Astra Agro Lestari

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses trade associations of which it is a member. It could further report a full list of trade associations for all jurisdictions in which it operates.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and states the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups. Furthermore, the company’s stakeholder engagement covers nature, nutrition, and social issues.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process in relation to its sustainability strategy.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company reduces its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the company has set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions, of which it tracks and reports its progress towards achieving these targets.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company discloses quantitative evidence on optimising the use of fertilisers and minimising the use of pesticides in its production and/or sourcing practices.

Water withdrawal
The company demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations. Its water consumption reduced from 8,199,347 cubic meters in 2021 to 7,620,757 cubic meters in 2022.

Workforce nutrition
The company discloses its programme/policy to support breastfeeding mothers. It has lactation rooms at its company’s headquarters and provides maternity leave for at least 6 months.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company discloses that it purchases Oil Palm FFB directly from smallholders and cooperatives in various provinces of Indonesia, and supports them to meet its sustainability standards. Also, it has formed partnerships with cooperatives and provides them coaching and mentoring programmes, including training on institutional formation and development, cooperative financial management and cooperative customer relationship management. In addition, it discloses how it takes into account farmers’ individual needs based on their culture, region, and basic knowledge when developing new programmes.

Land rights
The company has a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. It states that it respects the individual, communal, and customary rights of indigenous and local communities, and commits to ensuring legal compliance as well as the implementation of best practices in FPIC, prior to commencing any new operations.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a public policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers. It states that it prioritizes creating a safe and decent working environment for all company personnel in operational activities, including relationships with suppliers, business partners, and all related workers who operate in the company’s working area.

Respect human rights
The company has a public policy statement committing it to respect human rights. It discloses its commitment to upholding the human rights of all workers, contractors and indigenous people, and local communities in accordance with United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives that cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues. While the company states that the board of directors has expertise in area such as sustainability, it has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including climate, water, soil health, social inclusion, ecosystem conversion, and biodiversity.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, it can report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses certain sustainability objectives or targets, including those related to climate and water. However, there is an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Moreover, while the company reports on some of their targets, including climate, it could report consistently across all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to align its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Additionally, there is an opportunity for the company to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and to disclose a time-bound target for such reduction. Furthermore, the company can also report its progress in achieving these scope 3 targets and align these targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has an opportunity to disclose activities and time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets to optimise the use of fertilisers and minimise the use of pesticides in its production and/or sourcing practices, and report progress against the targets.

Food loss and waste
The company has the opportunity to disclose its FLW reduction targets and report progress towards achieving those targets. Additionally, the company can align its FLW reduction goals with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

Water withdrawal
The company has set a target to reduce water withdrawals, and as part of this effort, it also has an opportunity to disclose a baseline year. Additionally, the company can report the amount of water it withdraws for its own operations in water-stressed areas. Furthermore, engaging with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal is another opportunity for the company to consider.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has the opportunity to engage in nutrition-sensitive activities that enhance the nutritional quality and/or variety of foods. Additionally, the company can disclose the results and impact of these initiatives on nutrition.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate that all of its own operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme or other widely recognized certification program specific to the industry. Additionally, it can disclose the percentage of food suppliers certified to a GFSI-recognized food safety scheme.

Workforce nutrition
The company has health and wellbeing promotion programs for its employees. However, it could enhance the program by incorporating nutrition-focused health checks or nutrition education. Moreover, the company has an opportunity to implement a programme to offer healthy food options to its employees and expand its nutrition initiatives to its supply chain workers.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programs when child labour cases are found in its operations. Additionally, it could share how it enhances its suppliers’ capacity to prevent child labour impacts. Although the company already prohibits the use of child labour by its suppliers, it could also consider mandating the implementation of an age-verification system.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain such as a prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents, or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company acknowledges that the indigenous people of Orang Rimba are a vulnerable group. It could further clarify the specific areas in which they are vulnerable, such as health and safety, and outline any associated risks.

Land rights
The company could require its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and negotiating with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company has an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Furthermore, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
While the company prohibits bribery and corruption, it could formalise this statement in a public policy document and include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in contracts with business relationships. It also has the opportunity to describe the process for identifying bribery and corruption risks in specific locations or activities within its own operations. Although a mechanism exists for stakeholders to raise concerns about bribery and corruption, it could further clarify whether these can be raised without fear of reprisal.

In addition, the company could demonstrate ethical practices by establishing a policy for lobbying and political engagement, formalising its commitment to not to make political contributions in a publicly available document, disclosing its lobbying expenditures, and adding requirement for third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose a policy statement expecting its suppliers to commit to respecting the health and safety of their workers, as well as how it monitors the health and safety performance of these suppliers. While the company pays minimum wage to its employees, it has an opportunity to commit to a living wage by setting a time-bound target and disclosing how it determines this living wage regionally, along with how it supports its suppliers in paying the living wage.

Despite a public commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment, the company has an opportunity to set time-bound targets in these areas. The company discloses that its board of directors is entirely male and offers a 1:1 ratio of basic salary and remuneration for male and female employees, but it lacks details on the ratio of salary and remuneration between genders for each employee category, by significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company has a policy statement that commits to specific workers’ rights but could extend this to cover all ILO fundamental rights at work, both for its own operations and its suppliers. It has an opportunity to describe the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities, encompassing both its own operations and supply chain. Additionally, the company could outline its process for assessing salient human rights issues, disclose the results of its human rights risk assessment, and unveil a global system to address, prevent, or mitigate these salient issues.