Articles by Philip Jacobson

JAMBI — A quintet of Jambi residents gathered one morning in May at the home of Leni Haini, an Indonesian environmental activist who last year received a prestigious award from…

TALANG PARIT, Indonesia — For more than two decades, the residents of this Indigenous community in Riau province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, have watched as their lakes dried…

A court in northern Thailand has agreed to hear a citizen-led lawsuit filed against the government for inaction to address air pollution that experts say reduces people’s life expectancy and…

SIBAGANDING, Indonesia — After Abdulrahman Manik's father passed away in 2019, the young man inherited a duty to protect wild monkeys here in the north of Sumatra Island. Years later,…

A renewable energy project that received millions of dollars in climate financing from the Indonesian government is bulldozing rainforest in the nation’s Papua province, according to a new article by…

A new study recommends returning oil palm biomass to planting areas to maintain soil health — specifically, by replenishing the soil with silicon. The research was published in April by…

PASURUAN, Indonesia — Indonesia is one of the world’s largest producers of food commodities, but until recently this archipelago of 270 million people produced relatively little avocado. Julianto Effendi is…

Indonesia’s biofuel program was supposed to be a boon for small farmers. But although the country’s biodiesel production has skyrocketed, many farmers complain that the program hasn’t benefited them. Farmers…

Smoke from the catastrophic 2019-20 Australian bushfires may have tipped the planet into a La Niña climate phenomenon lasting almost three years, according to new research published May 10 in…

JAKARTA — Indonesia has made strides in developing its plantation industry, catapulting the country into the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Its sprawling plantations produce more than half of…

JAMBI, Indonesia — The lunchtime rush is well underway as customers file into a lively Padang-style restaurant here in the city of Jambi on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island. A clutch of…

Across the Indonesian island of Java, suitable habitat for Javan leopards shrunk by more than 1,300 square kilometers, or 500 square miles, between 2000 and 2020. That’s according to a…

After four years of conservation action, the number of flying foxes — large bat species — flocking to the Indonesian island of Mantawalu Daka has grown from around 8,000 to…

“Please tell me how I can make companies obey the law,” the official said. He was exasperated by the companies whose oil palm plantations saturated the subdistrict he headed in…

JAKARTA — Funds from illegal logging, mining and fishing are flowing into election campaigns in Indonesia, authorities have revealed. The announcement by the national anti-money-laundering watchdog, known as the PPATK,…

In Sumatra, villagers occupied an oil palm plantation and set tires on fire; in the Bangka-Belitung Islands, they filled the local parliament building demanding action; in Borneo, paramilitary police were…

PALEMBANG, Indonesia — Lithan, 68, grew up eating fish caught from the rivers and freshwater swamps near his village in Ogan Ilir district, near the southern tip of the island…

(Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) In 2020, the Indonesian government set a goal of restoring 600,000 hectares, or nearly 1.5 million acres, of mangrove ecosystems by 2024. Progress toward that goal…

On his ninth birthday, Robertus Darren Radyan gave a present to each person who came to his party. Each guest got to take home a light-red flower pot that had…

As mass coral bleaching events grow in frequency and intensity, scientists are finding out more about how corals, which make up the physical foundation of reefs, respond during times of…

When the palm oil industry began growing rapidly in Indonesia in the 1980s, the government developed a scheme aimed at ensuring communities would benefit. To gain subsidized funding, companies routinely…

In 2009, a group of Indonesian researchers published a report on the vulnerability to climate change of the eastern Indonesian island of Lombok, home to about 4 million people. Their…

More than a third of all elasmobranch (shark and ray) species are at risk of extinction due to overfishing. Indonesia is both a hotspot of elasmobranch biodiversity and one of…

EAST TANJUNG JABUNG, Indonesia — Ambo Angke trudged through the cemetery knowing he had been right to worry. A high tide surge had inundated the resting place here on the…

EAST LUWU, Indonesia — Environmental journalists investigating the impact of nickel mining on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have won a freedom-of-information ruling against local authorities, whose inability to release…

Each year, the European Union imports an estimated 4,000 metric tons of frogs’ legs. That sum is the equivalent of around 200 million frogs killed to feed demand, the majority…

AMBON, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia’s Maluku province say they will establish new marine protected areas this year, following from five created last year alone, as part of wider efforts…

BATAM, Indonesia — “There’s no more fish,” says Abdul Ganip, holding up a mostly empty flask containing a few prawns. “It's a quiet catch.” For decades, the 57-year-old has lived…

PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Intensive efforts in recent years to prevent fires in Indonesia’s Riau province, the country’s perennial epicenter of forest and land fires, will be put to the test…

NGADA, Indonesia — Marselus Selu wanted to be a musician from an early age, but he didn’t have the money back then to buy a flute. Today, he’s a master…