Indonesia’s Palm Oil Curse

101 East exposes how companies and the government are turning a blind eye to the human cost of palm oil production.

Indonesia is the world's largest producer of palm oil. From chocolate and ice cream to soap and cosmetics, palm oil from this Southeast Asian nation is found in countless products on supermarket shelves around the world.

But soaring global demand for the oil is having a disastrous impact on Indonesia's people and environment.
Millions of hectares of land are being razed to make way for new palm oil plantations, destroying farmers' livelihoods and devastating rural communities.

We travelled to the Indonesian province of Papua, where vast swaths of rainforest are about to be destroyed to make way for new plantations.