JAKARTA — Activists say the Forest Stewardship Council, the world’s leading sustainable forestry certifier, has failed to properly investigate reports of alleged deforestation by companies linked to Indonesia’s wealthiest individual.…
JAKARTA — A new study on certified oil palm plantations and their links to past deforestation has sparked a debate over whether they can be considered sustainable if they’re established…
A UN carbon accounting loophole that replaces coal with the burning of forests to make “carbon neutral” electricity is subsidy-driven and will destroy forests vitally needed now for carbon sequestration: Critics.
JAKARTA — An Indonesian government scheme to certify sustainable palm oil doesn’t do enough to protect human rights or the environment, and needs to accommodate input from Indigenous and forest…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Paskalina called to me by waving her hand and asked me to come to her house in a whisper. It was my…
One day around 2010, Agustinus Tomba and his neighbors heard the sound of heavy machinery in their ancestral forest, in the Indonesian province of Papua. When they went to see…
The article was co-published with The Gecko Project. A decade ago, the Indonesian government began to heavily promote large-scale plantation developments in Papua province, a region of savannahs and rich…
This story is a collaboration between La Nación and Mongabay Latam. It is the first installment of a five-part series about illegal deforestation for marijuana production in eastern Paraguay. Read…
JAKARTA — Lawmakers in Indonesia plan to call pulp and paper executives to testify about a recent case in which an Indigenous farmer was jailed for cutting down pulpwood trees…
JAKARTA — Activists have called on the Indonesian authorities to probe the finances of the Korindo Group, a privately owned conglomerate, in the wake of an investigation that exposed a $22…
by 6 July 2020
For conscious consumers, palm oil tends to be the pariah of tropically grown crops. This is due to the well-publicized fact that oil palm plantations are highly destructive to biodiversity,…
On May 15, authorities in the northeastern province of Si Sa Ket in Thailand arrested two Cambodians and six Thai workers for illegally removing a large Siamese rosewood tree from…
JAKARTA — Martamis says he’s worried about how he’ll pay for his daughter’s education once schools reopen. He’s an oil palm farmer from the village of Lubuk Mandarsah in Indonesia’s…
SAHN, Sierra Leone — The day they came, Margaret Fascia was in her forest garden of cocoa trees, pineapple plants, palms, ferns and cassavas. Like most days of the week,…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. This post details the analysis we carried out to estimate the revenues generated by the Korindo Group from harvesting timber as it…
MBONJO, Cameroon — The first time Emmanuel Elong wrote a letter to Vincent Bolloré was in 2013. “The impact of the group that you are controlling on our lives is…
Between 1885 and 1908, Belgium’s King Leopold II exerted control over a vast area of Africa that would later become the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His rule was characterized…
It was the middle of the afternoon in one of the world’s largest metropolises when the sky went black. Thousands of miles away, tens of thousands of fires raged, plunging…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Part 1: ‘Maybe they didn’t expect us to find it’ In April 2019, an Indonesian delegate stepped onto the stage at a…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced two indigenous farmers to eight and 10 months in prison respectively for stealing oil palm fruit from a plantation company that is…
The Canadian province says 23% of its forests are old growth, but a new study shows only 1% is left. And without immediate protection that could be sacrificed to supply the booming wood pellet biomass energy industry.
JAKARTA — Palm oil from a company that burned a pristine orangutan habitat in Sumatra has entered the global market due to an oversight, possibly ending up in products made…
In September 2019, the noon sky over a part of Jambi province in Indonesian Sumatra turned crimson. Fires had been raging through Indonesia for the past few months, and certain…
Hoang Anh Gia Lai, a publicly listed Vietnamese real estate, energy, mining and agribusiness giant, is at the center of recent allegations of clearing land in Cambodia that had been…
JAKARTA — Activists have condemned the conviction and jailing of an indigenous farmer in Sumatra whose community is embroiled in a long-standing land dispute with paper giant Asia Pulp &…
Dean Cycon spoke recently to students at Harvard Business School. A student asked him what his profit margin was at Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee, a company he founded in 1993…
JAKARTA — Activists in the Indonesian province of Papua are demanding an investigation into the death of an indigenous man who was reportedly assaulted by a police officer after complaining…
JAKARTA — A broad coalition of civil society groups has called on investors and buyers to stop doing business with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest…
A letter from 200 top scientists to congressional leaders strongly urges lawmakers to reject a new draft policy which researchers say would destroy U.S. forests while adding dangerously to carbon emissions.
PHNOM PENH – A surge in deforestation alerts from Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary has raised fresh concerns over the role of a controversial timber firm in illegal logging. The…
