Multiple versions of a sweeping deregulation law passed in Indonesia last week contain substantial differences affecting the nation’s plantation sector, despite assurances from lawmakers that any changes to the text…
Update: A new version of the deregulation law containing substantial changes began to circulate on Oct. 12. Mongabay covered it here. A wide-ranging deregulation bill passed in Indonesia this week…
HO CHI MINH CITY — Earlier this year, Vietnam’s prime minister called for a ban of the wildlife trade in the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several months…
In late July, a high-speed chase stirred the waters northeast of Indonesia’s Natuna Islands, as patrol officers pursued a Vietnamese vessel suspected of illegal fishing. Having fled when authorities approached…
SAMARINDA, Indonesia — On Sept. 6, five teenagers went together to a man-made lake in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, carved out of a coal-mining pit that had been abandoned and…
JAKARTA — A new paper calls for greater coordination by governments around the world to tackle the persistent problem of organized crime in the fisheries industry impacting the wider economy.…
This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the fifth installment of a five-part series on illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…
A gunshot ended the life of Indigenous leader Arbildo Meléndez Grandes in Peru. On a Sunday in early April this year, he went hunting and fishing for his family and…
This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the fourth installment of a five-part series on illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…
This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the third installment of a five-part series on illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…
This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the second installment of a five-part series on illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…
One day around 2010, Agustinus Tomba and his neighbors heard the sound of heavy machinery in their ancestral forest, in the Indonesian province of Papua. When they went to see…
JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia plan to call pulp and paper executives to testify about a recent case in which an Indigenous farmer was jailed for cutting down pulpwood trees…
JAKARTA — Activists have called on the Indonesian authorities to probe the finances of the Korindo Group, a privately owned conglomerate, in the wake of an investigation that exposed a $22…
The fishing boat flew a Singaporean flag as it sailed toward Batam Island in Indonesia. But when Indonesian Navy officers intercepted the vessel and boarded it in February 2018, they…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Part 1: ‘Maybe they didn’t expect us to find it’ In April 2019, an Indonesian delegate stepped onto the stage at a…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced two indigenous farmers to eight and 10 months in prison respectively for stealing oil palm fruit from a plantation company that is…
JAKARTA — Two people have died in a series of land disputes between major companies and rural communities in Indonesia. Activists have denounced the escalation in the conflicts, saying businesses…
AMBON, Indonesia — Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry has charged a director of a plantation firm on the eastern Indonesian island of Seram with illegal logging in a dispute…
Colombia is the world’s second-most biodiverse country after Brazil. Central Colombia’s Macarena region, in particular, is important for biodiversity as it serves as a transition zone between three major biomes:…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. A new company has begun clearing rainforest in an area of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province earmarked to become the world’s largest oil…
A major operation across five regions of Peru has seen 47 prosecutors and 1,200 police officers arrest 18 people who, according to Peruvian authorities, were members of a criminal organization…
JAKARTA — Police in Indonesia have jailed three indigenous farmers for allegedly stealing oil palm fruit from a plantation company that is itself accused of stealing their land. Police in…
JAKARTA — A sweeping package of deregulation aimed at boosting Indonesia’s economy will be far more harmful than initially feared as it threatens to revive the centralized power structure of…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. In late 2013, during a hearing convened by the local legislature of Indonesia’s Maluku province, a…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. When the politician in charge of Indonesia’s Aru Islands signed permits for a vast sugar plantation,…
In myths and carvings, sea turtles are reverent creatures, carrying wisdom and worlds on their backs. In Hindu cosmology, the earth is supported by four elephants on the back of…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. When Indonesian government officials received a credible allegation that the permits underpinning a giant oil palm plantation project in Papua province had…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Indonesian government officials have alleged that permits underpinning a multi-billion dollar plantation project in Papua province were falsified, leading to the criminal…
There may be a glimmer of hope for the extremely rare vaquita porpoise, the world’s smallest cetacean, a group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. The vaquita is also the…
