--- title: Indonesia's Green Gamble | TIME description: Growing demand for palm oil for biofuels means big business in Indonesia - but will the benefits outweigh the costs? canonical: https://time.com/video/65SwiYMy/ og:title: Indonesia's Green Gamble og:description: Growing demand for palm oil for biofuels means big business in Indonesia - but will the benefits outweigh the costs? og:url: https://time.com/video/65SwiYMy/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/65SwiYMy/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Indonesia's Green Gamble twitter:description: Growing demand for palm oil for biofuels means big business in Indonesia - but will the benefits outweigh the costs? twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/65SwiYMy/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Indonesia's Green Gamble > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Indonesia's Green Gamble [Watch (HLS stream): Indonesia's Green Gamble](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/65SwiYMy.m3u8) (3:39)  _Published 2007-12-13. Growing demand for palm oil for biofuels means big business in Indonesia - but will the benefits outweigh the costs?_ --- Jul 27, 2023 12:35 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [The Aftermath of Indonesia's Devastating Earthquake](/video/6RtgT18j/) ### The Aftermath of Indonesia's Devastating Earthquake [Bobby Ghosh on India's and Indonesia's Elections](/video/TqQYPygW/) ### Bobby Ghosh on India's and Indonesia's Elections [Indonesia's Palm-Oil Dilemma: Cash In or Fight for the Forests?](/video/FgTPvQFt/) ### Indonesia's Palm-Oil Dilemma: Cash In or Fight for the Forests? --- ## Transcript >> This is Krista Mahr reporting for TIME. com. About a week before the big global talks on climate change got started on the beaches of Bali this month, I visited another part of Indonesia, a remote province called Riau on Sumatra. Riau is a sleepy kind of place, but it's also a hub for Indonesia's fast growing palm oil industry. Palm oil comes from palm fruit like this and it's mostly used for cooking oil, but it's recently become a popular ingredient for biofuel specifically in biodiesel. High oil prices in the West growing appetite for a cleaner burning gas have sent palm oil prices here through the roof. On Riau's main highway, I met this woman who buys palm fruit off small farmers and sells them to local palm oil companies. She used to just take care of her own palm trees, but now that the price of palm oil has nearly doubled, she makes a few extra bucks as a middle- man for her and her family. But I also saw another side to the boom. Plantations after all need space. Forests are being cleared here and some peatlands like this one, basically a wet dense pile of old forest layers that naturally trap carbon are being drained, cleared and burned to make way for palm trees. Indonesia is sending a lot of carbon into the atmosphere in the process. So much in fact that it's helped me get the third largest in greenhouse gas emitting nation in the world after the US and China. Green Peace has been camped out in Riau since October trying to alert the West that their-- quote on quote- " green fuels" are actually making climate change worse. I followed a few Green Peace workers through the palm plantation; they've camped out next to take a look at the forest they say is next on the chopping block. Logging is also a problem here and though we didn't see anyone, we did bump into this camp and we could hear the chainsaws close by. Now, Jakarta knows it has a problem on its hands. The government says burning old peatland in clearing tropical forest is illegal, but areas like this are so far off the map that federal laws are hard to enforce. Nick, who has been living at the camp and is an IT worker by day, has been a Green Peace volunteer for 4 years in Jakarta. He says the government needs to do more to make its own laws work if it expects ordinary Indonesians to follow them. >> So- if the government is a- has ignorance- so, it will be followed by the people because the people will say, " Ah, our governor is like that, so I don't care, too about that. So why should I think about that if the government don't think about it ." >> But, out in Riau, not everyone sees it like Nick does. When I drove by the Green Peace headquarters here, the building was plastered in signs put up by local activists who don't appreciate the NGO's attempt to put a stop to this business. Palm oil is after all bringing in cash. The main highway is clogged with trucks carrying oil. There are new houses on the streets. Yes, some people have lost out, but others are living a better life than they used to. And so, it's parts of the world like these areas that can't afford to say no to industry, but can't afford to say yes to them either that make lofty talks like Bali so tough. 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