JAKARTA — A slowdown in both the expansion of industrial plantations and forest loss across Borneo in 2017 provides strong evidence of a correlation between the two. The findings are…
JAKARTA — Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono began his first term as president of Indonesia in 2004 with a pledge to plant a million trees a year, in an effort to make…
JAKARTA — Indonesia has restored degraded peatlands the size of a million football fields in the three years since President Joko Widodo launched an ambitious program aimed at preventing a…
JAKARTA — Central African countries are taking a lesson from the experiences of Indonesia, suffering from one of the world’s highest deforestation rates, as they look to protect their own…
JAKARTA — Its name in Indonesian means “hope,” but there seems to be little of that remaining for the Harapan rainforest, a tropical woodland oasis in an ever-expanding desert of…
JAKARTA — A prominent environmental expert in Indonesia faces a lawsuit by a palm oil company after testifying against its practices, in the second case of its kind this year.…
MALANG, Indonesia — Wildfires are sweeping across a savanna and protected rainforest in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in Java, home to one of the world’s rarest leopard subspecies and…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s top court is reviewing a lawsuit filed in 2016 by environmental activists calling on the government to pass regulations on forest fires, as the dry season ushers…
JAKARTA/PONTIANAK/PEKANBARU — Like their compatriots across Indonesia, a group of residents in the Bornean city of Pontianak celebrated the country’s Independence Day on Aug. 17 with a flag-raising ceremony. But…
JAKARTA — The threat of haze from another season of forest fires on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island hangs over Asia’s biggest sporting event, scheduled to kick off later this month. Authorities…
JAKARTA — A landmark Indonesian case that saw an oil palm company fined millions of dollars for burning carbon-rich peatlands has effectively been derailed by a district court on the…
KIRAM, Indonesia — The well-being of tens of thousands of athletes and spectators at Asia’s biggest sporting event later this year will depend on an unusual pair: palm oil and…
JAKARTA — High costs and a lack of funding stand in the way of Indonesia achieving its target for the restoration of degraded peatland across the country, a new study…
In the leadup to the release of the second installment of Indonesia for Sale, our series examining the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land-rights crisis, we are republishing the first article…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has unveiled an ambitious plan to restore a heavily degraded national park that is one of the last remaining habitats on Earth for the critically…
Arkani, an elderly Dayak man, drew a telling comparison between the plight of his community and that of the orangutans inhabiting a nearby rainforest, in a part of Borneo that…
JAKARTA — Forest fires are underway in Indonesia as the rainy season tails off, marking the return of potentially widespread burning that threatens to once again blanket parts of the…
ACEH, Indonesia — Deforestation slowed last year in the Indonesian province of Aceh, home to the Leuser Ecosystem biodiversity hotspot, according to a local forest watchdog. The province, which spans…
JAKARTA — More than a hundred palm oil and pulp companies in Indonesia have pledged to restore a combined area of peat forest the size of the state of Connecticut,…
JAKARTA — The daunting task of mapping Indonesia’s vast peatlands in painstaking detail has entered the home stretch, as competing proposals vie for selection as the standard to be adopted…
JAKARTA — Experts and officials have taken issue with a new study that warns of hefty economic losses as a result of the Indonesian government’s policies to protect peatlands from…
Between America's abandonment of leadership on conservation and environmental policy, Brazil's backtracking on forest conservation, massive forest fires worldwide, and the revelation of a sharp increase in global forest loss…
JAKARTA – The Indonesian government has unveiled an ambitious plan to nearly halve the number of fire hotspots in the country by 2019, in part through the restoration of degraded…
New research demonstrates that sustainability certification through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil does cut down on deforestation in Indonesia’s palm oil industry. But the new study, published online Monday by…
JAKARTA – The Indonesian government is working with peat experts to establish a global center for tropical peatlands just south of the capital, Jakarta. The details about the proposed institution,…
JAKARTA – A subsidiary of Indonesia’s second-largest pulp and paper firm is seeking to overturn a government decision to nix the company’s plans to operate on peatlands. PT Riau Andalan…
Susilo sat attached to an oxygen tank instead of tending his vegetables. The 62-year-old farmer, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, had a long history of respiratory trouble,…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has struck down a regulation obliging forestry companies to relinquish and protect carbon-rich concessions to prevent a recurrence of annual fires. The ruling was handed…
(Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) Prologue: Jakarta, 2007 On Nov. 29, 2007, on the tenth floor of a marble-clad office block in Jakarta, the scion of one of Indonesia’s wealthiest families met with…
(Read the first article in the series, "The palm oil fiefdom.") Indonesia, a nation of thousands of islands draped across the equator, is in the grips of a social and…
