Like virtually everything in 2020, COVID-19 defined the year for tropical rainforests. Conservation was particularly hard hit in tropical countries.
JAKARTA — Paying villages in Indonesia to ensure they don’t burn their land for farming appears to have little to no effect on reducing fires, researchers have found. The implication…
JAKARTA — Palm oil giant Korindo Group is alleged to have set fires to clear rainforest in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua, a practice that is banned by law. The…
JAKARTA — Activists have slammed one of the world’s biggest pulp and paper companies for clearing peatland in Indonesia despite its zero-deforestation pledge. They say Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings…
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…
JAKARTA — A U.N. fund has approved a $103.8 million payment to Indonesia for preventing deforestation-based carbon emissions — its biggest payout yet, and one that critics say can’t be…
JAKARTA — Suppliers to Indonesia’s biggest producer of pulpwood for paper cleared an area of carbon-rich peatland 10 times the size of New York City’s Central Park, in possible violation…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is pushing ahead with a plan to grow crops on a Puerto Rico-sized area of peatlands, despite criticism from experts and a history of similar…
JAKARTA — Milder weather is expected to bring about a less severe forest fire season across Indonesia this year compared to 2019. But cutbacks to fire-prevention measures as a result…
JAKARTA — Palm oil from a company that burned a pristine orangutan habitat in Sumatra has entered the global market due to an oversight, possibly ending up in products made…
The COVID-19 pandemic and the arrival of fire season in two of the world’s major rainforests are on a collision course, scientists and public health researchers say, and the results…
JAKARTA — Indonesia is set to receive $56.15 million from Norway, the first payment based on the results of the Southeast Asian country’s efforts to preserve its vast tropical rainforests…
JAKARTA — Nyoman Suryadiputra says he still vividly remembers the time he traveled deep into the heart of the lush tropical peat forests of Indonesian Borneo in 1996 to document…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we look at what’s driving the intense fire seasons we’ve seen around the world in recent years, what can we expect from the…
JAKARTA — Activists in Indonesia have filed a legal challenge to stop legislation that would dismantle environmental protections in favor of facilitating business. A coalition of civil society groups filed…
Dr. Kinari Webb believes this because she has witnessed it — up close: Amid this global pandemic, the health of the planet is intricately connected to public health around the…
JAKARTA — Forest fires are starting to break out in parts of Indonesia as the dry season gets underway, threatening to compound respiratory illnesses amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Fires have…
JAKARTA — Indonesia has little wiggle room to keep clearing its forests if it’s to meet its emissions reduction goals, and will need to step up the conservation of even…
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…
PONTIANAK, Indonesia — As the forests of Indonesian Borneo burned during fires last year, a female orangutan was forced to leave her burning home. When she was rescued from a…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is planning to sue five companies, and possibly up to 16, over the fires that burned on their concessions last year. But recent cases indicate…
JAKARTA — Indonesian President Joko Widodo has demanded accountability from his top officials over the land and forest fires that hit the country last year, as the government braces for…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian office of international conservation NGO WWF has expressed shock at the termination of its forest conservation partnership with the country’s environment ministry, three years before it…
JAKARTA — The fires that raze vast swaths of Indonesian Borneo every year are having a lasting health impact on the region’s critically endangered orangutans that threatens them with extinction,…
2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian court has fined an palm oil company $1.8 million for fires that occurred on its concession in 2015, capping a four-year ordeal by the government to…
JAKARTA — Land and forest fires in Indonesia cost the country $5.2 billion in damage and economic losses this year, equivalent to 0.5% of its economy, according to a new…
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…
JAKARTA — It was large swaths of degraded and idle land, and not forested land, that accounted for much of the burned area during this year’s fire season in Indonesia,…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has attempted to downplay the scale of its land and forest fires this year by saying things weren’t as bad as in the Amazon or…