# Inside the destruction of Asia's last rainforest - BBC World Service **Channel:** BBC World Service **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0M0Z5zBMPc **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/z0M0Z5zBMPc ## Chapters - 0:09 — West Papua's Forests Under Threat - 2:02 — Land Deals and Tribal Pressure - 5:19 — Papua's Conflict and Violence - 9:52 — Broken Promises and FSC Review - 14:12 — Investigating Fires and Accountability ## Transcript **[0:09]:** West Papua, Indonesia. Some of the last untouched rainforests on the planet are being cleared to make way for oil palm plantations. I just weep, I cry with the sadness for our stunning Papuan forests, created by God for us. We protected our forests and never destroyed them. But outsiders have come in and cleared them. It’s a deep wound. **[0:46]:** Indigenous tribes paid less than 10 US dollars a hectare for their ancestral lands. **[0:58]:** According to God, I have sinned. I tricked 10 tribes. I manipulated the truth for the benefit of the company. Here has a South Korean palm oil giant carried out deliberate and illegal burning on its land? We have developed a technique that can determine if a fire is intentional or not. This can bring liability to big corporations who are in charge of these concessions sites. **[1:33]:** The company at the centre of this story: associated with the world’s leading sustainable certification body. The Burning Scar **[2:02]:** The forests of West Papua are some of the most biodiverse in the world. Filled with unique flora and fauna, these rainforests sacred and essential to the hundreds of indigenous tribes who call them home. Mandobo tribal elder, Petrus Kinggo, explains how the Sago palms that grow wild in these forests are a staple food for his community. These is my minimarket. The outside of the palm is like the bone, inside is the sago, which we grate, after grating it we knead and squeeze it and the pulp becomes sago which we take home. So, this is my supermarket, where we don’t have pay for our food. But six years ago, he got involved in something that changed his tribe’s fate forever. **[3:05]:** He negotiated with a Korean palm oil giant, called Korindo and persuaded his tribe and 10 other clans, to accept just 8 dollars a hectare as compensation for their land. They said you will get a bonus. They said as the coordinator they would pay my children’s school fees, they said I would get a house with clean water and a generator. They would pay for my children’s higher education. It’s was all verbal promises, nothing in writing. He shows our BBC team a map of the area he claims is his ancestral forest. This receipt showing he received just over 30,000 US dollars for 5,000 hectares of land. The company already had a permit. What they wanted was a quick deal, 8 US dollars per hectare. So they could take a photo of our signatures and show (the government) in Jakarta. **[4:14]:** Korindo says they paid an additional 8 dollars for the trees, an amount set out by the Indonesian government, who gave them the permit. Petrus says they were felt pressured to sign. In fact, the company worked with the police and the military to manipulate us. They frightened us so that we gave up the land. It wasn’t right. The company deny this. And say all their dealings complied with Indonesian laws. Laws made 4,000 km away in the capital Jakarta. **[4:52]:** West Papua a former Dutch colony became part of Indonesia in the 1960s after a controversial referendum overseen by the United Nations. Jakarta maintains it’s an integral part of the nation, recognised by the international community. **[5:19]:** But a low-level separatist movement has been waged here ever since. This is my land, our ancestors gave us this land, we want independence. Indonesia has stolen our land from us. How long have we been suffering in the jungle. How many people have died? There are just so few of us now. Papua must gain independence from Indonesia. Last year the biggest independence protests in decades turned into riots and ended in deadly clashes with the army. **[6:06]:** Control over the region's vast natural resources gold, copper and the forest are one of the key flashpoints. **[6:17]:** Despite its rich resources it’s amongst the poorest regions in Indonesia. Jakarta has vowed to change that. Pumping money in, building infrastructure and opening up the region up to investors. Korean palm oil giant Korindo, has benefited greatly. They now control more land in Papua than any other company. Clearing nearly 60,000 hectares of rainforest, an area the size of Chicago or Seoul. Their vast plantations now protected by state security forces. It’s classified as an object of national importance. The company asked us to provide security. So, we station our personnel there to protect the company. In May, this year when local farmer, Marius Betera turned up at the local office of Korindo to complain about the destruction of his banana plantation. The police were called. The police suddenly arrived. I was shocked, straight away they started threatening him.... hitting him here and here, using their fists. **[7:53]:** Three hours later he was dead. His daughter grieves over his body at the health clinic where he died. Dad is gone. How can this be happening? He still has young children. Police say he died of a heart attack. CCTV footage seen by the BBC captures a police officer hitting him. When our officer was trying to restrain him, he resisted. Then our officer kind of hit him a little bit on the shoulder and near his neck. The case is being investigated. There has been an internal process and he has been spoken to and detained for 21 days. Now there is a criminal case. **[9:18]:** Korindo while having no role in his death, says they gave the family 15, 000 US dollars and will pay for his two children’s education up to university. His daughter says nothing will make up for the loss of her father. I am heartbroken, I love him. I can’t forget… I loved him. I will always love him. He was my dad, so I will never get over the loss. **[9:52]:** Our team heads deeper into the heart of Papua to reach another Korindo concession. **[10:13]:** Here too, our team found palm oil development has bitterly divided tribes and families. Thousands of hectares of forest gone…and what did we get? We are suffering. There is not one tribe that’s done well. Elizabeth left her village to work in the city when she returned she found out her brother, now deceased, had sold their land to Korindo. My brother would never have sold his pride and forest before. It’s devastating that my own brother was a victim. There is no electricity here, or clean running water. Those that can afford it use generators, and fuel here costs four times more than in the capital Jakarta. When the company arrived they made lots of promises. So many promises, but they were just that, promises. Nothing has changed, except the forest is gone and we are living in poverty. You would think after our forest was destroyed we would be living a good life. **[11:29]:** But it’s 2020 and we’re not. Korindo turned our repeated interview requests but said in a statement that they have paid fair compensation to communities and have put an additional 14 million US dollars into social programs. Many of tribe’s allegations were investigated for two years by the leading global green certification body, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), of which Korindo is a certificate holder. The final report was never released, but the BBC obtained a copy. It found evidence that Korindo violated the rights of Papuans and benefited from close military ties for its own economic benefit. The report recommended Korindo be stripped of its FSC membership, but they decide to work with them. The FSC Logo is meant to tell you as a consumer that the product comes from an environmentally friendly and socially responsible company. And the logo is used everywhere here in Europe. It was on the sandwich napkin that I was given with my lunch and on the train ticket that got me here. **[12:41]:** So we are here at the headquarters of the FSC to ask why this logo is being given to Korindo. These things have happened in breach of our values. They were in breach of our values. They will remain in breach of our values. What's the best thing to do with that? They happened, right? Is the best thing to do say they were in breach of our values we're not going to have anything to do with that anymore? Well that’s one option that environmentalists would say that you are taking a strong stance. Therefore, maybe other companies will feel like they can't get away with it too. But the end result, I think, would be, and the logic of the board has been, we want to see the improvement happen. We want to actually see if we can help those communities that have had problems that have been treated in wrong ways, that have not been listened to, that have not been understood to actually get something in terms of **[13:38]:** options, possibilities, remedy for what happened. Remedy, he says, could be in the form of restoring forests, land rights or jobs. But admits it will be a process that could take up to three years to work out. In a statement Korindo denied they were involved in any human rights violations but acknowledged that there is room for improvements and say they are implementing new procedures, and economic programs for locals. **[14:12]:** The FSC’s investigation, found no evidence of deliberate and illegal use of fire by Korindo. It’s also something the company strongly denies. But researchers from the group Forensic Architecture based at Goldsmith University have been testing this claim. We had images and video footage that were showing fire and the smoke coming out of it and it wasn't clear whether they were intentional or not. That was the question. And with that, we started our research. This footage taken from a plane by Greenpeace Indonesia in May 2013, shows stacks of timber burning. Using clues in the image they located it in satellite images inside a Korindo concession called PT Dongin Prabawa. They then went back to 2011 when this area was all forest and used a technique that detects patterns of land clearing from satellite images. The blue: thick vegetation; red shows cleared earth. So when I play this months by months analysis, you will see that the pattern and the direction of land clearing is very clear. **[15:42]:** It's moving from this central top area very clearly towards the east. Next they added in the heat sources that are picked up NASA satellites: hotspot data – and they put the two together of the same period of time. The patterns the direction and the speed with which fires were set matched perfectly with the direction, the pattern and the speed with which land clearing had occurred in these concessional sites. That is evidence that the fires were set intentionally. If the fires were set from outside the concession sites or due to weather conditions, they would have moved with a different directionality. They would be diffuse. They would be going up and down and south and west. But in the cases that we were looking at. There was a very clear directionality. Korindo says there were many natural fires in the area, especially in 2015 due to an extreme and long dry season. **[16:51]:** And insists that all land clearing was carried out with heavy machinery. And that the fires found in their concessions were started by villagers to hunt giant wild rats hiding under stacks of wood. But people living near this concession told our BBC team a different story. **[17:19]:** I saw them gather the left-over wood. They used heavy machinery to pile it up and put it in rows. Long rows, maybe 100-200 metres long and they poured petrol over them and burnt them. The burning happened for years, as they cleared the forests, they collected left over wood, put it in high piles, and then put petrol on it and burnt it. This continued until 2016. **[17:55]:** Another man said smoke from the fires covered their community for years. It was thick haze when they were clearing. The left over wood they didn’t want, they burnt. The smoke was closing off the sky. It was all full of smoke here, particularly in the afternoon, it was dark. **[18:21]:** Every year in Indonesia, fires send a thick haze across the region causing breathing problems and sending large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If Korindo had deliberately had deliberately used fire to clear land it would be in breach of the law. Indonesian government turned down our requests for an interview. **[18:47]:** The FSC says the company has agreed to stop all further forest clearing for now. In August the FSC board met again, deciding Korindo was on track and that they would continue to work with them on improvements. I believe there is a shift that needs to happen in Korindo. They need to improve in a number of different areas. And one of them is to actively seek and get the approval of the community. Do they understand that? Why would we ask for training of all their staff this year to happen if we thought they understood that? We don't think they understand. We think it's a new concept to them. Isn't it too late for that? Isn't this just about putting a rubber stamp on something that's already happened? We are taking the bet, you can say that what we are doing is the best chance for the people and the forest to get in a better situation, faster than any other track we could have taken. **[19:57]:** Elizabeth, whose brother took compensation for their ancestral forest from Korindo, is sceptical that anything can make up for what’s been lost. I walk from division one to division 15, crying, I ask myself, where are our ancestors’ spirits now that our forest has been completely destroyed. And it happened on my watch. Others have decided to go and work for the oil palm company, hoping to build a new future there. I am working for the company to save for university. Hopefully by 2023 I can go. I was anxious about what would happen to us after our forest was completely destroyed. The only option is to get an education. That’s what I started thinking, that’s the only choice. I can’t rely on my parents so I had to work for the company. **[21:15]:** Petrus Kinggo is fighting to protect what is left of his tribe’s once vast forest, that now falls within Korindo’s concession. Where will future generations go? So I will fight to keep this forest. I will never give it away. He carries a heavy burden. According to God, I have sinned. I deceived 10 tribes. We should have talked and really thought about what we were doing, did we want to handover our land? That’s where I feel like I did a great wrong, it was deceitful. The company said ‘thank you Petrus for looking after us so well,' but in my heart I knew I had wronged. **[22:30]:** As investors eye this, one of the last untouched corners of the planet. Petrus hopes other tribes hear his story.