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…
JAKARTA — Central African countries are taking a lesson from the experiences of Indonesia, suffering from one of the world’s highest deforestation rates, as they look to protect their own…
JAKARTA — Its name in Indonesian means “hope,” but there seems to be little of that remaining for the Harapan rainforest, a tropical woodland oasis in an ever-expanding desert of…
JAKARTA — A prominent environmental expert in Indonesia faces a lawsuit by a palm oil company after testifying against its practices, in the second case of its kind this year.…
JAKARTA — Pledges by major brands to stop buying palm oil from companies known to destroy rainforests have failed to stop the clearance of a total area of forest the…
JAKARTA/PONTIANAK/PEKANBARU — Like their compatriots across Indonesia, a group of residents in the Bornean city of Pontianak celebrated the country’s Independence Day on Aug. 17 with a flag-raising ceremony. But…
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…
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 — 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…
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…
