Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
BANTAENG, Indonesia — Stepping into Mustajab Syahrir’s home in the village of Papan Loe feels like treading on a beach of fine sand. “What am I supposed to do?” Mustajab…
Articles by Eko Rusdianto
Sulawesi islanders grieve land lost to nickel mine
WAWONII ISLAND, Indonesia — The coconut palm has been a source of food and identity for centuries among the people of Wawonii Island. In the local language wawo means above…
Indonesian farmers refuse to budge for train line through karst landscape
MAROS, Indonesia — Santuwo straightens the crease in the sarong that he often wears while working in his rice field in the village of Salenrang, in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province.…
Architects bring bamboo revival to Indonesian village
TANETE, Indonesia — Aman Wijaya looks up at the roof made from a thousand bamboo stems. “At last this building is standing tall,” he says. “It’s an example to all…
Indigenous communities resisting dams in Indonesia claim they face repression, rights abuses
In October 2014, when developers entered Seko and Central Seko to begin preliminary work on a 480-megawatt hydroelectric dam, the communities living there say no one asked their permission. The…
In remote Indonesian villages, indigenous communities fight a hydropower dam
NORTH LUWU, Indonesia — Benyamin Langga invited me to walk with him along the rice field embankment, climbing up a hill and then down a steep slope. At 60 years…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Indigenous communities in Peru ‘living in fear’ due to deforestation, drug trafficking
- Indigenous community in Peru losing forests to timber, drug, land trafficking
- Bolivian protected areas hit hard by forest fires
- The protected area that isn’t: Bolivia’s Ñembi Guasu beset by fires, farms, roads
Oceans
- ‘It was a shark operation’: Q&A with Indonesian crew abused on Chinese shark-finning boat
- Fishers in Flores Sea opt to limit harvest of overexploited sea cucumbers
- As shark numbers plummet, nations seek ban on devastatingly effective gear
- Illegal bottom trawling widespread inside Mediterranean marine protected areas
Amazon Conservation
- To be effective, zero-deforestation pledges need a critical mass, study shows
- Indigenous youths lured by the illegal mines destroying their Amazon homeland
- U.N. report calls for the ban of mercury trade and its use in gold mining
- Following the impacts of palm oil alliance: Violated regulations and penalty proceedings
Land rights and extractives
- To replace Western food imports, Cameroon gives community lands to ‘no-name’ agro-industry
- Indigenous youths lured by the illegal mines destroying their Amazon homeland
- About 72% of gold miners poisoned with mercury at artisanal mining sites in Cameroon
- ‘We go in and take Indigenous lands back from cattle ranchers’: Q&A with activist Pablo Sibar
Endangered Environmentalists
- Worries and whispers in Vietnam’s NGO community after activist’s sentencing
- Scientists call for end to violence against Amazon communities, environmental defenders
- Indigenous advocates sense a legal landmark as a guardian’s killing heads to trial
- In Brazil, an Indigenous land defender’s unsolved killing is the deadly norm
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’
Conservation Effectiveness
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows
- ‘South Asia needs its own tiger plan’: Q&A with Nepal’s Maheshwar Dhakal
- Nepal was supposed to double its tiger population since 2010. It tripled it
- In prioritizing conservation, animal culture should be a factor, study says
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- Indonesia’s grand EV plans hinge on a ‘green’ industrial park that likely isn’t
- Java communities rally as clock ticks on cleanup of ‘world’s dirtiest river’
