Category: Commodities
Pension scheme asked to account for deforestation by portfolio company Pension scheme asked to account for deforestation by portfolio company Pension scheme asked to account for deforestation by portfolio company
Korea’s National Pension Service, the world’s third largest pension fund with $600bn in assets, has been named in a complaint under the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises “soft law” mechanism.
The complaint says it has done nothing while a portfolio company carried out large-scale deforestation in an area of “exceptionally rich and unique biodiversity” and encroached on indigenous land, rendering it uninhabitable.
The destruction was reportedly perpetrated by oil palm plantation PT Bio Inti Agrindo (PT BIA), which is linked to Korean steelmaker POSCO – in which the NPS is a major shareholder with a stake valued at approximately $1.8bn, or over 10% of the firm’s equity.
According to a complaint filed under the OECD human rights grievance system, the operations of PT BIA in Papua, Indonesia did not receive the consent of the land’s indigenous owners, caused large scale deforestation of tropical rainforest and poisoned a local ri…