A few blocks off Jalan Kemang Raya, the main drag in Jakarta's trendy Kemang district, and a stone's throw from the shops of tailors, antique-furniture dealers and dog groomers, stand plush houses and villas with swimming pools in their back gardens. These homes are popular with expatriates but in one, the talk is not about international-school fees or family weekends in Bali, but about the causes of deforestation.
In the run-up to the next United Nations climate-change conference, which begins in Cancun, Mexico, tomorrow, Indonesia has become ground zero for the great palm-oil debate - a dispute over deforestation that's become increasingly nasty and is likely to feature prominently at the meeting.
Indonesia has some of the largest remaining rainforests and, from its Kemang office, Greenpeace is waging a bitter battle against the US$12 billion-a-year palm-oil industry.
'Our campaign is not an anti-palm-oil campaign; it's an anti-deforestation campaign,' says Bustar Maitar, lead forest campaigner for Greenpeace Indonesia. Even before the highly publicised Bali climate-change conference, in 2007, Maitar points out, 'we focused more on palm oil as a key driver of deforestation in Indonesia'.
Several kilometres away, in central Jakarta, on the upper floors of a tower in the Plaza BII complex, there's a group of people who don't see it that way. On the 28th, 29th and 30th floors lie the offices of Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (Smart).
Since December last year, Greenpeace has released a series of reports accusing Smart of mass environmental destruction in the course of expanding its production of palm oil. The allegations have related to the clearing of off-limit peat lands, which contain huge amounts of greenhouse-gas-emitting carbon, destroying the habitat of orangutans and other wildlife, and cutting down protected rainforest.
Smart has fought back, accusing the environmental group of unfair and vindictive targeting, and claims its own commitment to following Indonesian forestry laws and sustainable palm- oil farming is not being reported by the media.