In a press release, a coalition of environmental groups has accused a British company of funding the imminent destruction of a critical area of Indonesian rainforest. The group claims that, if allowed to proceed, the process would destroy a fragile tsunami buffer zone (1) as well as accelerate global climate change. The Scottish firm Jardine Matheson Holdings is the majority shareholder of AAL, the palm oil company behind plans to decimate the untouched forests of Tripa in Aceh Province, northern Sumatra. Jardine's chairman, Sir Henry Keswick, was knighted this month in the Queen's birthday honours list. The environmental coalition – including groups such as the Sumatran Orangutan Society, Wetlands International and Greenpeace – accused the firm of turning a blind eye to a massive rainforest crime and driving the destruction of an entire ecosystem.
The region, on the northwestern coast of Sumatra, is home to the highest concentration of Sumatran orangutans in the world. Less than twenty years ago the Tripa swamp forests harboured around 1,500 orangutans. Today there are just a handful left. The dense peat swamp soils also house a huge store of buried carbon, which will be released into the atmosphere and contribute to climate change if the planned conversion of this area to palm oil plantations goes ahead. The 13,000 hectare plot also provides a critical forest barrier against natural disasters such as the 2004 tsunami, which killed more than 225,000 people. The coalition includes Greenpeace, the Sumatran Orangutan society, Wetlands international, The Orangutan foundation and the Orangutan land trust. |
