Indonesia News

“We stayed quiet for a while because after the customary fine they never came back," said Markus, deputy head of the village council in Ongko Asa, a traditional Dayak village…

JAKARTA — Songbird owners in Indonesia are up in arms over the recent inclusion of hundreds of bird species in the national list of protected animals. The owners plan to…

JAKARTA — International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was marked on Aug. 9 in Jakarta by musical performances and traditional cuisine. But the festive mood was tempered by news…

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…

BANDUNG, Indonesia — Sarmidi joined a conservation program for the Javan rhino in 1980. But it wasn’t until 2008 that he finally met one of the elusive creatures. And it…

JAKARTA — Dolphins haven’t had it easy in Bali, a resort island in Indonesia that’s massively popular with tourists. They’re often held captive in chlorinated pools for traveling circuses; a…

Reaching the village of Wae Rebo on Indonesia’s Flores Island requires a seven-hour drive down rugged jungle roads from the port town of Labuan Bajo. At the edge of the…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Fishermen and environmental activists in Indonesia are demanding accountability after a barge spilled 7,000 tonnes of coal off the Sumatra coast, polluting beaches, damaging coral and…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has expanded its list of wildlife species banned from trading and hunting for the first time in nearly two decades, bringing the total number of…

When Chinese President Xi Jinping extolls China’s Belt & Road Initiative, he uses words like “green”, “low carbon” and “sustainable”. Is this reality or just ‘greenwashing’—vague and flimsy promises that…

One afternoon in 2017, an indigenous Dayak man named Kardie tracked us down to a hotel in Kuala Kurun, a one-horse town in the interior of Indonesian Borneo. He had…

JAKARTA — For the past four years, the indigenous community of Santa Clara de Uchunya has battled for state recognition of its right to ancestral forests in a remote pocket…

JAKARTA — Indonesia has released its inaugural report on the state of its forests, highlighting recent successes in conserving an ecological treasure trove that makes up the third-largest span of…

Selective logging—where specific high-value trees are cut—in tropical forests affects biodiversity, forest structure, and carbon storage. According to a 2009 study, timber was removed from over 20 percent of the…

JAKARTA — Suryadi, a cashier at a convenience store in Jakarta, says he prepares some 400 plastic bags every morning for the day’s shoppers. Sometimes he runs out before the…

KUCHING, Malaysia —  As governments in Southeast Asia target economic growth through infrastructure development, China, the world’s second-largest economy, has emerged as a ready funder for some of the most…

JAKARTA — Twenty-five of the world’s top environmental scientists have lambasted plans to construct a hydroelectric dam in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, because it would threaten the rarest species of great…

JAKARTA — Oil palm plantations that adhere to the world’s leading certification scheme for the crop show no difference in environmental, social and economic sustainability than non-certified estates, a new…

An investigation by Mongabay has uncovered new evidence suggesting one of the world’s biggest paper producers, Indonesia’s Asia Pulp & Paper, took deliberate measures to disguise its ownership of a…

Major agribusiness firms are using opaque corporate structures to gain access to palm oil sourced from plantations operating in violation of their sustainability commitments, according to an investigation into the…