In late June 2002, the container ship MOL Independence docked at a Singapore port after a voyage of almost a month from Durban in South Africa. On board was a…
JAKARTA — Activists have welcomed the Indonesian government’s announcement to carry out a nationwide audit of all palm oil companies operating here, in response to a shortage of cooking oil…
With its bright green plumage and range of vocalizations, the rose-ringed parakeet is one of the most sought-after birds in the pet trade. To supply ongoing demand for these birds,…
“How do we tell the stories of people that history forgets and the present avoids?” journalist-turned-author Jori Lewis asks in the preface to her debut book, Slaves for Peanuts: A…
Talks aimed at curbing harmful subsidies for fisheries concluded in Geneva in the first multilateral trade agreement the World Trade Organization (WTO) has struck in almost a decade. The body’s…
Mahogany is everything you would want in a tree: tall and majestic, with leaves up to half a meter wide that cast cooling shade on the forest floor below. It…
Rosewood trees are a mainstay of tropical forests across parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. But their future looks bleak. Their fragrant, red-hued heartwood is prized by makers of…
JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the island of Sumatra appear to have been set in and around oil palm plantation concessions and could signal the…
Anything goes in a Laotian “Special Crime Zone,” a haven for illegal wildlife, narcotics and human trafficking. Asia’s wild tigers remain imperiled, say conservationists, as “tiger farming” continues in Asia.
“Initially we were all excited because we had intercepted a record-breaking ivory shipment,” says veterinarian Charlene Fernandez of Singapore’s new Centre for Wildlife Forensics. “But when we started carrying the…
JAKARTA — Prosecutors in Indonesia have arrested a prominent economist in an ongoing investigation into why the world’s top producer of palm oil is suffering a domestic shortage of cooking…
Trade in endangered species online is an increasingly popular avenue for traders and traffickers. A recent review, published in the journal Oryx, highlights a related trend: lesser-known species that have…
JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of crude palm oil, has ordered a ban on the export of the commodity starting April 28 to address an ongoing shortage of…
JAKARTA — Indonesian prosecutors have charged a top trade ministry official and three palm oil executives in connection with a scarcity of cooking oil that has driven up protest and…
New conservation efforts for critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles are starting to make a difference in the status of global hawksbill populations, although the continued illegal trade of tortoiseshell in…
The planetwide cocaine supply chain — its production, trafficking and consumption — causes deforestation and pollution, and impacts biodiversity, as do other criminal activities associated with illegal drugs.
JAKARTA — Cartel practices have been blamed for a scarcity of cooking oil in the world’s top producer of palm oil — but government policies seen as coddling the industry…
Two decades ago, the inhabitants of four communities in the northern Mexican state of Durango put together a proposal: to make sustainable forest management a means of living. Over the…
Finding endangered plants and animals for sale online remains easy. “Rampant” according to Mark Hofberg of the International Federation for Animal Welfare (IFAW). The strong word is significant since it comes from an…
JAKARTA — Deforestation associated with palm oil in the region covering Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea has declined for the second straight year, a new analysis shows, dropping to…
Illegal deforestation represents an outsized share of global deforestation. Tropical forest loss is accelerating climate change, displacing Indigenous and local communities, and destroying landscapes that biodiversity and communities depend on…
LAGOS — Nigeria has for years failed to hold wildlife traffickers and poachers accountable for their crimes, despite federal and state laws that criminalize the killing and trading of protected…
For the past 30 years, soaring demand from East Asia has fueled massive poaching of a South African abalone, Haliotis midae, reducing the mollusk’s population to a fraction of its…
Proposed legislation to ban the import of hunting trophies (e.g. horns, antlers, tusks) apparently enjoys popular support within the UK, yet the effects of these policies are likely to be…
The European Commission's plan to counter deforestation associated with certain imported agricultural products was unveiled on November 17, 2021. One third of global deforestation is linked to international trade, and…
Humanity’s response to pandemics to date is similar to our climate change response: mitigation rather than prevention. A new study says preemption could save trillions of dollars and millions of lives; but preparation is grossly underfunded.
The price of palm oil has doubled since the early weeks of the pandemic. In May 2020, the price of palm oil contracts sold on the Bursa Malaysia, the main…
Illegal mining in protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon saw as much as a fivefold increase since 2010, a gold rush driven largely by surging prices in international markets. Over…
After a disappointing track record over the past two decades, carbon credit markets are back in style. Also known as “offsets,” carbon credits are having a renewed moment, as corporations…
A recent article on the Emirati newspaper The National reports that, according to conservationists, “The increased enforcement by Somaliland in the Gulf [of Aden] and along known smuggling routes, plus the…