JAKARTA — Palm oil-driven deforestation is slowing down in Southeast Asia in 2020 but a handful of low-profile companies continue to drive the majority of the destruction, according to a…
Michael Regan, President Biden’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2019 saw no climate benefit to the production of wood pellets in North Carolina to make energy abroad; what will he do at EPA?
In the far west of Brazil’s Bahia state, sprawling soybean plantations extend from the edges of the highways right up to the horizon. The region is considered Brazil’s new grain…
The native vegetation of Brazil’s vast savanna is rapidly being replaced by plantations and pastures. At risk along with the biome’s grasslands are hundreds of endemic, uniquely adapted reptile species.
Covering around 13% of Earth’s surface and harboring an estimated 83% of its endangered wildlife, protected areas are tasked with an outsize responsibility to safeguard vulnerable species, as well as…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has denied that deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines contributed to a recent deadly flood in southern Borneo. At least 21 people died…
This article was co-produced with The Gecko Project. JAKARTA — Indigenous people in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province are protesting against a company that’s preparing to raze their ancestral forest for…
JAKARTA — Recent floods that inundated large areas of the southern part of Indonesian Borneo might have been exacerbated by massive deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines, activists…
JAKARTA — An upgrade to a road that cuts through one of Southeast Asia’s last great swaths of intact rainforest is driving deeper encroachment by humans into blocks of forest…
JAKARTA — Activists have called on financiers and clients of Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, to stop doing business with the company, citing…
The Brazilian Amazon is home to public lands that span an area the size of Spain — undesignated forests that are at growing risk of land grabbing encouraged by the…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian government initiative that fell short of its goal to rehabilitate degraded peat forests will get another chance to do so — plus the added task of…
JAKARTA — U.S. agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge are buying palm oil from mills in Indonesia that have been publicly linked to land and human rights violations and…
2020 was a rough year for tropical rainforest conservation efforts, as explained in Mongabay's year-end wrap-up on rainforests. So what's in store for 2021? Here are 11 things to watch.…
In Indonesia, the year 2020 has been marked by a number of events and decisions with significant, and likely long-lasting, environmental impacts. Here, we review five of the key stories…
Like virtually everything in 2020, COVID-19 defined the year for tropical rainforests. Conservation was particularly hard hit in tropical countries.
As global demand for edible oil keeps growing, palm oil has enjoyed unprecedented growth both in consumption and production. Used in everything from chocolate to ice-cream, lipstick to shampoo, palm oil…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian government program to phase out diesel for an alternative made from palm oil could spur massive deforestation for palm plantations spanning an area a fifth the…
Smallholders and family farms, Indigenous people, rural women, youth, and landless rural communities are being squeezed into increasingly smaller parcels of land or forced out entirely as global land inequality…
JAKARTA — A coalition of NGOs has documented rampant labor abuses in five oil palm plantations in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of the commodity. The palm oil…
“The invasions do not stop, the deforestation does not stop, and the threats do not stop,” Iván Flores Rodríguez said by phone from the Indigenous Santa Clara de Uchunya community.…
When Celso Silva Junior, a Ph.D. candidate at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE), stepped back from his recently completed map of Brazil’s secondary forests, he was surprised by…
JAKARTA — A major sawmill operation linked to widespread deforestation and corruption in Indonesia has had its legality certification revoked by the licensing authority over allegations of a forged permit,…
A group of nomadic hunters who once lived deep in the Amazon is today on the brink of physical and cultural extinction. Though their tribal lands are designated as an…
JAKARTA — An area of natural forest the size of 1,500 football fields has been cleared since January in an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua by…
JAKARTA — Paying villages in Indonesia to ensure they don’t burn their land for farming appears to have little to no effect on reducing fires, researchers have found. The implication…
JAKARTA — Two major pulp and paper producers associated with widespread deforestation and land conflicts in Indonesia may also have skimped on $168 million in taxes through a web of…
Rising across remote stretches of southeast Cambodia, the Cardamom Mountains harbor dense tropical rainforest, much of it native growth carpeting the range’s wet slopes. Due to its remoteness, the vast…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. Read parts one and two of the series, and watch the film here. It’s cloudy when my plane lands at the airport…
*This article is a collaboration between Mongabay Latam and GK, Ecuador. At the beginning of June 2020, Ecuador’s National Assembly overwhelmingly passed the Oil Palm Law, officially called the…
