Palm oil, an ingredient in half of all packaged foods worldwide, has a bad reputation because it’s associated with the clearing of virgin rainforest to make way for plantations, threatening wildlife andwreaking environmental destruction from Borneo to Guatemala.
That hasn’t stopped Indonesia continuing with a program of clearing and planting that now has dedicated almost 11 million hectares to the crop.
Drone photos just released show the effect of the palm oil and logging concessions belonging to one company, Korindo, a South Korean firm that produces plywood, pulp, and palm oil, among other things. The photos, part of an investigation by a consortium of non-governmental organizations, are of land in Papua, an Indonesian-controlled region on an island that’s 85% covered with rainforest.
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