JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has abandoned a plan to contract out long-term fishing rights to companies, following intense criticism from small-scale fishers and experts that the move would effectively…
KATHMANDU — When Nepal's Supreme Court recently canceled government plans to build an international airport in Nijhgad in the country's south, the project's environmental impact assessment report, or EIA, was…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Nestled between a vast palm oil plantation and the Sumatran rainforest is Alue Buloh, a hamlet in Cot Girek village, North Aceh district. To reach it,…
PHNOM TAMAO, Cambodia — Prime Minister Hun Sen has stepped in to cancel all development projects slated for the Phnom Tamao forest, near the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, following…
JAKARTA — Seagrass meadows are the fishing grounds of choice for many households in four Indo-Pacific countries, according to a new study that calls for better-informed management of these often-overlooked…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Saleh Kadri, a young farmer from Leubok Pusaka village in North Aceh district, was on his way to his plantation when he spotted eight elephants on…
KATHMANDU – The Sherpa Indigenous community in Nepal has lived in the lap of the world’s tallest mountains for centuries. Ever since Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand climber…
DHAKA, Bangladesh — In the early hours of July 19, a herd of wild elephants came down from the hills to a crop field located in Rangunia, in Bangladesh’s Chattogram…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Junaidi, the leader of an elephant patrol team in this Sumatran village, has a daunting task. The large animals, with their forest habitat destroyed, often enter…
KATHMANDU — Thousands of farmers in Nepal's fertile southern plains, the country’s rice bowl, face a double whammy of a fertilizer shortage and inadequate monsoon rains. This is likely to…
Ultra-strong fibers, multi-legged robots, pain relievers — all are human innovations inspired by spiders. Now, conservationists in Indonesia are rehabilitating coral reefs using what’s known as the coral spider technique.…
JAKARTA — Fires are flaring up in Indonesia’s Riau province, the perennial epicenter of the burning season in Sumatra, as the dry season sets in. At the end of March,…
Nestled in a verdant valley in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, about a four-hour drive southwest of Bengaluru, the agroecology learning center Amrita Bhoomi is one of dozens of…
DHAKA — Bangladesh is looking to recharge its aquifers with storm water, reclaimed water, desalinated water and potable water, in an effort to ward off the depletion of this precious…
Malaysian timber giant Samling has removed logging equipment from a long-disputed area in Sarawak state’s Upper Baram Forest Area, in what the Penan Indigenous community is calling a win for…
In deep waters off the coast of Japan, a hermit crab is wearing haute couture. On its shell is the new-to-science anemone species Stylobates calcifer, named after the fire demon…
Indonesia’s planned new capital city on the island of Borneo, Nusantara, is being touted by the government as a "green" city. However, its construction may lead to a surge in…
At 49, Hamid Ali has moved house at least eight times in his life. The reason each time has been the same: the erosion of the char lands, or river…
BENGKALIS, Indonesia — On the east coast of the island of Sumatra lies a grove of timber, fruit and native trees known as the Marsawa Peat Arboretum. This shady grove,…
Chocolate is one of the world’s greatest little pleasures. But its primary ingredients — cocoa, palm oil and soy — all contribute to global deforestation. The industry is working now to make chocolate more sustainable.
JAKARTA — More than 100 Indigenous people in Indonesia’s Papua region are calling on the local government to revoke all the permits of a palm oil company that’s continuing to…
KATHMANDU — The number of tigers in Nepal has nearly tripled over the past 12 years, officials announced July 29, on the occasion of International Tiger Day. The figure of…
In 2010, in the Lunar Year of the Tiger, the governments of 13 Tiger Range Countries met in St Petersburg, Russia and agreed to work together to double global tiger…
Spanning more than 1,600 square kilometers (620 square miles), the Ulu Muda rainforest is one of the last large, continuous tracts of forest in the Malay Peninsula, and provides vital…
PREK TABAEK, Cambodia — The roots of the forests surrounding Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake spend half the year submerged in water. But in the past five years, they’ve been catching…
JAKARTA — In May, Indonesians breathed a sigh of relief when President Joko Widodo announced that masks were no longer required to be worn outdoors as a guard against COVID-19.…
JAKARTA — Habitat for up to a quarter of the known population of Bornean orangutans will disappear across the island of Borneo under predicted patterns of deforestation over the next…
In the Indonesian village of Kun-kun, where illegal loggers once cut mangroves for timber, a new livelihood has come to the fore: crab fishing. “Without the mangroves, the crabs cannot…
JAKARTA — A part of the only forest on Earth where rhinos, tigers, orangutans and elephants coexist is seeing a resumption of deforestation for an oil palm concession. Indonesian company…
KATHMANDU — As the world prepares to mark International Tiger Day on July 29, officials in Nepal are putting the finishing touches on a report that’s expected to show a…
