JAKARTA — The coal industry in Indonesia, one of the world’s top exporters of the fossil fuel, has laid waste to large swaths of forest, polluted waterways, and disenfranchised local…
For nearly a decade now, Vietnam has made “payment for forest ecosystem services” its key strategy for protecting forests and improving the lives of poor rural communities. Now, it plans…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has for the first time prioritized passing new legislation on renewable energy, and activists have seized the opportunity to call for a shift away from coal.…
SAMARINDA, Indonesia — Major flooding from just a few hours of heavy rain in Samarinda, Indonesia’s coal-mining capital, has underscored the severity of the environmental degradation being carried out by…
Reporting on environmental issues is not easy. It can mean great physical exertion under difficult conditions, painstakingly long investigative processes involving mountains of paperwork, stonewalling — or worse — from…
JAKARTA — Indigenous activists in Indonesian Borneo have scored a big win in a lawsuit against a coal mining firm that sought to operate on their land. After a two-year…
JAKARTA — Activists say they’ve identified the business tycoons who control land in the area slated for Indonesia’s new capital and who could potentially benefit from the $33.5 billion mega…
In Indonesia, a major producer and consumer of coal, politicians often argue that continued reliance on the highly polluting fossil fuel remains an economic necessity. Challenging this conventional wisdom, a…
SAMARINDA, Indonesia — Two abandoned open-pit coal mines, each of which has claimed the life of a child in Indonesia’s Eastern Kalimantan province, have been earmarked for restoration efforts led…
This story was co-published with The Gecko Project. When Rita Widyasari, the former head of Kutai Kartanegara district in Indonesian Borneo, was sentenced to 10 years in prison last year…
For two decades or more, alarms have been sounding for the Mekong Delta. It's being hammered by climate change, by a proliferation of upstream dams, by unsustainable and inappropriate farming…
JAKARTA — Indonesia must stop building new coal-fired power plants by 2020 if it wants to do its part to cap global warming under the targets of the Paris climate…
JAKARTA — A quick scan of social media trending topics in Southeast Asia reveals K-pop to be the flavor of the moment. But the highly polished and cannily choreographed girl…
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Nearly a year and a half ago, a barge hit by high waves spilled an estimated 7,000 tonnes coal on a beach in Sumatra popular with…
As the forests of South Kalimantan province were whittled away by extractive industries, just one district in this corner of Indonesian Borneo remained free of both mining and oil palm…
BENGKULU, Indonesia — Hearings in a lawsuit filed by residents over a newly built Chinese-funded coal-fired power plant in Sumatra have revealed a litany of irregularities behind the permit that…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — The Pangkalan Kapas forest on the eastern coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island is central to the livelihoods of local villagers and the survival of the endangered wildlife…
MANILA — In 1996, when a community in the Philippine municipality of Pagbilao agreed to house a coal power plant a few hours’ drive from Manila, the residents had high…
CILACAP, Indonesia — Hundreds of people in this city in central Java staged a protest this week demanding a meaningful solution to a long-running air pollution problem caused by ash…
MINDANAO, Philippines — In September 2006, Victor Danyan looked out over the corporate coffee plantation that had taken over his tribe’s land in the village of Ned, on the southern…
