JAKARTA — Top officials from Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s biggest palm oil producers, will meet European Union policymakers in Brussels amid a diplomatic standoff over a new deforestation rule…
JAKARTA — A government audit on Indonesia's palm oil industry found that 9 million hectares (22.2 million acres) of concession holders — an area three times the size of Belgium…
JAKARTA — As the European Union is set to adopt a landmark regulation that prohibits companies from trading commodities from deforested areas and illegal sources, the proposed law continues to…
The European Union is one step closer to adopting landmark regulations that hold companies accountable for ensuring their products don’t contribute to deforestation. A new law, passed with an overwhelming…
JAKARTA — Deforestation associated with oil palm cultivation has declined in recent years in Indonesia, but in a biodiversity haven at the northern tip of Sumatra, the forest is being…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi to 15 years in prison for his role in the biggest corruption case in the country’s history.…
MEXICO CITY — It was considered a major environmental victory, back in 2017, when El Salvador’s government announced it would be the first country in the world to issue a…
JAKARTA — The governments of Indonesia and Malaysia, two of the world’s largest palm oil producers, have intensified their criticisms against European Union trade policies, which they deem to be…
Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu region, in Pará; project foresees the extraction of 74 tons of gold in 20 years of operation.
Residents of a landless worker’s settlement in Anapu, Pará state in Brazil’s Amazon region, accuse the Federal Government of favoring large landowners, land grabbers and corporations at the expense of poor and landless peasants.
JAKARTA — Anticorruption activists in Indonesia have criticized as too lenient the sentences handed down by an Indonesian court against officials at the center of a cooking oil shortage that…
JAKARTA — New palm oil regulations being adopted by the European Union and the U.K. could put even more pressure on independent small farmers in Indonesia who are already struggling…
JAKARTA — The European Union has finalized a law that will ban the trade of commodities associated with deforestation and forest degradation. On Dec. 6, the European Council, Parliament and Commission struck…
Amid a global biodiversity crisis, nations have agreed to protect threatened species like sharks, songbirds, glass frogs and tropical timber by regulating their trade. Over the past two weeks, member…
BRUSSELS — Indonesia's timber industry is known for having the only legality system in the world that's robust enough to be recognized by the European Union. And now, the country…
Local people and communities should be given greater control over the international trade in wildlife in order to make the multi-billion-dollar industry more sustainable, according to a group of scientists…
BERLIN — Indonesian officials have slammed the European Union’s proposal of a regulation that they say negates more than a decade of progress by the Southeast Asian country to comply…
JAKARTA — Sustainability commitments and greater scrutiny of supply chains is helping bring down deforestation rates associated with palm oil in Indonesia, a new analysis suggests. The country is the…
Just weeks after visiting a patch of Malaysian rainforest, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler learned it had been logged for wood chips to supply a paper plant. A teenager at…
War, supply chain breakdowns, and climate change-driven weather disasters are pushing wheat prices up and increasing the threat of global hunger. Some analysts say financial speculation is making things worse.
JAKARTA — Small-scale fishers in Indonesia will be exempt from an end to “harmful” subsidies agreed by governments at the World Trade Organization. Indonesian negotiators citing existing fishing quotas that…
JAKARTA — Activists have welcomed the Indonesian government’s announcement to carry out a nationwide audit of all palm oil companies operating here, in response to a shortage of cooking oil…
Talks aimed at curbing harmful subsidies for fisheries concluded in Geneva in the first multilateral trade agreement the World Trade Organization (WTO) has struck in almost a decade. The body’s…
JAKARTA — If you own a luxury fashion item made with snakeskin, there’s a good chance it came from a blood python in Indonesia, where the species isn’t considered threatened.…
JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the island of Sumatra appear to have been set in and around oil palm plantation concessions and could signal the…
JAKARTA — Prosecutors in Indonesia have arrested a prominent economist in an ongoing investigation into why the world’s top producer of palm oil is suffering a domestic shortage of cooking…
JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of crude palm oil, has ordered a ban on the export of the commodity starting April 28 to address an ongoing shortage of…
JAKARTA — Indonesian prosecutors have charged a top trade ministry official and three palm oil executives in connection with a scarcity of cooking oil that has driven up protest and…
Deforestation due to leather production, alarm over COVID-19’s spread to fur farms, and animal rights activism are all inspiring a booming fashion industry using plant leaves, fruits and microorganisms to imitate animal skins and fur.
JAKARTA — Cartel practices have been blamed for a scarcity of cooking oil in the world’s top producer of palm oil — but government policies seen as coddling the industry…
