JAKARTA — The Indonesian office of international conservation NGO WWF has expressed shock at the termination of its forest conservation partnership with the country’s environment ministry, three years before it…
JAKARTA — The fires that raze vast swaths of Indonesian Borneo every year are having a lasting health impact on the region’s critically endangered orangutans that threatens them with extinction,…
JAKARTA — An Indonesian court has fined an palm oil company $1.8 million for fires that occurred on its concession in 2015, capping a four-year ordeal by the government to…
JAKARTA — Land and forest fires in Indonesia cost the country $5.2 billion in damage and economic losses this year, equivalent to 0.5% of its economy, according to a new…
JAKARTA — The Malaysian government has decided to allow the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to publish maps of corporate land concessions for Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak, in a bid…
JAKARTA — It was large swaths of degraded and idle land, and not forested land, that accounted for much of the burned area during this year’s fire season in Indonesia,…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has attempted to downplay the scale of its land and forest fires this year by saying things weren’t as bad as in the Amazon or…
JAKARTA — The toxic haze that swept across large swaths of Southeast Asia this year from forest and land fires in Indonesia could become a common phenomenon if two of…
JAKARTA — Fires from land and forest fires across Indonesia this year have pumped at least 708 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere — almost double the emissions…
JAKARTA — Indonesian forensics expert Bambang Hero Saharjo has been awarded a top environmental prize for his work in delivering justice against oil palm plantations accused of allowing fires on…
JAKARTA — The makers of Oreo cookies and KitKat chocolate bars are among the companies getting some of their palm oil from producers linked to the fires that have razed…
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 — 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,…
BRUSSELS — The European Parliament will proceed with phasing out palm oil-based biofuel by 2030 despite threats of retaliatory action by Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s biggest producers of 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 — 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…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s president has made permanent a temporary moratorium on forest-clearing permits for plantations and logging. It’s a policy the government says has proven effective in curtailing deforestation, but…
Three years after forest fires in Indonesia sent huge volumes of smoke billowing into Malaysia and Singapore, the Southeast Asian neighbors are dealing with a repeat of the “embarrassing” transboundary…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a ruling holding the government, including the president, liable for the disastrous forest fires and resultant haze that blanketed large swaths of the…
JAKARTA — A new Indonesian government regulation that restricts the types of carbon-rich peat landscapes that must be protected has raised concerns among environmentalists about a backslide in forest protection…
JAKARTA — A provisional moratorium on issuing forest-clearing permits for plantations and logging is expected to be made permanent, Indonesian officials have announced. The moratorium prohibits the conversion of primary…
If you flew over the island of Borneo in 1950, you would see nearly unbroken, untouched forest from one end to the other. Of course, there would be villages and…
JAKARTA — A logging prohibition in Indonesia aimed at protecting peatlands threatens a supply crunch for two of the world’s biggest paper producers that could drive them to source wood…
JAKARTA — Oil palm and logging companies in Indonesia have come into public glare once again as another season of forest fires flares up in Sumatra. Hotspots have been detected…
JAKARTA — With every tree felled and every piece of coal burned for energy, Indonesia is inching closer to its ecological tipping point. And once it passes that point, the…
JAKARTA — Forest fires have intensified in Sumatra, raising questions about the government’s claims it has succeeded in tackling the annual problem. An area spanning nearly 26 square kilometers (10…
JAKARTA — It’s taken nearly a decade, but Indonesia is finally set to receive the first part of a $1 billion payment pledged by the Norwegian government for preserving some…
JAKARTA — A slowdown in both the expansion of industrial plantations and forest loss across Borneo in 2017 provides strong evidence of a correlation between the two. The findings are…
JAKARTA — Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono began his first term as president of Indonesia in 2004 with a pledge to plant a million trees a year, in an effort to make…
JAKARTA — Indonesia has restored degraded peatlands the size of a million football fields in the three years since President Joko Widodo launched an ambitious program aimed at preventing a…