Description
It’s one of the most exotic places on Earth: the Indonesian island of Borneo; lush, rich, one of only two places in the world where you will find orang-utans, but there’s trouble in paradise. Forest fires have destroyed tens-of-thousands of hectares; a drought was partly to blame. Mainly it’s big business which is destroying the wilderness, killing animals and destroying lives. The equatorial rain forests of 60 years ago no longer exist. It’s been overtaken by industry. Thousands of hectares of rain forest are converted annually to export crops such as palm oil. It’s sold throughout the world, manufactured into everything from biscuits to shampoo. The fire areas are large and they’re concentrated in plantation areas. Over 30 years, the rain forests have been a cash cow for Indonesia’s elite. What they haven’t turned over to foreigners, they exploited for themselves. The country’s dictator at the time, President Suharto, awarded lucrative contracts to his friends, like Mohammed “call me Bob” Hassan. Hassan owned oil palm plantations and ran an enormous cartel in Kalimantan, making plywood out of rain forest timber. People who live here don’t know the politics. They do know their big river, the Mahakam, is turning salty. Ocean water washes in as the river water dries up. Barges of rain forest logs come from deeper and deeper in the interior. People can’t associate the timber that brings jobs, with the drought that threatens their food and the fires that threaten their villages. The choice logs are refashioned into plywood and exported to the Western world. There’s no stopping the development. On an island where the natives once grew and traded all they needed to eat, they now buy it. Big companies that have turned the land into industry, provide food staples at wholesale prices. It’s a goodwill gesture. People in this area once farmed. Then they worked on the rubber plantations that ate up their farms. Now the rubber trees are destroyed, and they’re hungry. The army helps distribute rice, sugar and oil. In this documentary we see strong images of an eco-system in peril and the struggle to save it.