President Joko Widodo visited a health center in the haze-hit province of Riau on Friday, as medical workers diagnosed more cases of respiratory diseases across the archipelago and Indonesia's neighbors…
Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s flight to visit firefighting efforts in Sumatra was diverted on Thursday after the region’s haze kept flying visibility below the legal minimum. Jokowi and Health Minister…
While fires in Borneo and Sumatra are garnering most of the headlines for the choking air pollution they are causing across Southeast Asia, New Guinea is also experiencing widespread fire…
Greenpeace has released dramatic drone video footage showing burning forests and smoldering peatlands in Borneo. The video shows fires burning on peatlands, rainforests, and oil palm plantations surrounding Gunung Palung…
Singapore formally requested Wednesday that the Indonesian government provide details of companies it suspects of causing haze pollution. If Indonesia complies it could forerun a wave of new Singaporean legal…
Haze pollution continued to cover much of Southeast Asia on Tuesday as Malaysia said it would draft new laws and Indonesian officials maintained the archipelago was doing all it could…
International pressure on Indonesia to address haze pollution escalated on Monday after Malaysia’s prime minister closed thousands of schools and called on Jakarta to “take action.” Meanwhile, Indonesia’s state media…
massive peat dome on Borneo’s southern coast is under threat from an oil palm firm whose area of operation should never have been removed from Indonesia’s moratorium on new licenses…
by 1 October 2015
Singapore is taking legal action against Asia Pulp & Paper and four other Indonesian companies whose concessions are full of fires causing air pollution across the region. Singapore’s National Environment…
A satellite image released this week by NASA shows the extent of haze currently blanketing much of Southeast Asia. The photo captures plumes of smoke emerging from fires burning in…
Farmers in South Sumatra, an epicenter of Indonesia’s haze crisis, unfurled banners last week expressing their readiness to protect forests and peatlands from fire – and calling for President Joko…
mid cries that Indonesia’s central government is more concerned about stamping out the fires belching haze in Sumatra, which is downwind from Singapore and Malaysia, than in Kalimantan, which has…
As fires burn across Indonesia as badly as since the disaster of 1997, blanketing parts of the country and its neighbors in a noxious haze, a variety of assertions have…
At a housing complex in Riau, an epicenter of Indonesia’s haze crisis, Muklis shows a picture of his little daughter, seated before a piano and peering into the camera. She…
Indonesia’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from oil palm developer PT Kallista Alam, which had been ordered to pay a staggering 366 billion rupiah ($26 million) in fines and…
With forest and peatland fires raging across large swaths of Indonesia, an oil palm developer in South Sumatra faces having its permit revoked after President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo paid one…
The development of REDD+ in Indonesia as an experiment in bringing together carbon abatement, equity development and biodiversity protection is continuing to attract global attention.
Many Southeast Asians are wondering if they will have to withstand another blanket of haze from rainforest fires as Indonesia enters its annual dry season.
A fire burns on an oil palm plantation in Borneo. Photo: Rhett A. Butler With dry season in full swing, Indonesia's new environment and forestry minister flew in a helicopter…
Fire burning in Tesso Nilo. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Dozens of fires are raging across Indonesia's Tesso Nilo National Park National Park, a protected area that has lost more…
Oil palm plantation with the rainforest of Gunung Leuser National Park in the background of Sumatra. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. A new half-hour documentary investigate the impact of the…
Peatlands drained for a plantation in Riau. An inter-agency audit of 17 plantation and timber concessions in Riau Province, Indonesia, found that every company is failing to meet fire prevention…
Fires on deforested land trigger massive GHG emissions, haze Light haze over a drained and deforested peat forest in Riau, Sumatra in February 2014. Photo by Rhett Butler. Air pollution…
Fire hotspot data for the past seven days from the World Resources Institute's Global Fire Watch. Singapore's parliament has approved a controversial measure that could penalize companies — both foreign…
Biomass burning takes many forms: wildfires, slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing forests and other vegetation, and even industrialized burning for energy production. Yet this burning—mostly manmade but also natural—takes a massive toll…
The number of fires burning in Sumatra's Riau Province doubled on Sunday, raising concerns that dry conditions could unleash an especially severe haze this dry season in Indonesia. An image…
New forest clearing for an oil palm plantation in Sumatra. Photo taken in May 2014 by Rhett Butler. How to best use Indonesia’s land resources? This is one of the…
New data from NASA and the World Resources Institute (WRI) show that peat fires are again burning in Sumatra, yet both leading presidential contenders are ignoring the issue of climate…
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite on Feb. 28, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined…
Thick smog blankets Singapore's skyline on 06/18/2013 when the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI), Singapore's main index for air pollution, hit record levels. © Ferina Natasya / Greenpeace. Corporations will have…
