Mongabay series: Indonesian Forests

“When oil palm was given out by the district head I didn’t accept it. I am still angry at the oil palm companies,” says Monica Mensea. At 83, Mensea is…

JAKARTA — International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was marked on Aug. 9 in Jakarta by musical performances and traditional cuisine. But the festive mood was tempered by news…

JAKARTA — The threat of haze from another season of forest fires on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island hangs over Asia’s biggest sporting event, scheduled to kick off later this month. Authorities…

One afternoon in 2017, an indigenous Dayak man named Kardie tracked us down to a hotel in Kuala Kurun, a one-horse town in the interior of Indonesian Borneo. He had…

JAKARTA — Indonesia has released its inaugural report on the state of its forests, highlighting recent successes in conserving an ecological treasure trove that makes up the third-largest span of…

JAKARTA — Twenty-five of the world’s top environmental scientists have lambasted plans to construct a hydroelectric dam in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, because it would threaten the rarest species of great…

JAKARTA — Oil palm plantations that adhere to the world’s leading certification scheme for the crop show no difference in environmental, social and economic sustainability than non-certified estates, a new…

An investigation by Mongabay has uncovered new evidence suggesting one of the world’s biggest paper producers, Indonesia’s Asia Pulp & Paper, took deliberate measures to disguise its ownership of a…

Major agribusiness firms are using opaque corporate structures to gain access to palm oil sourced from plantations operating in violation of their sustainability commitments, according to an investigation into the…

OSLO, Norway — It has been a decade since the United Nations launched REDD+, an ambitious program to incentivize forest restoration and conservation in developing countries, as a part of…

JAKARTA — Food and beverage giant PepsiCo has launched an investigation into reports of deforestation carried out by one of its suppliers in a key Indonesian habitat that’s home to…

Dutch national pension fund APB is divesting 300,000 euros ($351,000) from Korean firm Posco Daewoo over deforestation in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province. The announcement by ABP follows a series of…

The 2015-16 El Niño briefly turned Amazon, African and Indonesian tropical forests from carbon sink to carbon source. Will climate change make that shift permanent?

In July last year, Abdon Nababan, one of Indonesia’s most prominent activists, announced his intention to run for governor in his home province of North Sumatra. During his decade-long tenure…

JAKARTA — Environmental officials have warned of the potentially catastrophic impact of a planned gold mine in a conservation zone in eastern Indonesia, amid mixed signals from the district chief…

JAKARTA — The European Parliament and European Union member states have agreed to phase out palm oil from motor fuels by 2030, easing back from an initial deadline of 2021. The…

In the village of Tewah, in the heart of Indonesian Borneo, stands a wooden church named Immanuel. When the church was founded by German missionaries more than a century ago,…

JAKARTA — At least six illegal logging camps have sprung up in a peat forest in Indonesian Borneo that the government had declared off-limits last year, a Greenpeace investigation has…

In June this year, elections will take place in 171 districts, provinces and municipalities across Indonesia. On paper, millions of citizens in the world’s third-largest democracy will be afforded the…

One of the world’s biggest paper producers continues to deny that it secretly owns most of the companies supplying it with wood, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. In the…