indonesia

As world leaders line up in Copenhagen to agree a new climate treaty, we've also been working hard to secure a result that will have a positive impact on the global climate - by protecting Indonesia's forests.

Today we're publicly releasing new evidence that Sinar Mas, Indonesia’s biggest palm oil producer, has been persistently engaging in widespread illegal deforestation and peatland clearance. We presented presented the evidence in this dossier to one of their biggest customers, the giant Unilever corporation. Now Unilever has decided to stop buying palm oil from Sinar Mas.

Just hanging around... our activists shut down a paper mill that was busy pulping the rainforest.

After building dams and shutting down bulldozers to prevent further deforestation, the team at the Climate Defenders Camp in Indonesia has swung into action once more. At dawn, climbers entered a huge pulp and paper mill in Sumatra and scaled the massive loading cranes, blocking operations at the mill.

As I write, the latest reports are that three teams of climbers have been removed and detained, while a fourth remains in place on one of the cranes. In keeping with earlier reactions to the Climate Defenders, they've been threatened and intimidated but they're still holding out.

Greenpeace activists shut down an APRIL logging concession yesterday.

Ian is the member of our forests campaigning team dealing with Indonesia.

Yesterday, as Greenpeace activists were preparing to close down the pulp and paper operations of one of Indonesia's biggest forest criminals APRIL, (or 'Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings'), back here in the UK I was just starting a meeting with UK climate minister Joan Ruddock.

What's the connection between our activists in the field, and me in a meeting room in London? Well it certainly wasn't our choice of outfits - they probably wouldn't let me into DECC with a red boiler suit on, and a suit and tie isn't particularly suitable for the Indonesian rainforest.

Some rather grim images were sent out from our picture desk yesterday. Taken on Sunday by Ardiles Rante, they show the devastation caused by fire in the peatland forests outside Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province in Sumatra. So that's another few thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide sent up into the atmosphere, and seeing photos like these make me realise our ongoing campaign to protect these forests from the ever-expanding palm oil industry is even more essential.

Volunteers in Jakarta get the climate message to Hillary Clinton's convoy (not pictured) © Greenpeace

Our colleagues in Indonesia have been very busy this week - with visiting foreign dignitaries and an outrageous decree from their own government following in quick succession.