A recent study finds that when parks and reserves don’t do a good job of safeguarding the forest they contain, they’re more likely to be stripped of their status as…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has reported a second straight annual decline in the country’s deforestation rate, but continues to confound with its definition of what constitutes a forest. The…
In 1962, at the First World Conference of National Parks in Seattle, U.S., Carleton Ray, a marine biologist at the University of Virginia, pleaded the cause of setting aside “unmolested”…
JAKARTA — Global demand for biofuels containing palm oil looks set to grow sixfold by 2030, potentially driving the destruction of Southeast Asian rainforests the size of the Netherlands, a…
JAKARTA — Of the nearly 3,000 villages located within peatlands throughout Indonesia, only one is permitted to manage the forest — a glaring omission that the government has been slow…
JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia are adamant about passing new legislation on the palm oil industry this year, amid concerns from activists and even the executive branch of government. Environmental…
JAKARTA — 2017 saw Indonesia once again fulfilling its economic development potential. The Southeast Asian nation started out the year with mixed superlatives: home to the third-largest stretch of tropical…
A country’s citizens aren’t the only ones to benefit from living in a place that’s run well. In a new study, a team of scientists reports that the most important…
In the last four years, Ecuador’s social organizations have tiptoed over a series of obligations (Executive Orders 16 and 739) imposed for their own subsistence by former president Rafael Correa’s…
In 1986, Patricia Wright, then a budding primatologist, spent weeks combing the rainforests of eastern Madagascar in search of the greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simus), a five-pound bamboo-eating primate that…
The indigenous inhabitants of Indonesia’s Mentawai district, a cluster of islands off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, are a step closer to reclaiming their ancestral rights to their land from…
In August, the government of Madagascar drafted a business plan to sell its stockpiles of rosewood and ebony — hundreds of thousands of logs. The plan required the approval of…
PORT BERGÉ, Madagascar — Karimo and Célice could scarcely believe their luck. Four years of bumper corn harvests have allowed the husband and wife, who each go by a single…
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…
MAROANTSETRA, Madagascar — Two years ago, a group of foreigners visited Marovovonana, the riverside village where Amélin Toto Arison runs a general store, to make a presentation about carbon. Arison…
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has the strongest set of requirements among certification schemes for edible oils and biofuels, even if its members often get away with flouting its…
A rare earth mining project in Madagascar that has been in turmoil for the last two years took another blow in September, when its concession, previously valued at over $1…
SAMARINDA, Indonesia — Officials in Indonesia’s coal-rich province of East Kalimantan have announced the revocation of more than 400 mining permits, as part of ongoing efforts to clean up the industry.…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s picturesque Wakatobi islands are so remote that the electricity only comes on at night. A thousand miles to the west, meanwhile, there’s so much power surging into…
SAVA REGION, Madagascar — Madagascar is applying to sell millions of dollars’ worth of illegally logged timber, prompting fears of a bonanza for traffickers. The country has stockpiled tens of…
