With an area covering 125.76 million hectares, Indonesia's forests, which are home to 17% of the global wildlife population, constitute the world's third largest rainforest ecosystem and hold the key…
JAKARTA — Despite various commitments from global brands and the government to protect Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, home to some of the rarest species on Earth, development of new palm oil…
JAKARTA — Parts of Indonesia are covered with toxic air pollutants from burning lands and forests as this year’s fire season is intensifying amid the El Niño weather phenomenon, which brings drier…
JAKARTA — A new analysis has found a Switzerland-sized area of tropical peatland in Indonesia is at high risk of fire. More than half of the 3.8 million hectares (9.4…
MENDAHARA ULU, Indonesia — At the end of 2018, three communities in this subdistrict on the island of Sumatra were given rights to manage their local peatland by Indonesian President…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a $61 million fine against an oil palm company over massive fires on its plantation that razed an area seven times the size…
Editor's note: Mongabay has withdrawn this article from publication. On July 6, Mongabay published a news article based on a scientific journal article entitled "Prioritization of peatland restoration and conservation…
When battling to protect Indonesia's peatlands during wildfire crises in 2015 and 2019, most volunteer firefighters confronted the infernos with a dire shortage of equipment and technological resources. For community…
JAKARTA — Most peatlands in Indonesia that need protection are currently not protected, a new study has found. It identifies 5.65 million hectares (13.96 million acres) of peatlands — an…
JAKARTA — When Indonesia embarked on its Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s, it cleared vast swaths of forest for farmland, mostly in the peatlands of Borneo — only to…
The Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest rainforest at a staggering 178 million hectares (just under 440 million acres). It is also one of the biggest carbon sinks on the…
JAKARTA — When the Indonesian government announced its food estate program in 2020, it envisioned the establishment of large-scale agricultural plantations across the country. These plantations of crops like rice,…
The dry season of 2015 was a devastating one for Indonesia, with around 100,000 fires engulfing thousands of hectares of tropical rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands on the islands of Sumatra,…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — Lithan, 68, grew up eating fish caught from the rivers and freshwater swamps near his village in Ogan Ilir district, near the southern tip of the island…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi to 15 years in prison for his role in the biggest corruption case in the country’s history.…
Temperate peatlands sequester tremendous amounts of carbon, but many have experienced extensive harm. Now, as climate change worsens, land managers are urgently moving to restore these vital ecosystems.
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Intensive efforts in recent years to prevent fires in Indonesia’s Riau province, the country’s perennial epicenter of forest and land fires, will be put to the test…
Planting trees may seem like a simple, unifying endeavor to restore ecosystems and meet climate goals. But once the saplings are in the ground and event photos posted online, forest…
On Dec. 6, legislators in Argentina’s southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego approved a law to permanently protect the land and sea of the Mitre Peninsula at the tip of…
A group of researchers from more than a dozen countries are calling for worldwide peatland protection and restoration. In a signed statement released Dec. 1, more than 40 scientists say…
It’s a stunning landscape with a prophetic name: Lisima lya mwono, or “the source of life” as it’s known in the language of the local Luchaze people. But that’s not…
JAKARTA —Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas, which has a long history of deforestation and conflicts with local Indigenous communities, secretly controls Canadian paper and packaging company Paper Excellence, which could soon…
Scientists and companies are looking to a small section of the textile market to address the clothing industry’s threats to climate and ecosystems. Cellulose fabrics are fibers extracted from plants,…
One of the first on-the-ground investigations into the Democratic Republic of Congo’s proposed oil exploration blocks suggests that in some of the regions marked for auction, many residents are wary…
JAKARTA — Smallholder farmers in Sumatra who cultivate oil palms are more likely to expand their farms into carbon-rich peat forests the closer they are to roads and palm oil…
The fires started small, charring a handful of areas scattered across a southern stretch of Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands. Fueled by searing temperatures and months of drought, the flames quickly spread…
JAKARTA — Fires are flaring up in Indonesia’s Riau province, the perennial epicenter of the burning season in Sumatra, as the dry season sets in. At the end of March,…
BENGKALIS, Indonesia — On the east coast of the island of Sumatra lies a grove of timber, fruit and native trees known as the Marsawa Peat Arboretum. This shady grove,…
The world’s largest bank of the partially decomposed plant matter known as peat in the tropics is even more extensive than initially thought, according to a new study. The peatlands…
JAKARTA — A part of the only forest on Earth where rhinos, tigers, orangutans and elephants coexist is seeing a resumption of deforestation for an oil palm concession. Indonesian company…
