Good, isn't it! A lovely green portal, offering serious dialogue and debate about Indonesia's (fast disappearing) rainforest. A humble, sober tone, inviting discussion, stakeholder comment, and all the other online niceties you'd expect from a progressive portal about sustainable forestry. Tabs that remind us 2011 is the International Year of Forests (boy do they need one), and all the right buzz words (people, planet, profit). Ah, heaven. 

Except that it isn't. This is the latest drivel from Asia Pulp & Paper (as you'll see if you scroll down the home page). They proudly sent it out, presumably through their PR firm, last week. I'd put a fair bit of money on their PR firm being behind the idea in the first place. Admittedly, it's a great improvement on what used to pass for PR at APP, the rather more aggressive - http://www.app-mythsandrealities.com/ I'm not sure why they've left that online, but it did little for them as one customer after another delisted them as a supplier over the less than sustainable deforestation practices for which APP is now world famous. Will this 'Rainforest Realities' portal fare any better? I suspect not, as the 'reality' that APP sees appears to be at odds with the reality most of their now ex customers see, not to mention environmentalists. If you want rainforest reality, there are plenty of websites to visit. TFT, Rainforest Alliance, Pro Forest, WWF, Greenpeace, Birdlife, UN, Mongabay, Prince's Rainforests Project, et al. Not APP. 

If the aggressive APP PR of old was idiotic, this new foray into blogging is arguably more dangerous, since it could almost pass for plausible sincerity. APP watchers will know however that whilst smooth PR can produce cuddly websites, this kind of 1990s front group tactic is never a substitute for real action. There seems to be something of a window of opportunity, fast closing, for APP to shift in the right direction of sustainability, especially following progress by its parent company Sinar Mas on palm oil. When they do, they can launch as many websites as they like. Until they do, this kind of thing should be viewed with extreme caution through a powerful greenwash filter.