As the forests of South Kalimantan province were whittled away by extractive industries, just one district in this corner of Indonesian Borneo remained free of both mining and oil palm…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — Aerial images taken last month in the southern part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island show wildfires burning through peat forests and producing clouds of toxic smoke. Peatlands in…
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — The Pangkalan Kapas forest on the eastern coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island is central to the livelihoods of local villagers and the survival of the endangered wildlife…
This article was co-published with The Gecko Project. This month Mongabay and The Gecko Project published “Saving Aru,” an article chronicling how the people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands thwarted a…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has ordered palm oil company PT Arjuna Utama Sawit to pay the equivalent of $18.6 million in fines and damages for fires on its…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo has announced his new cabinet for his second and final term in office, naming controversial figures with strong ties to the extractive industries. Introducing…
JAKARTA — Fires in Indonesia have razed an area the size of Puerto Rico, following a sharp spike in burning in September. The fires this year, the worst since 2015,…
JAKARTA — Environmental activists in Indonesia have called on President Joko Widodo to use his second-five-year term to strengthen protections of the country’s rich natural resources, after he failed to…
CIBULAO, Indonesia — A light drizzle falls outside Kiryono's home as he peers at the thermostat on a coffee roaster. The 39-year-old's green robusta harvest absorbs the heat in the…
This story was co-published with The Gecko Project. Additional support was provided by Earthsight. (Baca dalam Bahasa Indonesia.) I. The movement begins Late one rainy night in August 2013, a…
As Indonesia’s forests go up in smoke, the world may be losing a lot more than we currently understand.
Brazil’s failure to monitor cattle from source, to sale, to slaughterhouse, creates an immense deforestation regulatory loophole according to a new report.
UPANG CERIA/GELEBAK DALAM, Indonesia — Boat drivers sometimes decide not to work when the smoke is thick on the Musi River out of fear of a dangerous collision. For the…
JAKARTA — At least three companies whose concessions were burned in the 2015 fires that razed huge swaths of forest in Indonesia are also caught up in this year’s fires,…
JAKARTA — Major consumer brands including Nestlé, Kellogg’s and Hershey have been getting some of their palm oil from an illegal plantation inside a protected forest that holds the highest…
JAKARTA — Indonesian lawmakers have chosen not to pass a raft of controversial legislation that critics say would dismantle environmental and social protections, in the face of massive student-led protests.…
TENGGULUN, Indonesia — Around 20 Acehnese men sit cross-legged while smoking clove cigarettes on the terrace of a simple wooden building in this village on the island of Sumatra. The…
SAMARINDA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s wildfire emergency has spread to the part of eastern Borneo where President Joko Widodo wants to relocate the nation’s capital. On Aug. 26, President Widodo announced…
JAKARTA — A severely injured and malnourished orangutan has been rescued from a plantation near a Sumatra forest where a hydropower project threatens the only known habitat of this particular…
JAKARTA — The Forest Stewardship Council, the world’s foremost body certifying the sustainable forestry industry, has delayed the publication of its findings into a palm oil company’s operations in Indonesia,…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s president has admitted negligence on the part of the government, as top officials engage in a blame game amid the worst spate of forest fires since 2015…
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…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s environment minister risks undermining the country’s credibility if she continues denying, in the face of overwhelming data, that haze from Indonesian forest fires is affecting neighboring Malaysia…
JAMBI, Indonesia — Clouds of haze have blanketed parts of Jambi province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, as slash-and-burn clearing to make way for oil palm plantations rages on.…
Hotspots signaling fires in Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra have increased nearly sevenfold over a four-day period in September, according to official reports. The national disaster management agency on Sept. 2…
Researchers in the U.K. are calling for stronger criteria to ensure that high-quality forested areas remain intact, even if they run through oil palm plantations. The key, they say, is…
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — A court in Indonesia has annulled a permit allowing the development of a $3 billion hydropower plant in a forest that’s home to critically endangered tigers,…
The rainforests that once carpeted Indonesia's Sumatra Island are among the world's most biodiverse ecosystems, home to iconic species like the Sumatran tiger, rhino and orangutan. They are also among…
SAMARINDA/UJOH BILANG, Indonesia — For nearly a week this summer, the residents of Ujoh Bilang in Indonesian Borneo’s East Kalimantan province were virtually disconnected from the rest of the world.…
JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, is anticipating a boost in exports of the commodity to China, taking advantage of an opportunity opened up by the…
