JAKARTA — Indonesia is experiencing a resurgence in forest clearance due to the expansion of pulpwood and oil palm plantations, reversing years of declining deforestation associated with these two industries.…
JAKARTA — Deforestation for oil palm plantations continues unabated at the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, likely driven by new processing mills that in turn may ultimately…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Emergency workers and community firefighters battled isolated fires in Sumatra’s Riau province in late February as the onset of the region’s first dry season of 2024 sparked…
JAKARTA — Deforestation by the palm oil industry in Indonesia increased in 2023 for the second year in a row, bucking a decade of gradual decline, according to an analysis…
JAKARTA — Fires razed nearly 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) of lands and forests in Indonesia in 2023, as the country suffered from unusually scorching weather due to El…
JAKARTA — After years of declining deforestation, forest loss caused by Indonesia’s pulp sector is on the rise again, showing a fivefold increase in 2022 compared with 2017 levels, a…
LIMBUNG, Indonesia — Sarijan struggled to understand why they had come to arrest him. His mother tongue was Javanese, and he could parse only bits and pieces of Indonesian as…
LIMBUNG, Indonesia — Tall brush has taken over the land that Sarijan farmed for decades here on the island of Borneo. At the height of Indonesia’s 2019 wildfire crisis, the…
The Indigenous residents of the highlands of southeastern Angola have long lived there with a light touch. Ironically, with the end of the country’s civil war and the slow return…
JAKARTA — A palm oil company in Indonesia has finally started paying off a $23 million fine for burning an important Sumatran orangutan habitat more than a decade ago, highlighting…
JAKARTA — Indonesian environmental activist Gita Syahrani, who has worked for years to push local governments to adopt sustainable economic policies, has been named a recipient of this year’s multimillion-dollar…
A strange fire on the top of a unique geological formation in Venezuela has baffled scientists, park guards and local community leaders, who have never seen a fire in the…
JAKARTA — A decade after Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, launched its landmark no-deforestation policy, the company continues to clear forests to feed…
PANGKALANBUN, Indonesia — An employee of a palm oil company sanctioned by Indonesia’s Supreme Court in July over wildfires was killed in late September while fighting a major fire in…
BALIKPAPAN, Indonesia — The deforestation rate has surged in a key habitat for critically endangered orangutans in Indonesian Borneo, with an area of forest 40 times the size of New…
A senior member of Indonesia’s parliament on Oct. 10 called for tougher police action against companies responsible for land fires, as air pollution continued to shutter schools and sicken thousands…
JAKARTA — Swaths of tropical peatland that were supposed to have been restored and protected from burning are among the fire-hit areas in Indonesia’s ongoing dry season, raising questions about…
New acute respiratory infections in Indonesia’s Palembang city, on the island of Sumatra, are on track to surpass the total number recorded there in 2022, as firefighters scramble to confront…
JAKARTA — Experts have slammed a court ruling that significantly slashes the fines imposed on Indonesian palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi, even as it increased his jail sentence, in the…
With an area covering 125.76 million hectares, Indonesia's forests, which are home to 17% of the global wildlife population, constitute the world's third largest rainforest ecosystem and hold the key…
JAKARTA — Despite various commitments from global brands and the government to protect Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, home to some of the rarest species on Earth, development of new palm oil…
JAKARTA — Parts of Indonesia are covered with toxic air pollutants from burning lands and forests as this year’s fire season is intensifying amid the El Niño weather phenomenon, which brings drier…
JAKARTA — A new analysis has found a Switzerland-sized area of tropical peatland in Indonesia is at high risk of fire. More than half of the 3.8 million hectares (9.4…
MENDAHARA ULU, Indonesia — At the end of 2018, three communities in this subdistrict on the island of Sumatra were given rights to manage their local peatland by Indonesian President…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a $61 million fine against an oil palm company over massive fires on its plantation that razed an area seven times the size…
Editor's note: Mongabay has withdrawn this article from publication. On July 6, Mongabay published a news article based on a scientific journal article entitled "Prioritization of peatland restoration and conservation…
When battling to protect Indonesia's peatlands during wildfire crises in 2015 and 2019, most volunteer firefighters confronted the infernos with a dire shortage of equipment and technological resources. For community…
JAKARTA — Most peatlands in Indonesia that need protection are currently not protected, a new study has found. It identifies 5.65 million hectares (13.96 million acres) of peatlands — an…
JAKARTA — When Indonesia embarked on its Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s, it cleared vast swaths of forest for farmland, mostly in the peatlands of Borneo — only to…
The Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest rainforest at a staggering 178 million hectares (just under 440 million acres). It is also one of the biggest carbon sinks on the…