Indonesia is the fourth most populated country on earth. Plantations are not usually developed on no-man’s land. Many companies and investors grabbed forests from local communities, made quick profits from their timber, and then built pulpwood or oil palm monocultures on the land.

In Bukit Tigapuluh the indigenous Orang Rimba and Talan Mamak are being forced to live in plantations as their forests disappear.

In 2.6 million hectares of pulpwood concessions of the Sinar Mas Group’s Asia Pulp & Paper and its affiliates, hundreds of land conflict cases are waiting to be resolved, one of the legacies of over 30 years of grabbing forests. In February 2013, APP had announced conflict resolution as one of the “social responsibility” commitments of its “Forest Conservation Policy” (FCP). However, a year later, field surveys by NGOs and community-based organizations found little on-the-ground evidence that APP was taking sufficient action to resolve these conflicts. Even after three years of FCP implementation, in 2016, NGOs had to repeat their criticism that APP had made only limited efforts and had not fully resolved any of its conflicts (for more information, read foresthints.news, RAN press release).