Selling Out Paradise
The intense flapping sounds like a loud aeroplane turbine and stops me in my tracks. It’s like there is a mythical dragon high in the heavens. I look up. A flock of majestic hornbills soar past a sliver of light in the forest canopy. This was one of the many joys of hiking for hours among the trees in Asia’s largest remaining rainforests. We’d come to West Papua, a remote, restive corner of Indonesia which is usually off-limits to journalists and foreign observers. Indigenous separatists have been fighting a war of independence here with Indonesia for the last 50 years. West Papuans have witnessed much bloodshed, human rights abuses and mass displacement. But being largely cut off from the rest of the world has had a silver lining: Vast tracts of wilderness, home to hundreds of Indigenous tribes and unique biodiversity found nowhere else on earth, an ecological wonderland in a country with some of the world’s fastest rates of environmental destruction. A year after we first applied to enter West Papua, we received special permission to visit nature reserves that form the third-largest rainforest on the planet after the Congo Basin and Amazon. But we didn’t come for the wildlife watching - Indonesia’s last Eden is under threat. Pristine
rainforest is being razed for timber and palm oil plantations. Our investigation for Al Jazeera’s flagship Asia Pacific current affairs show, 101 East, uncovered dubious deals that show rainforests are being sold to South Korean resource companies for just $5 a hectare. Working in conjunction with environmental news outlets, The Gecko Project and Mongabay, we uncovered corporate documents and photographs showing how two companies, Korindo and Posco International, conducted exploitative timber deals with local tribes where they each stood to make $1 billion. After travelling 12 hours by boat into the heart of West Papua, our reporting team filmed the rampant destruction that occurred after these land sales. Miles and miles of virgin rainforest reduced to scorched earth and replaced with plantations. We soon discovered that the plunder of West Papua is not just an environmental catastrophe. It’s also an act of economic exploitation. 101 East interviewed a range of tribal elders who said their ancestral rainforests were destroyed without their permission. “This is my land. There used to be animals and birds here. But not anymore,” said Linus Omba, a Mandobo tribesman.
Selling Out Paradise Drew Ambrose | Senior Producer ‘101 East’
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