Certification News

JAKARTA — The Malaysian government has decided to allow the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to publish maps of corporate land concessions for Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak, in a bid…

The 2010s opened as a moment of optimism for tropical forests. Widely available satellite imagery via platforms like Google Earth brought new levels of accountability which, for the first time,…

JAKARTA — A year after the Indonesian government imposed a ban on issuing new licenses for oil palm plantations, the leading certification body for sustainable sourcing of the crop has…

This story was produced via a co-publishing partnership between Mongabay and Repórter Brasil and can be read in Portuguese here. Brazilian meatpacking giants JBS, Marfrig and Frigol bought cattle from ranches…

Since as far back as the early 1990s, Thailand has been the world’s largest exporter of natural rubber, responsible for as much as 35.1 percent of rubber exports in 2016.…

Korindo, one of the biggest palm oil companies operating in the Indonesian province of Papua, must “secure remedy” for the damage it has done there or else face expulsion from…

The fall of the Suharto regime and the beginning of the democratic or reformasi era in Indonesia coincided with a massive surge in deforestation. One of the central reasons for…

The homegrown banks that back the flood of soy into China have with little knowledge of the deforestation their funding is potentially supporting, according to the nonprofit CDP, an international…

Investments known as green bonds that are intended to slow climate change can finance the operation of tree plantations in ways that have few, if any, environmental benefits, according to…

Near the Arctic Circle in late summer 2011, I waited at a petrol station on the outskirts of a large tract of Sweden’s boreal forest. My Volvo had completely cooled…

Animals around the globe are losing ground to farming and ranching, and their numbers are dwindling at the hands of human hunters. But the question of where to direct precious…

JAKARTA — Indonesia is racing to certify its world-leading tuna fisheries as sustainable, drawn by the lucrative global market for eco-labeled seafood. The government has since 2014 rolled out a…

In the coming weeks and months, a number of Guatemalan palm oil producers are expecting to receive memberships in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) — a move that…

It was an ambitious project from the start: to capture the Congo Basin rainforest in the pages of a book. Stretching across an area larger than Saudi Arabia, the world’s…

2018 wasn't a great year for tropical rainforests, with major conservation setbacks in Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and the United States coming on top of back-to-back years of…

2018 was a difficult year for the world's tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn't cover everything, so if there…

A Christmas advertisement deemed too political to air in the U.K. but that has been viewed more than 70 million times online has rekindled the debate about how to save…

JAKARTA — The world’s leading certification body for ethically sourced palm oil has ordered a total ban on deforestation by its members, amid growing pressure from both companies and consumers.…

Gabon's President Ali Bongo announced on September 26, during a visit to a Rougier wood processing plant, that all forest concessions in Gabon will have to be certified with the…

On this episode, we look at research into an African bat that might be the key to controlling future Ebola outbreaks. Listen here:   Our guest is Sarah Olson, an…

Raid rescues 18 workers from Minas Gerais farm holding good practice seals. Starbucks denies buying beans there in recent years, though its certifier approved the farm.

As governors of tropical forest states and provinces descend upon San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit and the annual meeting of the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force,…

Logging to feed furniture factories in China, spurred by demand from the United States, is thinning the forests of Central Africa, recent research has found. Lead author Trevon Fuller, an…

In early 2018, the Africa branch of Rougier announced its bankruptcy. Founded in 1923, Rougier is one of the oldest and largest timber companies in Africa, present in five Congo…

Lax due diligence by European companies is driving the illegal harvest of timber in Ukraine, one of the largest suppliers to the continent, according to a report published July 14.…

A recent analysis of logging roads in Africa’s Congo Basin has revealed that timber concessions certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) lost more blocks of untouched forests than non-certified…

This commentary is a response to "Palm oil certification? No silver bullet, but essential for sustainability," an op-ed Mongabay published on May 25, 2018. Changing Markets Foundation’s recent report "The…

Leveraging the most comprehensive dataset ever compiled for the gorillas and chimpanzees that live in western Central Africa, scientists have concluded that there are more of the two subspecies than…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government aims to impose its homegrown sustainability standard for palm oil on all operators, but concerns persist over the readiness of the previously exempt small-scale farmers…

Both the RSPO and GVL have responded to this commentary. Click here to jump to GVL's response. Click here to jump to the RSPO's response. Below these is a response…