries. The human cost was terrible: 19 people died and an estimated 500,000 cases of respiratory tract infections were reported at the time of the fires.

In response to the 2015 fires, the Government of Indonesia issued regulations restricting the development of new plantation areas on drained peatlands and, in some areas, requiring the protection and rehabilitation of peatlands.

Greenhouse gas emissions Despite APRIL claiming to manage its plantations on peat according to “best management practices”, these practices have been shown to insufficiently curb drainage effects in the long term. According to a scientific field study based on APRIL’s concessions in Indonesia, the release of CO2 from an acacia plantation on peat has been identified as around 80 tonnes per year per hectare. APRIL's supplier plantation on peat is more than 265,000 hectares. As a result, APRIL’s plantations emit 19.4 million tonnes GHG, nearly as much as emissions from Slovenia, and as much as 24 low emitting countries combined. In 2017, the company has also been repeatedly sanctioned for violations of the new peat legislation and tried to avoid official inspections on its concessions areas. When in October 2017 the government declared the work-plan of APRIL's major and biggest subsidiary and plantation company (PT RAPP) invalid, APRIL responded by bullying the government, threatening mass firing to mobilize workers against the government, and suing the government itself with a court case that APRIL eventually lost. This highlights APRIL's reluctance to protect and conserve peatland areas.