Korindo Group Still Destroying Pristine Rainforest in Papua

While the Korindo Group has enacted a temporary moratorium on new deforestation on its oil palm plantations, it has been quietly but steadily destroying areas of pristine rainforest in one of its logging concessions in Papua, PT Inocin Abadi (PT IA).

Recent satellite imagery shown below reveals that in 2017, Korindo constructed a major network of logging roads and conducted intensive logging within this 100,000 hectare concession, degrading an area of over 3,000 hectares of pristine rainforest. Satellite imagery from November 2017 to January 2018 shows that Korindo has started extending a major logging access road further into a new frontier of pristine forest and has started logging in the vicinity of this road. This indicates that Korindo plans to continue expanding its logging operations deeper into areas of pristine rainforest.

Korindo’s logging concession sits right on top of a pristine rainforest. In 2016, over 93% of this logging concession was covered with 80% canopy cover forest. Over half the concession was mapped as part of an Intact Forest Landscape in 2013. In total, Korindo has already built logging roads over an area of approximately 15,000 hectares of rainforest since it started developing the concession in 2014. In addition, PT IA is located adjacent to one of Korindo’s oil palm concessions, PT Papua Agro Lestari, where it has already cleared over 4,800 hectares of pristine rainforest that is part of the same Intact Forest Landscape.

In response to Mighty Earth’s campaign, Korindo is trying to convince its customers and the marketplace that it is operating sustainably without destroying more rainforest. These images prove this to be untrue.

Despite a revamped public relations effort, Korindo has failed to take meaningful action to stop rainforest clearance across its operations. It has refused to announce and implement a comprehensive Group-wide No Deforestation, No Peat, and No Exploitation policy, aligned with the High Carbon Stock Approach methodology, that applies to both its oil palm and logging operations. And it has refused to restore forests and ecosystems it has destroyed or resolve its grievances with local communities. No matter how much green it puts on its website, Korindo remains a high-risk supplier of both palm oil and wood products.

Caption for featured photo: Trucks carrying logs from Korindo’s PT Inocin Abadi logging concession. @MightyEarth, June 2016.

Sources: 

[1] The source of the boundary of PT Inocin Abadi is the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry, 30 September 2014. http://appgis.dephut.go.id/appgis/Arahan_pemanfaatan_2014/Papua.pdf. See also: http://webgis.dephut.go.id:8080/kemenhut/index.php/en/map/interactive-map-2

[2] https://www.planet.com/

[3] ibid