Outside Southeast Asia, few people know of Palembang, a city on Sumatra, the sixth largest island in the world. A gloomy and immense city, with almost two million inhabitants, most of them living in cramped and squalid conditions.

The tropical River Musi bisects the city, a desperately polluted waterway, bordered by slums built on stilts and a few old colonial buildings.

Vessels of all types use the Musi, hauling everything that can be sold abroad or to the rest of Indonesia. The river is jammed with enormous barges filled with coal, oil tankers, makeshift boats carrying palm oil fruit bunches, as well as countless ships carrying timber.

Plunder is done openly; there is no attempt to conceal it.

Ms. Isna Wijayani, a Professor at Bina Darma University in Palembang, laments on the situation.

“There is no primary forest left in a wide area around Palembang,” she says. “However, illegal logging doesn’t get reported in the local media. It is because powerful forces, including police and the army (TNI) are involved or directly behind much of the illegal logging and other profitable commercial activities in South Sumatra.”

Bina Darma University invited me to speak on the manipulation of the Indonesian media by the West. I was asked to address some 100 selected students and lecturers from the region. What followed was an hour-long discussion, during which I clearly understood how little is known, even among the local students and teachers, about the dire environmental situation in their part of the world.

“We have no idea about the extent of deforestation around here,” explained Ms. Lina, a student.

Ms. Ayu Lexy, a graduate student, was somewhat more knowledgeable on the subject: “I think Donald Trump is crazy, claiming that there is no global warming. The effects of it are clearly felt here.”

Just as I had done several years ago, I rented a makeshift speedboat and instructed the captain to take me around the delta to Upang, a village more than one hour of literally ‘flying’ over the murky waters from Palembang.

There was the Pusri plant, producer of fertilizers, one of the largest in Southeast Asia, belching smoke and spewing an unbearable stench into the air. Right across the water, surrounded by slums, a wood-processing plant was emitting yet another very distinct odor. Local children were swimming nearby, clearly oblivious to health hazards.

Later, a former top executive of Pusri, Mr. Reza Esfan, confessed to me: “We create pollution, of course, although we try to minimize it. I can’t deny that unsavory odor is emitted… Obviously, Pusri’s mistake was that they didn’t purchase the land surrounding their plants. Now, if we have a leak, then the community sues us… ”

Naturally, not a word about the suffering of the communities…

At Kapitan village, several women were washing their clothes in the filthy river water, and then brushing their teeth in it.

“Why shouldn’t we be washing ourselves and brushing our teeth in clean water,” a village woman said. “We can’t spend our money on such luxuries! Anyway, the river water is free, and it is clean.”

As the woman spoke, a grotesquely swollen carcass of a dog passed slowly by in the water just a few meters away.