rainforests

Deforestation continues in Indonesia, as this image taken on 16 October of an area cleared for an Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) plantation shows (c) Sutton-Hibbert/Greenpeace

Being a part of a Greenpeace ship tour is never boring. Generally, you expect the unexpected, and then you're surprised. But even by ship tour standards, the Rainbow Warrior's recent 'tour' of Indonesia was an interesting one.

It started with high hopes that our peaceful campaigning ship would be able to support the Indonesian president's stated aims of ending deforestation in Indonesia. It ended with the Rainbow Warrior being denied vital supplies and being ordered - and escorted - out of Indonesian waters and well into international waters by two navy vessels, in breach of international maritime law.

Take a look at this audio slideshow produced by photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and our very own Bex Sumner, both currently in Indonesia. It features our international exective director Kumi Naidoo and US forest campaigner Rolf Skar who've been witnessing the devastation in Sumatra for themselves, where plantations are replacing the rainforests at a rate of knots.

I was hoping to write my first post in Indonesia from the Rainbow Warrior. As it turns out, the Warrior is anchored out at sea, waiting for permission to get into the country from the Indonesian government. The ship and crew have been there for several days now, occasionally communicating with Indonesian supporters by virtual hookup (at this event for disappointed supporters) instead of in the steel flesh everyone was hoping see.

On the other hand I am very much here, in the middle of Jakarta, on the most densely populated island on Earth (Java). What can I tell you about Jakarta? It smells of cloves. The congested traffic crawls. The people are interesting, enthusiastic, gracious. It's humid - really humid. Every day, a downpour or two washes away the smog and cools the city down; you can almost hear the pavements sizzle.

It seems that Sinar Mas hasn’t learnt from last month’s mistakes and is labouring on with a strategy of hiring auditors to distract attention from their ongoing involvement in forest and peatland destruction.

This week Sinar Mas's pulp and paper arm – Asia Pulp and Paper - released a new 'independent audit' that purports to prove that Greenpeace investigations are wrong and our evidence of forest destruction unfounded. The people behind the audit are, shall we say, a little less independent than they claim. Alan Oxley and his consultancy International Trade Strategies Global (ITS) are an Australian outfit who have a track record of working for companies engaged in unsustainable business practices - including logging companies.

At last, the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is threatening action following the release last month of the independent audit commissioned by Sinar Mas, which showed that the company had been breaking Indonesian law and RSPO rules.

In these next two episodes, actress Marion Cottilard continues her journey through the Congo rainforest. Here, she sees first hand the wreckage left behind by the logging companies working in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As we've heard many times before, the companies get permission to log from the local villages by promising to build schools and clinics, but these often never materialise and if they do, they're hopelessly inadequate. Or logging rights are sold for salt, beer and soap when the timber fetches thousands of dollars.

More of Sinar Mas's handiwork, this time in an area known to support endangered Sumatran tigers 

There's been a not insignificant amount of fallout from the implosion of Sinar Mas's audit last week. You'll remember that the independent auditors demanded public clarification on some statements made by Sinar Mas about the results of said audit which were not, in fact, supported by the audit itself.

First of all (and this might be a complete coincidence), shares for Golden Agri Resources (Gar) - one of the Sinar Mas group's palm oil producers - fell by over 6 per cent between 19 and 23 August. PT Smart, another palm oil arm, dropped by nearly 3 per cent.

Shooting yourself in the foot. Getting egg all over your face. These and many more idioms apply to the Sinar Mas group which, following the release of its audit last week, has seen its executives "misreporting" the audit's findings.

Despite what company bigwigs have been saying, the audit doesn't clear Sinar Mas of operating irresponsibly or outside Indonesian law, leading to the embarrassing retraction of several claims made publicly which the audit doesn't in fact support. Worse, Sinar Mas has been telling these fibs not just to journalists, but to its shareholders, the Indonesian government and the stock exchange.

The third and fourth films documenting Inception star Marion Cottilard's journey to the Congo see her head out into the rainforest.

After meeting her hosts in Oshwe and the local forestry administration, she follows Greenpeace campaigners to see timber the loggers have left behind. Despite including sizeable tree trunks, they've been abandoned because they won't fetch enough money to make it worth the effort.

This blog first appeared on Ethical Corporation.

Last week saw Sinar Mas, one of the largest conglomerates in Indonesia, come to London for a press conference to try and turn the tables on two years of Greenpeace investigations into their deforestation practices.

The palm oil producer came to explain that they are a responsible company, that they don't destroy rainforests and how the likes of Unilever, Nestlé and Kraft had been mistaken to suspend them from their supply chains.

They claimed a new 'verification exercise' would prove Greenpeace has got it wrong.