Following activity in Sumatra and Kalimantan, palm oil companies have begun expansion in Papua, which houses Indonesia’s only remaining virgin forests as other parts of the country have largely been converted to plantations.

One such company is Korindo Group, a Korean-Indonesian conglomerate and Papua’s major palm oil company. In 2013, Korindo began its aggressive clearing of tropical lowland forests for oil palm plantations in Papua.

The massive deforestation and illegal burning of pristine rainforests by Korindo was uncovered in a recent investigative report by global environmental organization Mighty, Indonesian humanitarian organizations SKP-KAMe Merauke and PUSAKA, Transport & Environment, Rainforest Foundation Norway and the Korean Federation for Environmental Movements (KFEM).

In total, Korindo has cleared more than 50,000 hectares of tropical lowland ...