Stakeholders call for scaled up and accelerated remedy

At the FSC Remedy Forum held in Jakarta, Indonesia on 24 and 25 June, a diverse group of stakeholders and rights holders involved and interested in the implementation of FSC’s Remedy Framework shared a clear message with FSC. They expect to see restoration outcomes scaled up and delivered. They want the implementation of remedy to pick up pace so that degraded forest landscapes are transformed and people and communities get an opportunity to heal. And they want FSC to develop robust systems that ensure verified and holistic redressal of past unacceptable activities. 

Listening to the voices from the ground, FSC is lifting the suspension on Asia Pulp and Paper’s (APP) remedy process. APP’s remedy process was suspended in January 2025 when the sole beneficial owner of Domtar, Jackson Wijaya, was announced as the new sole beneficial owner of the APP group. Acknowledging that this change in concentration of power could potentially affect the scope of APP’s corporate group that will implement remedy, FSC commissioned a legal review to confirm the implications of this development.  

The legal review is still ongoing and FSC will publish a summary of the conclusions once completed. Regardless of the result of the legal review, it is clear that APP will need to remedy for past environmental and social harms. Further delaying their implementation of remedy puts rights holders’ access to remedy at risk.  It is in the interest of speedy delivery of remedy, at scale, that APP will take its remedy process forward. APP’s remedy process is in the first stage of environmental and social baseline assessments.  

Following the implementation of the FSC Remedy Framework, after a series of verified stages of the remedy process, APP’s corporate group within the scope of the remedy process will become eligible to seek association and certification in the future. Both parties APP and FSC will remain fully committed to the FSC Remedy Framework and continue this process with transparency and inclusively. 

The entire list of organizations participating in APP’s remedy process is publicly available here. 

FSC has also commissioned an independent legal review of the implications for Domtar in light of its connections with APP, in the context of FSC’s disassociation with APP’s corporate group. FSC disassociated from APP because of its involvement in destructive activities unacceptable to FSC. Therefore, no organization in the APP corporate group is eligible for association or certification with FSC, until it completes a remedy process. 

FSC holds all its certificate holders, and their entire corporate groups, accountable for their actions. When an organization signs the FSC Trademark License Agreement, the entire corporate group it belongs to commits to upload FSC’s core values and avoid engaging in six highly destructive activities in its forestry operations, through the FSC Policy for Association. When the Policy for Association is violated, FSC may disassociate from the entire corporate group.  

However, FSC firmly believes in the need for healing and regeneration to remedy the impacts of the ongoing climate crisis. Therefore, the FSC Remedy Framework is a pathway for organizations to atone for the environmental and social harms they have caused, restore degraded forest landscapes, and empower forest dependent communities through renewed trust and accountability.