Watch: James Watt, the farmer who challenged a palm oil fiefdom

We met James Watt in his home village of Bangkal during the reporting of “The palm oil fiefdom,” in early 2017. Bangkal lies on the banks of Sembuluh, a sprawling lake in the heart of Seruyan district, in Indonesian Borneo. A few decades ago, Seruyan was a sea of rainforest. During the dictatorship of Suharto, like many areas in Borneo, it was heavily impacted by logging that thinned out the forest and made the soil prone to burning. From the early 2000s, it was afflicted by a new and different problem: oil palm plantations. In the early years of Indonesia’s transition to democracy, during which district chiefs, known as bupatis, assumed new and wide-ranging powers, farmers like James hoped the investors who flooded into Seruyan would be made to work in partnership with them. In fact, they were explicitly told this would be the case. But in Seruyan, under the control of bupati Darwan Ali, the farmers were cut out of the deal. James Watt at Lake Sembuluh. Photo by Leo Plunkett for The Gecko Project. As James told us, “All we got was oppression. Clearing our land, dumping waste in our rivers. We never imagined it would be like this.” As the companies pushed into the villagers’ land, Darwan didn’t lift a finger. “It was always empty promises with him. I think he saw being bupati as his chance to make as much money as possible.” As shown by our investigation, produced in collaboration with The Gecko Project, Darwan…

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