THOMAS PETERSSON considers the destiny of the Korowai people many of whom have had little contact with the rest of the world until recently. Many of them still live off what the jungle has to offer but the rain forest in which they live is threatened

Deep in the rainforest in the Indonesian part of New Guinea the Korowai people lives, many of them still completely on what the forest has to offer. Now their living environment has become one of the most important climate change issues.

One day Manu Malingatung comes to our camp in the jungle to participate in the preparations of the sago worm feast to which we are invited. He belongs to the few Korowais that have been travelling outside the Korowai lands. On foot and by canoe he went all the way to Tanah Merah, a remote penal settlement during the Dutch colonial time, now the chief town of the Papuan district of Boven Digoel. This district is one of those which are subject to big scale plans on oil palm plantations in the Indonesian part of New Guinea. If those plans are completed it would, according to the International Crisis Group, ICG, lead to labour immigration of around 42, 000 non-Papuans.

In the twinkling of an eye the native Papuan population would become a minority in the district.

Manu is preparing for the sago worm feast with his axe. A misdirected cut makes the stone come off the axe and it disappears in the surrounding greenery. Soon it is found and with a skilled hand the young man binds together the stone axe again. Hardly half an hour after the sago palm is cut down. The working up of the log starts and a couple of hours later the sago flour – the Korowais’ staple food – is ready to put directly on to the fire.

Since a few years the Korean company Korindo is involved in several oil palm projects close to Tanah Merah. Lately tensions have increased between exploiters and land owners.

Manu Malingatung tells us that he saw his first car in Tanah Merah. His face shines up when he talks about it. He was even invited to take a ride in it. “I would probably be happier there,” he comments.

When I ask him if he knows about Korindo and the oil palm plantations around Tanah Merah his answer is negative.

“No, I don’t know anything about that.”

Since the 1960s’ Indonesia has ruled the western part of New Guinea with a rod of iron. The Indonesian army has been the dominating actor in the area, at the same time as the outside world has been kept at a distance. With a finger in the pie in nearly all kinds of economic activities, the army has also been deeply involved in illegal logging.

Today the rate of the deforestation in Indonesia is the fastest in the world and has made this country the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases worldwide – after the United States and China. However, the inaccessibility of New Guinea has preserved the rainforest of the island and today it is the largest continuous rainforest area apart from forests of the Amazon and the Congo basin.

The Indonesian government has recently turned its interest more and more from the heavily exploited islands of Sumatra and Kalimatan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, towards New Guinea and the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua. A greater demand for palm oil to produce biofuel has instigated the governing authorities in Jakarta to draw up grandiose development plans.

According to a report from the ICG, the most important investments in Papua today belong to the palm oil industry. To increase the production rate of biofuel the Indonesian government plans to exploit millions of hectares of land until 2012. If the plans are completed hundreds of thousands people will have to move to Papua in order to satisfy the need for labour of the palm oil industry.

Tropical forest replaced by oil palms means increased global warming. According to the influential Stern Review Report, deforestation is the cause of nearly twenty per cent of the global emission of carbon dioxides. This corresponds to more than all the emissions by transports all over the world. At least one can write that awareness of how the tropical forests lose their capacity to absorb carbon dioxides through deforestation has increased. Does the rich world’s long-term self-interest mean that the remaining tropical forests, can, at least partly, be saved

Demands that rich countries pay developing countries not to cut or burn down and replace the remaining tropical forests by pasture or cultivable land have increased. One of the big issues at the UN climate conference in Bali was how to stop deforestation.

An important issue when the Kyoto Protocol will be replaced by a new treaty in 2013 will be how the preservation of tropical forests could benefit the international carbon credit markets. The existing protocol only embraces reforestation, not the protection of existing forests.

The governor in Papua, Barnabas Suebu, has taken a leading role in stopping deforestation. He has expressed great hopes, due to carbon credit trade, for the rainforest in Papua not to be devastated like it has been in the rest of Indonesia.

During the UN climate conference in Bali Mr Suebu announced that Papua province will ban the export of raw timber and crude palm oil (CPO), which must first be processed into downstream products before they can be shipped out of the region.

The last word is not said by the regime in Jakarta, but Mr Suebu’s steps may at least catch the world’s eyes to the long neglected conflict in the Indonesian part of New Guinea.

An upcoming issue is how the rich world’s compensations for the protection of the tropical forests should be shared. Many want a piece of the cake – from big companies to governments as well as provincial and local actors.

The power of those involved differs in a striking way.

The Korowai people’s land is situated between the Eilanden River and the Dairam River in one of Papuas least explored areas. Suddenly, while sitting down to taking notes, three women appear, as from nowhere, in the dusk. Since a week we have been in the camp, situated several days’ marches from the nearest airstrip. The women tell us that until now they have only looked at us from a distance.

Our short meeting takes place in late 2007. A couple of weeks have passed since it was announced that Al Gore together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will receive the Nobel Peace prize.

The women look at us as if they were shy but at the same time curious. They tellus , through an interpreter, that it is the first time that they meet white people.

“We were afraid of coming here earlier,” the oldest of the women remarks.

All the three of them are married, two of them mothers. I calculate that their ages are between 15 and 30 years. None of them have visited Yaniruma or any of the other small villages along the Dairam River. They have not even seen the river, situated less than ten kilometres away. The women have lived their lives on the limited area of their clan. The land behind is an unknown world, a world in front of several crucial crossroads.

Our meeting only lasted a few minutes, but we briefly discuss thousands of years of “development”. The rich consuming world, has met a more moderate world.

We have the time to exchange cordial smiles. Then the women chose to leave us, almost as suddenly as they appeared.

Once again they are as if swallowed up by the jungle.

• Thomas Petersson is a Swedish journalist and the author of two books about West Papua

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Facts/Western New Guinea

• New Guinea is the world’s second biggest island.

• The western part is since the 1960’s governed by Indonesia and was before that a Dutch colony.

• The political status of the area was decided in a very controversial referendum in 1969.

• A struggle for West Papuan independence has been going on since the mid 1960’s.

• In 2001 an Indonesian law was adopted that gave the western part extended autonomy.

• The freedom to travel for foreign journalists is highly restricted in the area for political reasons.