West Papua lost 748,640 hectares (1.85 million acres), or 2% of its old-growth forest, between 2001 and 2019, according to the study published in the journal Biological Conservation. This was largely due to the growth of plantations, primarily oil palms, and the government’s push for infrastructure development in the region. Oil palm and pulpwood plantations accounted for 208,223 hectares (514,500 acres) of the deforestation during those periods, or 28% of total deforestation. A study, by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia, an NGO, attributes 22,009 hectares (54,400 acres) of forest loss between 2001 and 2019 due to the construction of Trans-Papua Highway. The Road passes nearby at least seven conservation zones, including Lorentz National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, causing the loss of the function of protected areas as the support system of their surrounding ecosystems. It notes that 22% of this deforestation in an area of 4,906 hectares (12,100 acres), occurred in protected conservation zones. According to spatial analysis by the NGO Auriga Nusantara, Lorentz lost 7,644 hectares (18,888 acres) of forests in the past two decades, with an increasing deforestation rate.
A 202-km (126-mi) stretch of the highway that’s built through the national park has devastated parts of the protected area. Among the species living in the national park is the endangered dingiso tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus mbaiso).
In July 2021, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Fuzhou, China urged the Indonesian government to shut down constructing the Trans Papua Road in West Papua. The call released after the organisation highlighted the highway construction damaged the flora and fauna ecosystem in Lorentz National Park. Extraction industries, particularly palm oil plantations and mining projects remain a major threat to indigenous peoples and the ecosystem in West Papua.
The environmental destruction has occurred through the economic interests of both Indonesia and foreign companies. Besides losing natives land, the presence of these companies are causing negative outcomes, such as flooding and landslides. Many Papuans are threatened with huge tracts of land that have been granted as concession to timber companies. These companies were established in the early 1980s, and increased rapidly in palm oil production sites during the recent years, which is now considered a major cause of deforestation, and linked to the human rights concern affecting indigenous Papuans living nearby plantations.
The presence of these companies remains the biggest threat to primary rainforests in West Papua, and thus to West Papua’s ability to thrive and continue their culture and way of life, that is to determine their own destiny. As mentioned previously, destroying a people’s physical environment is a form of at least cultural genocide and carries a very real threat of physical genocide as well.
Satellite monitoring shows continued deforestation within an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s Papua province, long after the local government ordered concession holder PT Permata Nusa Mandiri (PNM) to halt land-clearing activities.
The local government issued the order because PNM was among 137 palm oil firms whose permits were revoked by the environment ministry on Jan. 6.
The Namblong Indigenous community, whose ancestral lands overlap with the company’s concession, say they never wanted PNM in their area and have called on the government to take firm action to stop it from clearing more forest.
JAKARTA — A palm oil company whose permit was revoked at the start of the year and which was ordered to halt operations is allegedly continuing to clear forests in Indonesia’s Papua province.
The revocation was announced on Jan. 6; on Feb. 3, PNM sent a letter to the Jayapura district government, notifying it of the company’s land clearing. In the letter, PNM said it had restarted operations in the wake of the mass revocations as the health risk brought by the COVID-19 pandemic had started to subside.
The district government sent a response to PNM on Feb. 23, in which the head of the district investment board, Delila Giay, ordered PNM to halt its activities on the ground because of the environment ministry’s decree.
However, forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas detected clearing within PNM’s concession well after Feb. 23.
“Looking at these two Sentinel 2 [satellite] images taken on 20 February and 12 March, it looks like the company kept clearing after the 23rd,” David Gaveau, founder of technology consultancy TheTreeMap, which developed Nusantara Atlas, told Mongabay.
According to data from Nusantara Atlas, 60.5 hectares (150 acres) were cleared in PNM’s concession from Feb. 20 to March 11, bringing the total for 2022 so far to 116.9 hectares (289 acres).
Another satellite imagery analysis, by Amsterdam-based sustainability consultancy Aidenvironment, shows 130 hectares (321 acres) of clearing from the start of the year until March 9. That indicates a surge of clearing in the second half of February, given that from the start of the year until Feb. 14, it found about 50 hectares (125 acres) had been cleared.
Satellite image of land clearing in palm oil firm PT Permata Nusa Mandiri’s concession in Papua, Indonesia. Image courtesy of Aidenvironment.
A PR official for PNM, Ridwan Syarif Abbas, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Namblong Indigenous community, whose ancestral lands overlap with the company’s concession, also reported land clearing after the local government’s order for a halt to activities.
“Some locals are already aware of the letter [from the district government],” Rosita Tecuari, who heads the Namblong Indigenous women’s group, said during a recent online press conference. “But the company’s operation hasn’t stopped. Until now, it still goes on.”
In its letter to the Jayapura district government, PNM said the owners of ancestral rights in the area had asked the firm to started cultivating the concession in order to create jobs for Indigenous peoples.
Rosita denied this, however, saying the community had never accepted PNM’s presence in their area, and wanted the company out of their ancestral lands.
“We truly disagree with the presence of the company here,” she said. “Why? Because there’s going to be a lot of impact. We will lose [our forests]. Wildlife like the cassowary birds will go far away from us.”
Piter Roki Aloisius from the Samdhana Institute, an NGO that works with Indigenous peoples in Papua, said the concession area has high biodiversity, especially birds.
“In our study location, we found 10 kinds of birds-of-paradise,” he said during the press conference.
Even now, the Indigenous community is already feeling the impact of the land clearing, Rosita said.
“Some of the forests have already been cleared [and] we’ve lost our livelihoods,” she said. “Sago trees have already been bulldozed by heavy equipment. If the forests are completely gone, where should we live? Most of us are farmers and gatherers. That’s how we live.”
Rosita said Indigenous women like her are especially vulnerable.
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll end up selling [goods] on the sidewalk or becoming scavengers to feed our family and children because our livelihoods have changed,” she said.
A newly opened oil palm plantation site. Image by Asrida Elisabeth/ Mongabay Indonesia.
By continuing to clear forest in the concession area, PNM has disobeyed the government’s order, Rosita said. To ensure it PNM stops its activities, she said, the government should revoke the company’s other permits on top of the forest release permit that was revoked by the environment ministry.
Among the permits that the community is demanding be scrapped are a location permit and an environmental permit issued by the Jayapura district head in 2011 and 2014, respectively as well as a right-to-cultivate permit, or HGU, issued by the land ministry.
“There’s no way for us to eat palm oil and for us to work at plantations because we’re not used to working under companies,” the Namblong Indigenous community said in a statement. “We don’t want to be ordered around by other people. So we’re asking for the HGU of PNM to be revoked, and the HGU should no longer be valid since the issuance of the environment minister’s decree in January 2022.”
The forest release permit revoked on Jan.6 was originally issued by the environment ministry to rezone a forest area into a non-forest area eligible for plantations. The forest release permit is a prerequisite for the company to obtain an HGU — the last in a series of licenses that oil palm companies must obtain before being allowed to start planting.
The government has cited failure to cultivate concessions within the allocated time period as one of the reasons for the mass permit revocation. And even before the permit revocation, PNM had been cited as an example of Jakarta’s patchy enforcement of the palm oil licensing freeze: the company obtained its HGU in November 2018, two months after President Joko Widodo had signed into force a moratorium on the issuance of new oil palm plantation permits.
Banner image: A road made by a palm oil company by clearing the forest in Jayapura Regency, Papua. Image by Asrida Elisabeth/ Mongabay Indonesia.
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Palm oil executives have been caught on camera apparently admitting to human rights abuses in Papua New Guinea (PNG), home to the world’s third largest rainforest, linking global brands to deforestation and child labour.
7 Oct 2021
Exclusive: Palm oil bosses human rights abuses claims
Palm oil executives have been caught on camera apparently admitting to human rights abuses in Papua New Guinea (PNG), home to the world’s third largest rainforest, linking global brands to deforestation and child labour.
Bosses from East New Britain (ENB) – a logging and palm oil firm which has had links to brands like Colgate-Palmolive, Nestle, Danone and Kellogg – were secretly recorded by Global Witness over two years claiming to use child labour and bribe officials. ENB denies it uses these practices.
All the companies contacted by Channel 4 News said they have severed ties with ENB.
Eddie Lamur, Founding Director of Tobar Investment, a close business partner of ENB, told undercover reporters how Tobar and ENB pay off the police to beat up locals who oppose deforestation. ENB and Tobar deny any involvement in police brutality.
‘School children’
Deforestation is set to be a key issue at the COP26 climate summit, to be held next month in Glasgow, as rainforests play a vital role in capturing carbon and providing a home to endangered species.
Palm oil is used in a wide range of supermarket products from pizza, biscuits, and chocolate to deodorant and cosmetics.
Rainforests around the world, including in PNG, are being cut down to make way for palm oil plantations.
In secretly filmed footage, ENB’s land acquisition manager Bernard Lolot said the company used “school children” aged “10 to 15” to pick the palm oil fruits.
At the same dinner, Michael Paisparea, ENB’s public relations manager, said it costs roughly the equivalent of £20,500 or £10,300 to bribe ministers in PNG.
Mr Lolot added that officials can be bribed with a “special favour” such as paying “school fees”.
ENB has denied bribery and using child labour.
In a separate conversation, Mr Lamur of Tobar Investment, a close business partner of ENB, told the undercover Global Witness reporter his company and ENB have paid police officers to beat up villagers opposed to their plantations.
Describing an attack on protesting villagers, he said: “We went after them in the night, got them, belted them up and locked them up at the station. I was there at one or two operations.
“The police and our people went together in the night.”
He added that they would “belt” the people they had chosen to ensure the “word spread around” and then there would be “no more unnecessary disturbances” to their workers.
The company has denied the allegations.
Mr Lamur also claimed ENB’s chief executive Eng Kwee Tan helped with the attacks.
In another secretly filmed meeting, Mr Tan detailed an international tax evasion scheme employed by the firm.
He said the company exports palm oil to India from Papua, but false paperwork labels it from Malaysia to avoid tax.
Mr Tan emailed on behalf of ENB to deny absolutely any involvement in tax evasion.
He added: “Neither Mr Lolot nor Mr Paisparea serve in any capacity within the employment division of the Company and any information they might give concerning the employment of child labour is hearsay and false.”
Curbing deforestation associated with the palm oil industry is crucial if Indonesia wants to meet its long-term emissions reduction targets, experts say.
There are still 3.5 million hectares (8.65 million acres) of natural forest inside existing oil palm concessions that could potentially be cleared in as little as three years as demand for palm oil continues to grow.
Experts have called on the government to save these forests by extending and strengthening a moratorium on licensing new plantations.
They also call for the adoption of the high conservation value and high carbon stock approaches to identifying areas to protect.
JAKARTA — Indonesia could lose an area of tropical rainforest bigger than Belgium to oil palm plantations over the next three years without existing measures to slow this loss, activists warn. This would negate the government’s own commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.
Indonesia has since 2018 banned the issuance of permits for new oil palm plantations to stem deforestation associated with palm oil production. But existing concessions containing vast swaths of forest may still be cleared. These amount to 3.5 million hectares (8.65 million acres) of forest — and they could be cleared within just three years, according to Anggalia Putri, forest and climate program director at the environmental NGO Madani.
She notes that companies are required to develop their concessions within three years or risk having the land deemed as “abandoned,” seized by the state and given to another firm under existing regulations.
“So oil palm trees have to be planted and the natural forests [in the concessions] will disappear,” Anggalia told Mongabay.
Besides that, the government’s biodiesel program, which seeks to phase out fossil fuel diesel for a blend that contains palm oil-derived fuel, also threatens deforestation, she added. Indonesia’s biodiesel transition program, the world’s most ambitious, will require 15 million hectares (37 million acres) — an area a fifth the size of Borneo — of new oil palm plantations, according to the government.
While it’s not clear whether the new plantations will be established in already deforested areas, the program nevertheless adds further pressure to clear natural forests inside existing oil palm concessions, Anggalia said.
“Various studies show that if the demand for biofuel increases overtime, we will run out of crude palm oil by 2023 or 2024,” she said. “And of course that’s an immense pressure for our natural forests and peatland. If we clear all natural forests [inside concessions] for biofuel [production], we will miss the target” set by Indonesia’s government of turning the country’s tropical forests back into a carbon sink by 2030.
That target is part of a larger goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2070; both aims have been derided as massively unrealistic by experts and activists.
New oil palm plantation established on peatland outside Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
No review, no revocation
Most of Indonesia’s remaining primary forests are located in the easternmost region of Papua, made up of the administrative provinces of Papua and West Papua.
In West Papua province, a government review recently identified 383,431 hectares (947,479 acres) — an area two and a half times the size of London — of intact forest that sits inside areas earmarked for oil palm plantations.
While there hasn’t been a similar review in the neighboring, and much larger, Papua province, a new report by Greenpeace shows at least 685,388 hectares (1.69 million acres) of forests inside oil palm concessions. Nearly two-thirds constitutes primary forest and almost a sixth is peatland.
Primary and peat forests are ostensibly protected under the palm oil permit moratorium, but the policy isn’t retroactively applicable for concessions issued before it was passed. And without extra measures to protect these forests, they can be legally cleared for planting oil palms.
Greenpeace estimates that clearing this area of forest in Papua province could release 71.2 million metric tons of carbon — equivalent to almost half of Indonesia’s total emissions in 2018, or half the emissions from the global aviation industry that same year.
Greenpeace says the figure is a conservative one as it doesn’t account for the carbon stored in below-ground biomass such as peat. That makes preserving these forests a crucial part of achieving any kind of long-term carbon sink or net-zero goals, according to Greenpeace forest campaigner Arie Rompas.
“If this is done immediately by revoking existing permits, the Indonesian government could save the carbon remaining in Papua’s concessions,” he said. “If it’s not done, of course the 2070 net-zero emissions target won’t be achieved.”
Deforestation in the Arfak mountains in West Papua province, Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Weak policies
Experts say there have already policies in place that could potentially prevent these forests from being cleared. But they’re either not strong enough or aren’t being strictly implemented.
The 2018 oil palm permit moratorium is itself a case in point. In addition to halting the issuance of licenses for new plantations, it also calls for a sweeping review of existing licenses. But according to Greenpeace, not a single permit has been revoked as part of this process, even though many were issued in apparent violation of prevailing laws and regulations.
And even if a concession is found to be illegal, there’s no default mechanism to redesignate the land as forest, allowing local governments to easily parcel the land back out to another company under a new permit.
The Ministry of Environment and Forestry says it’s addressing this issue.
“We’re currently discussing a ministerial regulation on how to revoke permits that have already been issued,” Ruandha Agung Sugardiman, the ministry’s acting chief of planning, said at a March 22 press conference. “The point is we protect our primary forests so that our national target of reducing emissions by curbing deforestation [can be met].”
Compounding the lack of permit reviews is the fact that the moratorium expires in September this year. Without an extension, the previously unbridled issuance of palm oil licenses will resume, which would put even greater pressure on natural forests, according to Jasmine Puteri, the Indonesia program advisor at the NGO Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN).
Trias Fetra, a palm oil management program officer at Madani, said extending the moratorium alone is not enough. The government also needs to strengthen it by including a stipulation that explicitly bans clearing natural forests and peatland inside existing concessions, he added.
“That’s why continuing the oil palm moratorium policy with an element of saving natural forest and increasing the productivity of oil palm plantations is very important in achieving Indonesia’s long-term vision,” Trias said.
Land recently cleared to make way for oil palm in Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
High conservation value and high carbon stock
An important aspect of identifying forests to save is by determining which areas have high conservation value (HCV) and/or high carbon stock (HCS), and then designating them as protected from clearing.
In 2020, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya said her office had identified nearly 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of potential HCV areas within 345 oil palm concessions with a total area of nearly 3.6 million hectares (8.9 million acres).
Rizaldi Boer, director of the Center for Climate Risk and Opportunity Management in Southeast Asia and Pacific at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said the government had started discussing taking the HCV and HCS approach in payment ecosystem services. This would see incentives offered to farmers or landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide ecological service.
“The problem is that the regulation on this matter hasn’t been issued yet,” Rizaldi said.
If the HCV and HCS concepts are applied in identifying areas with high ecosystem services, then large swaths of forest can be saved from deforestation, given that more than 60% of industrial and oil palm plantations have high ecosystem services, Rizaldi added.
“Right now, it’s still voluntary” for landowners to implement the HCV and HCS concept, he said.
Rizaldi cited the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) as an example of certification scheme that requires its members to adopt the HCV and HCS approach. The RSPO, widely considered the gold standard for palm oil sustainability certification, requires plantings after November 2005 to not replace primary forest or areas required for management to maintain HCV forests. In November 2018, the RSPO started requiring its members to conserve HCS forests as well.
“Those who have become RSPO members wouldn’t dare to clear forests inside their concessions. If palm oil plantations that are established after 2005 cause deforestation, [the companies] will have to pay for remediation and penalties,” Rizaldi said.
Indonesia also has its own domestic sustainability certification scheme, called the ISPO. Unlike the RSPO, which is voluntary, the Indonesian government has made the ISPO compliance mandatory for all growers. But while the ISPO states that HCV areas cannot be cleared and HCV identification is required, it doesn’t define the identification procedures clearly and is based on national laws and regulations that don’t recognize the HCV concept and don’t make it mandatory to conduct HCV assessments before clearing a forested area.
The ISPO also hasn’t adopted the HCS approach.
“That’s why I emphasize that this certification policy [ISPO] has to include this element [HCV/HCS] as well, and it’s a mandatory element,” Rizaldi said.
The environment ministry’s Ruandha said the ministry has a high-resolution map showing which concessions have HCV and HCS forests.
“But the ones who determine whether an area is HCV or HCS is the license holder,” he said. “What will the management [of the HCV/HCS area] be like? Will it be managed by the license holder itself, or returned to the government? That’s [determined] case by case.”
Banner image: Oil palm plantations in Malaysia. Image by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.
