Articles by Hans Nicholas Jong

JAKARTA — Darwan Ali, an Indonesian politician at the center of a palm oil licensing scandal and charged in a separate corruption case, died on Nov. 18 before he could…

JAKARTA — Indonesian forensics expert Bambang Hero Saharjo has been awarded a top environmental prize for his work in delivering justice against oil palm plantations accused of allowing fires on…

JAKARTA — The Forest Stewardship Council has released a batch of heavily redacted reports into its probe of violations by a palm oil company operating in Indonesia, after it was…

JAKARTA — The makers of Oreo cookies and KitKat chocolate bars are among the companies getting some of their palm oil from producers linked to the fires that have razed…

JAKARTA — A year after the Indonesian government imposed a ban on issuing new licenses for oil palm plantations, the leading certification body for sustainable sourcing of the crop has…

BENGKULU, Indonesia — Hearings in a lawsuit filed by residents over a newly built Chinese-funded coal-fired power plant in Sumatra have revealed a litany of irregularities behind the permit that…

JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has ordered palm oil company PT Arjuna Utama Sawit to pay the equivalent of $18.6 million in fines and damages for fires on its…

JAKARTA — Fires in Indonesia have razed an area the size of Puerto Rico, following a sharp spike in burning in September. The fires this year, the worst since 2015,…

BRUSSELS — The European Parliament will proceed with phasing out palm oil-based biofuel by 2030 despite threats of retaliatory action by Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s biggest producers of the…

AMSTERDAM — Hemsi has been in jail three times since 2006 and filed pleas with 13 government institutions in Indonesia during that period — all in an effort to fight…

JAKARTA — At least three companies whose concessions were burned in the 2015 fires that razed huge swaths of forest in Indonesia are also caught up in this year’s fires,…

JAKARTA — Indonesian lawmakers have chosen not to pass a raft of controversial legislation that critics say would dismantle environmental and social protections, in the face of massive student-led protests.…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament is rushing to pass a controversial bill on coal and mineral mining before the current legislators’ term ends on Sept. 30, defying a massive public outcry…

JAKARTA — Laode Muhammad Syarif has been spearheading a critical war against corruption in Indonesia for the past four years. Since December 2015, he’s served as a leader of the…

JAKARTA — A severely injured and malnourished orangutan has been rescued from a plantation near a Sumatra forest where a hydropower project threatens the only known habitat of this particular…

JAKARTA — The Forest Stewardship Council, the world’s foremost body certifying the sustainable forestry industry, has delayed the publication of its findings into a palm oil company’s operations in Indonesia,…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s president has admitted negligence on the part of the government, as top officials engage in a blame game amid the worst spate of forest fires since 2015…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s environment minister risks undermining the country’s credibility if she continues denying, in the face of overwhelming data, that haze from Indonesian forest fires is affecting neighboring Malaysia…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has banned food labeled as being “palm oil-free,” in its latest push to protect the commodity against a growing consumer backlash. The Drug and Food…

JAKARTA — More than 80 percent of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of the crop, are operating in violation of numerous regulations, a government audit has…