Global Trade News

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…

The Amazon Rainforest is resilient: the largest rainforest on the planet has been around for at least 55 million years, surviving repeated ice ages and warming. But human impacts, combined…

The shadowy world of fisheries crime is difficult to study; much of the action takes place far from land, without the knowledge of anyone but the perpetrators. New research shows…

In May 2014, the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) seized a consignment of wood at the port of Mombasa. Shipping records listed the cargo only as "wood" headed for Hong Kong:…

JAKARTA — A recent analysis of the legal wildlife trade in the last 46 years puts Indonesia, a biodiversity hotspot in Southeast Asia, among the top 10 exporters of live…

Twenty years is a long time to talk about fish. But hopes that World Trade Organization (WTO) members would finally reach a meaningful agreement to ban subsidies that enable overfishing…

The European Union is considering an ambitious new proposal that would regulate imports of products linked to global forest loss. The law would require suppliers to prove their products haven’t…

Altering Earth’s natural systems not only spreads disease to humans. Ecosystem disruption increasingly puts wild animals at risk of devastating pandemics and threatens endangered species’ survival.

MANCHIONEAL, Jamaica — Nestled deep in the northeast coast of Jamaica, hidden in the thick fertile forests of Portland parish, sits the multigenerational fishing community of Manchioneal. Families have been…

In August 2021, authorities at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport discovered a shipment of eight hornbills, caged but alive, en route to international markets. The Department of Wildlife and National…

Mongabay joins a noted forest ecologist in Olympic National Park to experience its magnificence and significance as a bastion of biodiversity and a carbon storehouse; protection of these vanishing U.S. and Canadian ecosystems is vital, say scientists.

JAKARTA — Human rights abuses continue to fester in the Indonesian palm oil industry as global brands and financial institutions and investors turn a blind eye to the problem, a…

As the human population grows, so does our demand for food, and soy is one of the key crops meeting that demand. Found in far more than tofu, soy is…

JAKARTA — A major palm oil company supplying to global brands like Nestlé and PepsiCo continues to source the raw commodity from plantations responsible for deforesting prime orangutan habitat in…

Soybean farming accounts for most of the agrochemicals used in Brazil, and the farming activity concentrated in the state of Mato Grosso is now seeing those chemicals washing downstream to the Pantanal wetlands.

At a glance, Japan’s seafood sector is a financial success story. Indeed, between 2010 and 2019, the 70 publicly-listed companies exposed to the sector on the Tokyo Stock Exchange enjoyed…

MANILA — When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020 in Southeast Asia, its governments took rapid containment actions: lockdowns, travel restrictions and trade suspensions, alerting the public about the virus. The…

In 2019, Hong Kong customs authorities inspected a cargo ship bound for Vietnam. Hidden beneath slabs of frozen meat were 8.3 metric tons of illegal scales from about 13,800 pangolins,…

Toxic Bubble Bounce Mushrooms or Green Iguana Disco Mushrooms may sound like psychedelic drugs, but they are, in fact, names of live corals available for sale online. These brilliantly colored…