Money Can Grow On Trees

FROM a helicopter, East Kalimantan, a province in the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, presents a dreary view. Where little over a decade ago rainforest transpired under a vaporous haze, the ground has been cleared, raked and gouged. Every few minutes, a black smudge, smattered with muddy puddles, denotes a coalmine. Angular plantations, 10km and more across, are studded with dark green oil palms. Tin roofs glitter on the shacks of loggers, miners and planters, each with a smallholding hacked out around it. Just a few straggly patches of forest remain, with greying logs scattered at their edges.
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