Articles by mongabayauthor

HO CHI MINH CITY — Earlier this year, Vietnam’s prime minister called for a ban of the wildlife trade in the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several months…

In late July, a high-speed chase stirred the waters northeast of Indonesia’s Natuna Islands, as patrol officers pursued a Vietnamese vessel suspected of illegal fishing. Having fled when authorities approached…

About 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Darwin and 14 km (9 mi) northeast of the town of Batchelor lies Woodcutters, an open-cut lead and zinc mine that shut in…

Dealing with climate change should be a no-brainer, right? To paraphrase Greta Thunberg, the science is done and only denial, ignorance and inaction remain. Or is that really all? We…

The use of coal as an energy source is steadily declining in the U.S. and Europe, but coal mining and the construction of coal-fired power plants continues across South and…

Your mental image of a fisherman is probably just that: a man. But women around the world are also key players in the fishing industry, catching fish on the open…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Paskalina called to me by waving her hand and asked me to come to her house in a whisper. It was my…

One day around 2010, Agustinus Tomba and his neighbors heard the sound of heavy machinery in their ancestral forest, in the Indonesian province of Papua. When they went to see…

The article was co-published with The Gecko Project. A decade ago, the Indonesian government began to heavily promote large-scale plantation developments in Papua province, a region of savannahs and rich…

Throughout the waters surrounding Indonesia, a porous tubular creature sits fixed onto coral reefs, its plain appearance hiding a potentially lifesaving secret. Researchers recently found that this sponge produces a…

Captured in the wild in 1973, in the country then known as Burma, Thaung Sein Win has been ridden by various mahouts over the years, dragging thousands of freshly felled…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  This post details the analysis we carried out to estimate the revenues generated by the Korindo Group from harvesting timber as it…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Part 1: ‘Maybe they didn’t expect us to find it’ In April 2019, an Indonesian delegate stepped onto the stage at a…

Dean Cycon spoke recently to students at Harvard Business School. A student asked him what his profit margin was at Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee, a company he founded in 1993…

JAKARTA — As Indonesia ramps up its mining sector to feed the world’s hunger for zero-emission vehicles, it is faced with a problem: what to do with all the waste.…

A little-known provision in a sweeping deregulation package now before the Indonesian parliament could make it easier for plantation firms to preserve forests within the areas they have been licensed…

Thousands of workers at the world’s largest copper and gold mine, run by U.S.-based Freeport McMoRan in the Indonesian province of Papua, have been instructed to remain on the company’s…

There is a saying in Malaysia, “Kais pagi, makan pagi. Kais petang, makan petang.” Loosely translated, it means, “What you scrape together in the morning is just enough for the…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Images by Nanang Sujana. When the people of Aru discovered that most of the land in their islands was to be converted…

AMBON, Indonesia — Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry has charged a director of a plantation firm on the eastern Indonesian island of Seram with illegal logging in a dispute…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. KOKOE, Indonesia — For years, this eastern Indonesian village of fishermen and seaweed farmers simmered with anger over the pollution of its…

GENERAL NAKAR, Philippines — Lucio Tena, 64, has been growing coconuts on his 20-hectare (49-acre) farm in General Nakar, on the east coast of the Philippine island of Luzon, for…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. A new company has begun clearing rainforest in an area of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province earmarked to become the world’s largest oil…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. In late 2013, during a hearing convened by the local legislature of Indonesia’s Maluku province, a…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. When the politician in charge of Indonesia’s Aru Islands signed permits for a vast sugar plantation,…

[UPDATE] 1/31/2020 - Philip Jacobson was deported from Indonesia today, with the original charge against him dismissed. Read more here.  Philip Jacobson, an award-winning editor for the environmental science news outlet…

In myths and carvings, sea turtles are reverent creatures, carrying wisdom and worlds on their backs. In Hindu cosmology, the earth is supported by four elephants on the back of…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. When Indonesian government officials received a credible allegation that the permits underpinning a giant oil palm plantation project in Papua province had…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Indonesian government officials have alleged that permits underpinning a multi-billion dollar plantation project in Papua province were falsified, leading to the criminal…

TANGKENO, Indonesia — Teenagers pound cowhide drums to dancers weaving their feet between bamboo stalks on this stage beneath the stars. It’s the island of Kabaena’s annual indigenous culture festival,…