How American recreational vehicles came to destroy orangutan habitat in Indonesia
An investigation by Mighty Earth
Ownership of recreational vehicles, commonly known as RVs, has significantly increased over the past 2 decades. The industry is worth $140 billion USD a year, with over 11 million RV owners in the United States alone.
What RV owners don’t know is that their vehicles could be built using plywood made from one of the worst recent cases of deforestation in Borneo, Indonesia. A recent New York Times piece investigates the case of the Mayawana Persada concession.
New York Times reporter in the field with Mighty Earth
New York Times reporter in the field with Mighty Earth
Mayawana Persada has cleared vast areas of carbon-rich peatland and orangutan habitat to make plywood that was shipped abroad to the United States and likely made its way into RVs made by Winnebago, Thor, and Forest River.
Photo from Winnebago
Photo from Winnebago
The meranti trees found in the Mayawana Persada concession are favored by the RV industry. According to industry insiders, the RV industry has been using meranti since the 1970s due its strength, flexibility and affordability.
Meranti, also commonly known as Lauan or Philippine mahogany, grows in tropical rainforests throughout Southeast Asia in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Imported plywood is the cheap and ready-to-use option for RV manufacturers. Meranti plywood can be cut thin, allowing it to bend to the shape of RV sidewalls.
With the meranti hidden from view, RV envelopes are typically made of thin sheets of meranti plywood with fiberglass on either side, and padded with insulation. The ceilings and floors can also be made with meranti plywood and covered with other plywood layers or laminates. Sometimes the interior fittings like cabinets are fabricated with meranti as well, with none of it visible on the exterior.
In an interview with Mighty Earth, one expert stated that an RV is essentially a “meranti box on wheels.”
A meranti tree in Indonesia
A meranti tree in Indonesia
A Notorious Deforester in Borneo
The Mayawana Persada concession in Borneo spans an area larger than Los Angeles, CA., totaling 138,710 ha (342,760 acres).
The concession includes carbon-rich peatlands that reach depths of 10 meters or more and intact rainforests home to critically endangered Bornean orangutans, and threatened species such as sun bears, white bearded gibbons, and helmeted hornbills. Officially, 65% of the concession is recognized as suitable rainforest habitat for orangutans. Researchers have also seen evidence of forest cats, identified by their pawprints.
Satellite imagery shows clearing in Mayawana Persada started in 2016. Between 2018 and 2022, an estimated ~19,649 ha of rainforest were cleared.
In 2023, the pace of clearing accelerated with an additional ~19,543 ha of rainforest cleared within the year - more clearing than the deforestation of the top ten timber and pulp and paper companies combined.
Alas Kusuma, a notorious deforester and last known owner of Mayawana Persada, was clearing the concession at a scale not seen in more than a decade. Beyond the scale of the deforestation, its speed was equally alarming with almost 5,000 ha (12,355 acres) destroyed in July 2023 alone.
In 2023 alone, nearly 20,000 hectares of rainforest were cleared in the Mayawana Persada Concession.
Mighty Earth Files FSC Complaint
The secretive Alas Kusuma group started in 1962 as a logging company and is now one of the largest holders of natural forestry logging concessions, timber plantation concessions and oil palm concessions in Indonesia. Alas Kusuma first received Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification in September 2007. According to the FSC, certification “ensures that products come from responsibly managed forests that provide environmental, social and economic benefits.” This certification appears on paper and wood products globally, and is used by consumers as an indicator of sustainability.
The Alas Kusuma group holds 318,900 hectares of logging concessions (namely PT Sari Bumi Kusuma and PT Suka Jaya Makmur) that were certified under the FSC Forest Management system. This land represented approximately 10% of the total FSC-certified forest area in Indonesia. Alas Kusuma also held chain of custody FSC certificates for PT Harjohn Timber. Until 2016, Alas Kusuma also held FSC certificates for PT Wanasokan Hasilindo. The Mayawana Persada concession was never FSC certified.
In August 2023, Mighty Earth filed a complaint against the Alas Kusuma Group with the FSC for violating its Policy of Association including the conversion of rainforests, peatlands and other High Conservation Value (HCV) areas to timber and oil palm plantations. In December 2023, the FSC accepted the complaint. Also in December of 2023, PT Harjohn Timber, an Alas Kusuma company, lost its FSC certification. The FSC complaint is still undergoing investigation The next step in this process is to explore whether alternative dispute resolution (ADR) measures, further investigations or a direct decision may be pursued. The complaint has yet to be resolved.
Hidden and Complex Ownership
Our research shows that between 2016 and 2022 the Alas Kusuma Group companies (PT Harjohn Timber, PT Sari Bumi Kusuma, PT Suka Jaya Makmur, PT Kusuma Alam Sari and PT Mayawana Persada) were all ultimately controlled by an elderly Chinese businessman known as ‘Suhadi’ (born 1926 in China) and his immediate family members: Amin Susanto (Suhadi’s son, born 1956), Iwan Susanto (Suhadi’s son, born 1959), Jeffrey Susanto (Suhadi’s grandson, born 1991) and Nani Susanto (assumed wife of Suhadi, born 1931). The company ownership profiles show that Suhadi and his family members named above are all registered at the same residential address in Jakarta.
Alas Kusuma Ownership Structure by Mighty Earth
Alas Kusuma Ownership Structure by Mighty Earth
In December of 2022, 50% of shares in Maywana Persada were sold to Green Ascend Sdn Bhd, owned by a shareholder domiciled in the British Virgin Islands called Green Ascend Group Limited. Alas Kusuma’s remaining shares in Mayawana Persada were then sold to Behai International Group in December of 2023, a company owned by Balaji Investment Group Holdings Ltd domiciled in the island of Samoa. Because both the British Virgin Islands and Samoa are secrecy jurisdictions, it is impossible to rule out that the Alas Kusuma group sold the company to its beneficial owners in an attempt to try and get out of the FSC complaint.
Mayawana Persada has been linked to Royal Golden Eagle (RGE), a $35 billion company dealing in pulp, paper, palm oil and other resources. RGE owns APRIL, which has plans to establish a large pulp mill in Kalimantan, which will further put pressure on nearby forests and communities. Regardless of ultimate control, Alas Kusuma is responsible for remediating the clearing that took place while the concession was under its control. The company is also responsible for addressing human rights violations, including land grabbing.
Buyers of Alas Kusuma’s Wood
Clean, Scalable, and Sustainable
Historically, many of Alas Kusuma’s customers were in Japan. A report by the NGO AidEnvironment states “Indonesian trade data over the first nine months of 2020 show that Alas Kusuma exported most of its plywood to the Japanese companies Sumitomo Forestry (10,500 tonnes) and ITOCHU Corporation (9,200 tonnes).” This trend is not surprising given the size of the Japanese economy, the fourth largest in the world, and its proximity to Indonesia.
Analysis by the NGOs Earthsight and Auriga and shared with Mighty Earth found that Japanese companies were not the only consumers of Alas Kusuma’s plywood. Meranti wood produced through the clearance of natural forest in the Mayawana Persada in West Kalimantan was shipped to Sumatra where it was processed into plywood by Indonesian timber company PT Asia Forestama Raya, and then shipped to a wood supplier in California called Transindo USA.
Google Earth imagery showing path of transport of wood (from Mayawana Persada in West Kalimantan to Asia Forestama Raya in Riau to Transindo USA in California).
Google Earth imagery showing path of transport of wood (from Mayawana Persada in West Kalimantan to Asia Forestama Raya in Riau to Transindo USA in California).
In 2022-2023, Transindo USA imported a total of 1,564 m3 of meranti plywood from PT Asia Forestama Raya in Sumatra, enough plywood to fill over 20 full-sized shipping containers. Forestama Raya has also been linked to RGE; a recent report from Greenpeace states that "A GPS tracker was placed on [a] consignment which was then tracked to plywood manufacturing company PT. Asia Forestama Raya." In 2022 and 2023 respectively, PT Asia Forestama Raya received 10,808 m3 and 13,423 m3 of timber derived from forest clearance in the Mayawana Persada concession. In 2023, more than 98% of PT Asia Forestama Raya’s supply of natural forest wood came from PT Mayawana Persada. This means that almost all imports of meranti plywood from PT Asia Forestama Raya during this period involved rainforest timber from PT Mayawana Persada.
The New York Times reports that Transindo USA, in turn, sells plywood to Patrick Industries, a major US RV parts manufacturer which supplies many of the best-known American RV brands including Winnebago, Thor Industries and Forest River Inc. Transindo's website states that they supply to the RV industry.
Supply chain analysis by Earthsight
Supply chain analysis by Earthsight
In an email to Earthsight, Transindo USA confirmed that PT Asia Forestama Raya is their supplier, but had no comment regarding PT Mayawana Persada. They stated that they do due diligence in line with regulations in place for importing materials into the US, including the Lacey Act.
Indigenous Rights Violations
Beyond the environmental damage, significant land conflicts surround the concession. Mayawana Persada has evicted forest-dwelling Indigenous Dayak communities from their land and burned the residents’ field huts, work equipment and tons of stored rice (see image on right from JATAN). The company has destroyed smallholder farmers’ rubber groves and sacred sites. Since the beginning of Mayawana's operations, flooding has continued to occur repeatedly and has become more widespread, not only inundating the company's operational area, but also encroaching on residential areas and fields owned by the local and Indigenous Dayak community around the company's concession. The company has used their influence to criminalize several community members who protested these actions.
Indigenous communities gather daily on the deforestation line to protect the bulldozers and the rainforests where they have lived for generations. They have powerfully stated: “We strongly reject the presence of PT Mayawana Persada in our forests and land. We demand them to immediately leave our ancestral land.” In May of 2023, communities in Borneo held a demonstration against Mayawana Persada’s land grabbing.
“We strongly reject the presence of PT Mayawana Persada in our forests and land. We demand them to immediately leave our ancestral land.”
A June 2023 report from JATAN outlines Indigenous rights violations surrounding the Mayawana Persada concession, documenting cases of social conflict, burning of huts, boundary disputes, protesting and clearing of forest and peatland. The report includes the following descriptions of conflict in Mayawana Persada (MP):
“The residents said that some MP security personnel held up knives. Several people were injured in the incident. A video showing a part of the clash is available to see on YouTube. Before and after the clash, there were two meetings held between residents of Community "L" and the company manager, "R", to resolve the dispute, but both meetings ended in a disagreement.”
“A freestanding mountain named Bukit Sabar Bubu, part of TCTP [Two Countries Twin Parks], has been traditionally managed as a sacred mountain that provides various blessings to the residents of Dusun Gensaok. However, just on the other side of the mountain is a vast MP concession…. What the residents fear more than anything else is destruction of their customary rights themselves by losing Bukit Sabar Bubu, which has been the foundation of their lives, beliefs, and culture for generations.”
Indigenous groups and NGOs, including JATAN, LinkAR Borneo, Pusaka and Satya Bumi have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of deforestation and community rights violations in the Mayawana Persada concession.
Image by Gopemba Belantara of Pondok set on fire
Image by Gopemba Belantara of Pondok set on fire
Image by Gopemba Belantara of boundary dispute between communities turned into violent conflict
Image by Gopemba Belantara of boundary dispute between communities turned into violent conflict
Image by JATAN of Pondok set on fire
Image by JATAN of Pondok set on fire
Image by JATAN of message board inside concession: "Life is conceived by adat, death is conceived by land"
Image by JATAN of message board inside concession: "Life is conceived by adat, death is conceived by land"
Indigenous Dayak communities calls to end deforestation of their sacred land. Video by Satya Bumi and Mighty Earth.
Indigenous Dayak communities calls to end deforestation of their sacred land. Video by Satya Bumi and Mighty Earth.
Inaction from the RV Industry
The International Wood Products Association (IWPA) supports imported plywood, particularly meranti which they prize because “lauan plywood provides the combination of strength, thin construction and lighter weight, all critical in RV construction.”
The RV industry has lobbied to reduce import tariffs on meranti plywood. In 2018, the RV Industry Association (RIVA) testified before a subcommittee of the US Trade Representative in support of a waiver on duties for tropical hardwood plywood from Indonesia. In their testimony, they emphasized that the RV industry is uniquely American and employs over 250,000 workers in Oregon, Michigan, California, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana (home to Elkhart, the hub of the RV industry). The testimony also argues that lauan, or meranti, is the only product that provides the flexibility and weight to build RV interiors. However, alternatives do exist, including Azdel, a composite panel meant to be used in place of meranti and extend the life of RVs.
In 2019, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) granted meranti plywood duty-free status. RIVA calculated this decision would save the $140 billion RV industry a mere $1 million per month. Ensuring lauan imports are duty-free remains the top priority of the RV industry, and was a major focus of their June 2024 advocacy day.
Today, Indonesian plywood is exempted from US tariffs.
Government & Private Sector Intervention
While the Indonesia government allowed wanton destruction of peatlands, orangutan habitat and Indigenous lands to go continue unchecked for years and years, the government finally acted thanks to sustained and organized civil society pressure. In March of 2024, Satya Bumi wrote a letter to Minister of Environment and Forestry Siti Nurbaya asking the ministry to intervene on the clearing of natural forests and peatlands in the Mayawana Persada concession. Also in March of 2024, the Indonesian government showed their willingness to intervene on the deforestation in Mayawana Persada with the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) issuing a stop work order.
The letter from MoEF states that Mayawana Persada is to stop all logging activities and instead focus on environmental restoration activities including planting on empty land and bushland. These demands are framed around implementing Indonesia’s climate commitments, specifically its enhanced Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) which includes restoring 2 million hectares of peatland and 12 million hectares of degraded land. In addition to Indonesia’s NDCs, the country also has set Forestry and Other Land Uses (FOLU) Net Sink 2030, meaning that the FOLU sector aims to reach negative emissions levels in 2030. To achieve FOLU Net Sink, MoEF is pushing to decrease deforestation and increase reforestation, in addition to maintaining valuable peatlands.
In June of 2024, Mighty Earth conducted analysis of any clearing since the letter from MoEF. Between late March and early April of 2024, approximately 96 ha of forest clearance, logging and infrastructure development occurred across 4 different areas of the Mayawana Persada concession (see image below).
Image by Mighty Earth of deforestation in Mayawana Persada concession
Image by Mighty Earth of deforestation in Mayawana Persada concession
In an October 2024 analysis, we identified additional limited deforestation [~6 ha occurring between June, July, August and September of 2024], but no obvious deforestation in any of the other areas. An additional 50 ha of land clearing activity had been picked in another area, but available data suggests this was an area already cleared between August 2021 and November 2021. This data indicates that, while it took some time for the stop work order to be implemented, it appears to be generally upheld.
Moving Forward
It’s an open question as to whether Mayawana Persada will continue to respect the government-issued stop work order and stop clearing for good. Even so, this letter serves as proof that the government has enormous sway over Indonesia’s rainforest and the climate. The Prabowo administration must harness its capacity to reverse deforestation and strengthen Indonesia’s role as a provider of sustainably produced products. Mighty Earth, in collaboration with groups working on this issue in Indonesia, will continue to monitor the satellite imagery to ensure the clearing in Mayawana Persada has indeed stopped.
In response to widespread clearing of rainforests and other critical habitats, as well as the violation of the rights of local communities, the RV industry must:
- Implement strong wood sourcing policies. Lowes’ wood sourcing policy may serve as a baseline example.
RV company policies should:
1) Prohibit the use of wood from deforestation or peatland;
2) Require wood to be independently certified as legal, well managed and deforestation-free*;
3) Demand traceability back to harvest site, checked by audits and scientific testing. The Indonesian government is incorporating traceability into its timber management systems which should, in theory, enable importers to establish where exactly wood came from and check against deforestation data;
4) Require annual publication of progress against the policy and implement strong due diligence measures;
5) Explore alternatives to unsustainable plywood.
* As a starting place, all wood used in RVs should be sourced from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified forest areas under its new, stricter EUDR-compliant standard. While Alas Kusuma (former owner of Mayawana Persada) held a number of FSC certificates during the time period in which much of the reported deforestation took place, Mayawana Persada itself was not FSC certified. Transindo USA (recipient of wood from Mayawana Persada) had FSC certification, but lost it. FSC forest certification will not address all sustainability issues, but could help ensure the RV industry is no longer linked to rampant deforestation.
Along with a coalition of Civil Society Organizations working alongside community members near the Mayawana Persada concession, we ask that Alas Kusuma:
- Provide restitution for community sacred lands impacted and remedy conflict.
- Restore areas of impacted forest, peatland and orangutan habitat. In addition, the peatland canals should immediately be dammed in the southern part of the concession.
- Disclose the ultimate beneficial owners of Green Ascend and Beihai International (two companies registered in secrecy jurisdictions that currently hold majority shares in Mayawana Persada)
- Ensure clearance of forest land, peatland and orangutan habitat does not resume
For RV owners, retailers, and shareholders in the industry, we recommend taking the following action:
- Reach out to RV manufacturers to demand stronger wood sourcing policies and truly sustainable supply chains for RV production
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