From the corporate perspective it may appear as if producers are trapped in a conflict with a swarm of Lilliputian detractors – well-intentioned but misguided, energetic young people, from countless non- governmental organisations. These fly para-gliders and helicopters over plantations on reconnaissance missions, build dams to prevent effective soil drainage, and foment resentment towards business among local communities, international agencies and eventually the companies own customers and host governments. Some firms, seeking to prove otherwise, have sought to be seen to be acting in a more responsible fashion. They have hired security contractors to prevent illicit tree-felling on their concessions. They have supported schemes to tag wood. They have established schools and clinics to ensure local communities benefit from their activities. They have even handed-over land to establish nature reserves.

But in reality this is to view the situation upside-down. Eco-warriors are a manifestation of the problem, not the problem itself. Their tactics, to presume guilt by documentation rather than by factual evidence, first emerged elsewhere. And far from being small and disconnected, they are simply the visible expression of a far more coherent, but invisible force.

Negative Narratives

Among world leaders, confidence in the economic system today is threadbare. In addition to declining political support and legitimacy, contemporary elites in the West lack a sense of greater purpose through which to steer world affairs. The protestors in Indonesia and elsewhere simply reflect this inner loss of certainty. They are indulged to a remarkable extent by multi-nationals and governments, keen to latch on to anything that appears to offer popular engagement.

Over the last few decades a negative narrative has emerged in the West that presents ambition as arrogant, development as dangerous and success as selfish. The instigators of this are not the youthful idealists establishing camps in the forest, but disillusioned politicians and officials. They have been supported by an army of writers, academics and social commentators, who seem determined to show that things are always getting worse and that the cause, as well as the victim of this, is human-action itself.

The consequence has been the creation of a cultural environment within which social advancement is viewed with suspicion. Singapore itself has been on the receiving end of this through the recent publication of a report purporting to show it as the worst environmental offender in the world. In reality, this was for having the temerity to develop a city at the equator on limited land.

Western Jihadists

Far from being involved in a David versus Goliath-like struggle against ‘big business’, organisations such as Friends of the Earth International are huge concerns in their own right. They do not even receive the lion’s share of their income from public donations, as some presume. A cursory look at their accounts reveals them to obtain well-over 80% of their funding from foundations and governments.

For instance, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs funds Hivos – a Netherlands-based civil society group with direct links to campaigns in Indonesia – for up to two-thirds of its annual !100m (S$200m) budget. In its turn, Hivos is listed as a partner to Aidenvironment who, through a former associate of Friends of the Earth, conducted the supposedly independent review of operations in Indonesia that led Unilever to pull-out.

These groups also send teams of Western activists in search of purpose and an identity to discover themselves in the jungles of Southeast Asia. There they interact with local groups – or ‘indigenous people’ as the campaigners patronisingly call them – encouraging these to share their concerns, according to strategies they learnt back home, and with a view to enhancing their credibility.