Wealth fund divests from Peruvian firm after indigenous group complaint
A major sovereign wealth fund has pulled its entire $12.3-million investment from a Peruvian company that was accused in 2019 of failing to sever ties to a palm oil plantation…
Palm oil firm has farmers jailed for harvesting from land it stole from them
JAKARTA — Police in Indonesia have jailed three indigenous farmers for allegedly stealing oil palm fruit from a plantation company that is itself accused of stealing their land. Police in…
PepsiCo renews sustainable palm oil policy to close supplier loophole
JAKARTA — Environmental activists have welcomed food and beverage giant PepsiCo’s move to update its palm oil sustainability policy, following years of pressure over a supply chain tainted by deforestation,…
South Korea’s POSCO vows zero deforestation in Papua palm oil operation
JAKARTA — Environmental watchdogs have welcomed a zero-deforestation pledge by South Korean trading giant POSCO International with regard to its palm oil operations in Indonesia’s Papua province, following years of…
Indonesia’s point man for palm oil says no more plantations in Papua
JAKARTA — A top Indonesian official has declared a halt to new oil palm plantations in the country’s heavily forested Papua region in favor of other, “greener,” crops, apparently contradicting…
Activists skeptical of win as court orders Papua plantation maps published
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has ordered the government to publish detailed maps of oil palm plantations in the country’s easternmost Papua region, an area increasingly targeted by the…
A new dawn: The story of deforestation in the next decade must be different to the last (commentary)
This was meant to be a moment of triumph in the long battle to save the world’s forests. The year when the bold commitment hundreds of companies made to eliminate…
Colombia’s ‘Heart of the World’: Mining, megaprojects overrun indigenous land
Jaime Luis Arias grew up on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. An isolated coastal pyramid-shaped massif in northern Colombia, the Sierra Nevada is one of…
Activists seek purge after Indonesia court rules forest plantations illegal
JAKARTA — Environmental activists have called on the Indonesian government to swiftly crack down on plantation companies operating in protected forests, after the country’s highest court ruled such activities illegal.…
Palm oil processors top plantations in destroying proboscis monkey habitat
JAKARTA — The oil palm processing industry has become the biggest threat to the iconic and endangered proboscis monkeys of Indonesian Borneo, a new study has found. The study, published…
Communities in Ecuador fight back against palm oil
This story is a journalistic collaboration between Revista Vistazo and Mongabay Latam. Fifteen years ago, Martha Valencia relied on the nearby river for water and for food. But then…
Palm oil, fire pushing protected areas in Honduras to the ‘point of no return’
Residents of the community of París de Leán in Honduras say they have been dealing with dirty water for a decade. To demonstrate this, Concepción Aguilera dips a dish into…
Habitat loss drives deadly conflict in Indonesia’s tiger country
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — A spate of recent tiger attacks on farmers in Indonesia's South Sumatra province has renewed calls from experts to protect wildlife habitats from development projects that threaten…
Indonesian palm oil firm hit with $1.8m fine for 2015 fires
JAKARTA — An Indonesian court has fined an palm oil company $1.8 million for fires that occurred on its concession in 2015, capping a four-year ordeal by the government to…
Indonesia fires cost nation $5 billion this year: World Bank
JAKARTA — Land and forest fires in Indonesia cost the country $5.2 billion in damage and economic losses this year, equivalent to 0.5% of its economy, according to a new…
Malaysia to let RSPO publish oil palm concession maps
JAKARTA — The Malaysian government has decided to allow the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to publish maps of corporate land concessions for Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak, in a bid…
Dodgy science and corporate concessions in Indonesia’s bid for clean palm oil
JAKARTA — Indonesia has launched a campaign that government officials say should boost the reputation of the country’s palm oil industry, even as activists and experts warn it could make…
Our fires weren’t as bad as in the Amazon, Indonesian officials claim
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has attempted to downplay the scale of its land and forest fires this year by saying things weren’t as bad as in the Amazon or…
Sumatra’s dwindling forests face extra pressure from a major highway project
JAKARTA — In Indonesia’s Sumatra, which has lost much of its forests over the decades, a major highway project running the length of the island is poised to speed up…
Indonesian officials charged in $1.6m bribes-for-permits scheme
JAKARTA — Anti-corruption investigators in Indonesia have charged two government officials for allegedly taking $1.6 million in bribes to grant permits for oil palm plantations spanning just over half the…
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- On anniversary of nun’s murder Amazon land rights activists at high risk
- Iran upholds heavy sentences for conservationists convicted of spying
- Two deaths trigger alarm at Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve
Indonesias forest guardians
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
Amazon infrastructure
- BR-319 illegal side road threatens Amazon protected area, indigenous land (commentary)
- Barrage of mining requests targets Brazil’s isolated indigenous peoples
- Database offers new details on the dams that hold mining waste
Asian rhinos
- Indonesia-WWF split puts rhino breeding project in Borneo in limbo
- Indonesian officials wield sharia law in defense of Sumatran rhinos
- Love triangle complicates efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos
