CORRECTED: Indonesian firms destroying rainforests for palm oil: Greenpeace

Asian Economic News, Nov 18, 2008

SINGAPORE, Nov. 17 Kyodo

Environmental group Greenpeace on Monday accused Indonesia's largest palm oil companies of continuing to destroy Southeast Asia's last remaining rainforests with their huge expansion plans.

The group said its recent seven-week tour of parts of Indonesia found evidence of deforestation activities around Lake Sentarum National Park in West Kalimantan. The activists showed images they collected of depletion of forests and wetlands in the area.

Some 18 companies are encroaching on land in the vicinity of the park, including six owned by Indonesia's largest palm oil company, the Sinar Mas Group, Greenpeace activists told reporters in Singapore after completing their tour of areas such as Papua, Kalimantan, Sumatra and the Rhiau archipelago.

The park has been protected by the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands, since 1994.

Greenpeace said deforestation was still being carried out near the park despite the fact that in August this year, Indonesia's Forestry Ministry ordered the permits of most of these companies to be revoked for breaching Indonesia's conservation and biodiversity regulations.

In particular, Greenpeace accused the Sinar Mas Group of endangering forests all over Indonesia with its huge expansion plans for its oil palm plantations and urged international buyers of palm oil to cancel contracts with the firm and for the company to be expelled from an industrial grouping on sustainable palm oil.

The company currently has 360,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, including 213,000 hectares in Sumatra, 135,000 hectares in Kalimantan and 12,000 hectares in Papua, Greenpeace said.

An internal company document has indicated that the company plans to develop up to 2.8 million hectares of oil palm plantation in Papua alone, Greenpeace claimed.

''We have discovered Sinar Mas is destroying forest throughout Indonesia, in Papua, in the Riau province of Sumatra and in Kalimantan,'' said Bustar Maitar, the group's forest campaigner in Southeast Asia.

Greenpeace is concerned that the depletion of forests around Lake Sentarum National Park will endanger the water and eco-system in the park, which has a rich wildlife including the proboscis monkey, orangutan and clouded leopard. In addition, the livelihoods of natives in that area engaged in fishing, sago cultivation and collection of organic honey and wildlife in the park could also be affected.

Indonesia has one of the world's fastest rate of deforestation, making it the world's third largest greenhouse gas emitter. It is currently the world's largest palm oil producer with plans to expand such plantations by another 20 million hectares.

Greenpeace has been pushing the Indonesian government to implement an immediate moratorium on deforestation, including expansion of oil palm plantations.