This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. When a string of palm oil companies arrived in the village of Anggai, in a heavily forested corner of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua…
ARFAK MOUNTAINS, Indonesia — Seblon Mandacan scampers with ease up the slippery footpath through the forest in the Arfak Mountains. I follow slowly. It’s about 4 a.m. and the sky’s…
The four-wheel-drive is king of the road in Papua New Guinea. Driving anywhere outside the capital, Port Moresby, is a whiplash roulette of swerving around zigzag crevices and blindsiding potholes.…
Just over two years ago, The Gecko Project and Mongabay set out to investigate the hidden story behind twin environmental and social crises unfolding in Indonesia. The country’s rainforests, the…
Sophie Chao is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney, whose work focuses on the impacts of agribusiness on the peoples and environments of the Asia-Pacific and Melanesia…
JAYAPURA/JAKARTA — Rain-triggered flash floods and landslides that struck Indonesia’s easternmost province this past weekend have killed nearly 90 people and driven thousands from their homes. The country’s disaster mitigation…
Politicians in Papua New Guinea are ratcheting up their support for a new foray into coal mining and power generation, even as neighboring states call for a global reduction in…
MADANG, Papua New Guinea — On the banks of the Banab River in Papua New Guinea’s northern province of Madang, rows of makeshift wooden shops, eateries and huts have popped…
AYAPOKIAR, Indonesia — Mince and Atafia Momo make light work of the rocky terrain as they press toward higher ground deep in the Tambrauw forest. The pair move with a…
2018 was a difficult year for the world's tropical rainforests. Below are of some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year, but we couldn't cover everything, so if there…
GEMBOGL, Papua New Guinea — In Papua New Guinea’s central highland province of Simbu, residents of the mountainous Gembogl district eagerly await the completion of a long-overdue road upgrade that…
An ambitious plan to mine precious minerals from the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea looks to have run aground due to the developer's financial problems. In…
Violence in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua has stalled a massive infrastructure project that researchers have separately warned may threaten the island's ecological health and the livelihood of its residents.…
The Indonesian government must put an immediate halt to land clearing in the Tanah Merah project, a vast stretch of land earmarked to become the world’s biggest oil palm plantation,…
Last week, The Gecko Project, Mongabay, Tempo and Malaysiakini published an investigation into the story behind the Tanah Merah project, a giant oil palm plantation under development in Papua, Indonesia.…
(Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia) Prologue: Johor Baru, 2012 In December 2012, at a press conference on the sidelines of an Islamic business forum in Malaysia, a man named Chairul Anhar…
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit that opens in Port Moresby this week is supposed to be a showcase of Papua New Guinea’s hosting, but the run-up to the…
MANOKWARI, Indonesia — High in the northwestern mountains of Indonesia’s West Papua province, the newly established Pegunungan Arfak district has a bold idea: Its leaders hope to achieve economic prosperity…
“I lost everything,” says Joe Moses, recalling the day homes in his community of Paga Hill were demolished. Moses is one of thousands of Papua New Guineans who have lost…
Large landscapes of intact tropical forests will figure prominently in global strategies to avert catastrophic climate change and conserve biodiversity. In this context, the extensive forests of Papua and West…
JAKARTA — Pledges by major brands to stop buying palm oil from companies known to destroy rainforests have failed to stop the clearance of a total area of forest the…
Traditional landholders in the Papua New Guinea highlands say they finally see signs of progress in a cycle of contentious negotiations over land rights and royalties at a massive ExxonMobil-led…
Landowners in Papua New Guinea’s Hela province have threatened to expand and escalate their blockade of a natural gas project there, after an attempt at negotiation fell through. Plant operator…
PORT MORESBY — Heavily armed civilian groups have burned and damaged ExxonMobil construction equipment in a land dispute involving a natural gas plant in Papua New Guinea. The civil unrest…
Dutch national pension fund APB is divesting 300,000 euros ($351,000) from Korean firm Posco Daewoo over deforestation in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province. The announcement by ABP follows a series of…
In 2008, when a consortium led by ExxonMobil was drumming up support for a $19 billion natural gas extraction and processing project in Papua New Guinea, proponents of the development…
Birds-of-paradise have some of the world’s strangest and most elaborate courtship displays. In the rainforests of New Guinea, for instance, the male superb bird-of-paradise (Lophorina superba) puts on the now-famous bouncing…
Traditional landowners in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, have exerted their power of veto under the autonomous region's new mining laws and rejected a corporate bid by Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL)…
Between America's abandonment of leadership on conservation and environmental policy, Brazil's backtracking on forest conservation, massive forest fires worldwide, and the revelation of a sharp increase in global forest loss…
TAMBRAUW, Indonesia — It took more than two hours by boat, through a driving rain, to reach the village of Saubeba from the nearest large town of Sausapor in Indonesia’s…
