Noble Agri Group – Pusaka Agro Lestari (PAL) – popup

The policy, which pledges not to knowingly provide financial services to “prohibited business” and defines it those involving “forests being converted to Plantation or to non-forest use (deforestation). Noble and HSBC are RSPO members and must adhere to the RSPO Code of Conduct.

Noble referred us to their compliance of RSPO procedures and processes such as RSPO New Planting Procedure (NPP), submission of Annual Communication of Progress (ACOP) and the closure of the Henrison Inti Persada complaint case by the RSPO Complaints Panel. Noble has also completed the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification process for one of their mills.

The report alleged that Noble Group’s subsidiaries, Henrison Inti Persada (HIP) and Pusaka Agro Lestari (PAL) were deforesting and clearing potential peatlands up to Q2 2016, in violation of it’s the sustainability policies of its bankers i.e. HSBC, ING Bank, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale, ABN Amro Bank and Rabobank.

Greenpeace released a report titled, “Dirty Bankers – How HSBC is Financing Forest Destruction for Palm Oil “. The report stated that in recent years, HSBC has begun or maintained a financial relationship (including providing or arranging loans) with companies and groups operating Palm Oil concessions in Indonesia associated with the most unsustainable aspects of Palm Oil development.

The report also alleged that both Noble Group’s subsidiaries, Henrison Inti Persada (HIP) and Pusaka Agro Lestari (PAL) deforested and cleared HCV forest and had significant social conflict.

The following matters were discussed:

• Transparency around HCV/HCS process and further clarification around their sustainability policy (given the reference to HCSA);
• We encouraged Noble to make its sustainability documents publicly available including HCS/HCV initiatives
• We asked Noble to follow due process on HCS as well in terms of HCSA review by HCSA panel and have a moratorium, while this process is ongoing
• Further engagements will include a workshop and a site assessment.

We have suggested to Noble to publicly announce its implementation of HCV and HCS and also update the HCS study.

On Pusaka Agro Lestari (PAL), the Board of Governors of the RSPO took up the case following a submission by the Environmental Investigation Agency and Greenpeace. The concerns raised were mainly on the clearance of forest, inadequacy of the HCV assessment and also on compliance to the RSPO New Planting Procedure (NPP).

Access to the relevant case tracker on the RSPO Complaints website can be found here.

RSPO issued a public censure against Noble Plantations Pte Ltd and terminates its membership, for withdrawing its membership while an active complaint was pending against the company. The announcement can be found here.