WALHI

Learning from the failed reclamation on Serangan Island and drawing on the extensive experience and knowledge of environmental and advocacy NGOs such as WALHI and Conservation International, and academic research, Forbali designed a leaflet containing thirteen reasons to reject reclamation in 2013.

"Plantation companies promise to build everything, but too often they build nothing," says Arie Rompas, a campaigner with Walhi's Central Kalimantan branch.

(11) See for example WALHI's position expressed in Mann and Surya (2009).

It seems the petition was written not only to seek support amongst other customary leaders against the company, but also that it was meant to project the company in a bad light especially to others, such as the environmental NGOs Walhi. In this sense, the petition was used to put pressure on the company without aiming to address the injustices to a particular dispute resolution forum.

Several NGOs, such as Sawit Watch, the Indonesian Environmental Forum (WALHI), Titian Foundation and West Kalimantan Alliance for the Indigenous People (AMAN Kalbar) form the Coalition for Danau Sentarum's Redemption.

Berry Nahdian Furqon, the executive director of WALHI, a leading environmental agency reported six politicians and officials to the police for suspected negligence, starting with Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto.

WALHI believed that the disaster happened as a result of Lapindo's failure to install a casing around the well to the levels obliged by Indonesian regulations of mining (Pohl, 2007, p.

As the major Indonesian environmental NGO WALHI (Friends of the Earth Indonesia) argues: illegal logging is connected to, and dependent upon, "legal logging." This is so because of the misuse of the permits which are issued by government officers, bribed police and military officers, usually with support of economically and politically powerful interests.

Subsequent charges of pollution brought an environmental group Walhi into the picture along with police who claimed to have found pollution in the bay.

Beginning in the 1980s, Indonesian environmental groups such as WALHI, Indonesia's largest umbrella environmental organization, were able to use the seeming neutrality of scientific environmentalism to develop a politically focused environmental-justice agenda.

Most of them were militia groups allied with the Indonesian military, but the decree also included the Aceh chapter of the respected environmental group Walhi and the Aceh Referendum Information Center, which has denounced aspects of the governance bill.

As Farah Sofa, the deputy director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), said in reference to the government's investigation, "We think it is a waste of time.