"Trashing the Last Rainforest: How Papua treasures are being dumped into the wastepaper bin," 15 March 2022

[...] Moorim Paper, a South Korean company, manages a forestry concession of about 64 thousand hectares through its controlled tree plantation company, PT Plasma Nutfah Marind Papua (PT PNMP).

[...] Between 2015 and 2021, the company cleared more than six thousand hectares of forests inside its government-granted concession, including primary forests and possibly peatlands. More forests risk being cleared in coming years.

The forests and swamps in the concession are also the customary land of a number of traditional clans. Their sago palm groves and their hamlets, fishing ponds and hunting grounds are gone, and local people must now walk a considerable distance to find food. Even their sacred sites, harbouring traditional clans’ social and spiritual values, have been bulldozed. [...] PT PNMP has consistently failed to produce prior assessments of precisely what is at risk and what is being lost. Indigenous Peoples’ sacred sites, biodiversity hotspots, sago groves, carbon-absorbing peatlands – nothing that, once destroyed, might give cause for reproach or require a remedy is to be measured, it seems.

This devastation must halt, immediately. Moorim must commit to a moratorium on further clearing, pending a serious analysis of the environmental and social impacts of its activities, and of protective measures that must be put in place. It must also commit to restore the area that it has already deforested. Indigenous clans’ rights must be respected, and any use of the traditional land must be conditioned by a process implementing Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC); existing damage must be fairly remedied.

[...] The same NGOs persisted, finally succeeding in obtaining certain responses from the company – but not regarding what really matters: there is not publicly announced immediate moratorium on further plantation expansion to carefully identify the conservation values it is destroying.

[..] Moorim P&P response to the report included: "...Our company would like to inform you again that PT PNMP's business site is a plantation area consisting mainly 2nd forest land and scrublands, and is proceeding smoothly without conflict under the principle of co-existence with local residents. Our company promise to carry out the business carefully for preventing any situations or misunderstandings like illegal deforestation, environmental destruction and human rights violations that you are concerned about..."