JAKARTA — Top officials from Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s biggest palm oil producers, will meet European Union policymakers in Brussels amid a diplomatic standoff over a new deforestation rule…
JAKARTA — A government audit on Indonesia's palm oil industry found that 9 million hectares (22.2 million acres) of concession holders — an area three times the size of Belgium…
JAKARTA — As the European Union is set to adopt a landmark regulation that prohibits companies from trading commodities from deforested areas and illegal sources, the proposed law continues to…
JAKARTA — The combination of weak antigraft policies, lack of transparency, revolving-door politics, and the prevalence of politically exposed persons within companies makes Indonesia’s palm oil industry highly prone to…
JAKARTA — Deforestation associated with oil palm cultivation has declined in recent years in Indonesia, but in a biodiversity haven at the northern tip of Sumatra, the forest is being…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has sentenced palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi to 15 years in prison for his role in the biggest corruption case in the country’s history.…
MEXICO CITY — It was considered a major environmental victory, back in 2017, when El Salvador’s government announced it would be the first country in the world to issue a…
JAKARTA — The governments of Indonesia and Malaysia, two of the world’s largest palm oil producers, have intensified their criticisms against European Union trade policies, which they deem to be…
JAKARTA — Anticorruption activists in Indonesia have criticized as too lenient the sentences handed down by an Indonesian court against officials at the center of a cooking oil shortage that…
JAKARTA — New palm oil regulations being adopted by the European Union and the U.K. could put even more pressure on independent small farmers in Indonesia who are already struggling…
JAKARTA — The European Union has finalized a law that will ban the trade of commodities associated with deforestation and forest degradation. On Dec. 6, the European Council, Parliament and Commission struck…
BRUSSELS — Indonesia's timber industry is known for having the only legality system in the world that's robust enough to be recognized by the European Union. And now, the country…
BERLIN — Indonesian officials have slammed the European Union’s proposal of a regulation that they say negates more than a decade of progress by the Southeast Asian country to comply…
LA PAZ — Gold is Bolivia’s second-biggest export, valued at more than $1 billion annually and employing hundreds of thousands of people in the country. But much of that gold…
Just weeks after visiting a patch of Malaysian rainforest, Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler learned it had been logged for wood chips to supply a paper plant. A teenager at…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The Amazon Rainforest is resilient: the largest rainforest on the planet has been around for at least 55 million years, surviving repeated ice ages and warming. But human impacts, combined…
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…
The European Union is considering an ambitious new proposal that would regulate imports of products linked to global forest loss. The law would require suppliers to prove their products haven’t…
As the human population grows, so does our demand for food, and soy is one of the key crops meeting that demand. Found in far more than tofu, soy is…
JAKARTA — A major palm oil company supplying to global brands like Nestlé and PepsiCo continues to source the raw commodity from plantations responsible for deforesting prime orangutan habitat in…
JAKARTA — Palm oil giants Indonesia and Malaysia are teaming up to fight what they call a smear campaign targeted at the commodity. The move sets the stage for what…
JAKARTA — Palm oil-driven deforestation is slowing down in Southeast Asia in 2020 but a handful of low-profile companies continue to drive the majority of the destruction, according to a…
JAKARTA — Illegal loggers in Indonesia’s remote Papua region have largely evaded any meaningful kind of punishment and continue to operate unimpeded, in what a new report calls a failure…
JAKARTA — Two major pulp and paper producers associated with widespread deforestation and land conflicts in Indonesia may also have skimped on $168 million in taxes through a web of…
Wild plants are hidden in your pantry. Mixed into herbal medicines, teas, aromatherapy oils, liquor and beauty products, wild-harvested plants are a multibillion-dollar industry. But with no labeling standard for…
