Articles by Philip Jacobson

JAKARTA — In late September, international news outlets caught flak for their coverage of Indonesia’s largest mass protests since the 1998 uprising that led to the fall of the dictator…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  This month Mongabay and The Gecko Project published “Saving Aru,” an article chronicling how the people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands thwarted a…

TAPULAGA, Indonesia — Over the past several years, Bakring, 56, has bought more than 20 live sea turtles. According to the law, each of these transactions could earn him five…

KENDARI, Indonesia — A conflict between residents of a remote Indonesian island and a nickel-mining company trying to operate there has gained national attention. In September, the National Commission on…

CIBULAO, Indonesia — A light drizzle falls outside Kiryono's home as he peers at the thermostat on a coffee roaster. The 39-year-old's green robusta harvest absorbs the heat in the…

This story was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. I. The movement begins Late one rainy night in August 2013, a college student named Collin…

UPANG CERIA/GELEBAK DALAM, Indonesia — Boat drivers sometimes decide not to work when the smoke is thick on the Musi River out of fear of a dangerous collision. For the…

It was a sunny afternoon in Tobelo, a town on the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera, when I met the late Den Upa Rombelayuk, a Torajan woman from the neighboring…

TENGGULUN, Indonesia — Around 20 Acehnese men sit cross-legged while smoking clove cigarettes on the terrace of a simple wooden building in this village on the island of Sumatra. The…

PEKANBARU, Indonesia — September 16 was a happy day for Evan Zendrato and Lasma Yani Zega. The young couple gave birth to a boy weighing 2.8 kilograms (6.1 pounds). They…

SAMARINDA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s wildfire emergency has spread to the part of eastern Borneo where President Joko Widodo wants to relocate the nation’s capital. On Aug. 26, President Widodo announced…

PAREMAS, Indonesia — Harniati keeps her youngest daughter close as the pair walk along the footpath from this village to the southeast coast of Lombok Island. For years, the people…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Aceh is one of those destinations that glimmer chimerically on the horizon, alluring with its newness, but ever receding, ever retreating in memory with the passage…

This article was co-published with The Gecko Project.  When a string of palm oil companies arrived in the village of Anggai, in a heavily forested corner of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua…

ROKO-ROKO, Indonesia — Residents of this village on the island of Wawonii look like they’re preparing for a battle. Men with chainsaws guard four jerry-rigged huts they’ve built to protect…

KENDARI, Indonesia — Next year will mark the completion of a nearly mile-long bridge being built over this booming industrial city’s iconic bay, say government officials here. But researchers studying…

TAPUWATU, Indonesia — Muhammad Arfa says he thinks a miracle saved his home. A wave of mud that swept through this riverside village on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi when…

The coral reefs of the lesser Sunda-Banda seascape in southeastern Indonesia host some of the planet’s most biodiverse marine ecosystems, which remain relatively untouched even as overfishing ravages sea life…

Rainforest clearance during the month of May destroyed orangutan habitat near 144 different palm oil mills in Indonesia, according to a report by MapHubs, an open-data platform and technology company…

ARU ISLANDS, Indonesia — In one of this country’s most isolated places, Ipus Apalem believes he has finally found a way for his village of 400 to improve its lot.…