The Indigenous residents of the highlands of southeastern Angola have long lived there with a light touch. Ironically, with the end of the country’s civil war and the slow return…
JAKARTA — A palm oil company in Indonesia has finally started paying off a $23 million fine for burning an important Sumatran orangutan habitat more than a decade ago, highlighting…
JAKARTA — Indonesian environmental activist Gita Syahrani, who has worked for years to push local governments to adopt sustainable economic policies, has been named a recipient of this year’s multimillion-dollar…
A strange fire on the top of a unique geological formation in Venezuela has baffled scientists, park guards and local community leaders, who have never seen a fire in the…
JAKARTA — A decade after Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, launched its landmark no-deforestation policy, the company continues to clear forests to feed…
PANGKALANBUN, Indonesia — An employee of a palm oil company sanctioned by Indonesia’s Supreme Court in July over wildfires was killed in late September while fighting a major fire in…
BALIKPAPAN, Indonesia — The deforestation rate has surged in a key habitat for critically endangered orangutans in Indonesian Borneo, with an area of forest 40 times the size of New…
A senior member of Indonesia’s parliament on Oct. 10 called for tougher police action against companies responsible for land fires, as air pollution continued to shutter schools and sicken thousands…
JAKARTA — Swaths of tropical peatland that were supposed to have been restored and protected from burning are among the fire-hit areas in Indonesia’s ongoing dry season, raising questions about…
New acute respiratory infections in Indonesia’s Palembang city, on the island of Sumatra, are on track to surpass the total number recorded there in 2022, as firefighters scramble to confront…
JAKARTA — Experts have slammed a court ruling that significantly slashes the fines imposed on Indonesian palm oil billionaire Surya Darmadi, even as it increased his jail sentence, in the…
With an area covering 125.76 million hectares, Indonesia's forests, which are home to 17% of the global wildlife population, constitute the world's third largest rainforest ecosystem and hold the key…
JAKARTA — Despite various commitments from global brands and the government to protect Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, home to some of the rarest species on Earth, development of new palm oil…
JAKARTA — Parts of Indonesia are covered with toxic air pollutants from burning lands and forests as this year’s fire season is intensifying amid the El Niño weather phenomenon, which brings drier…
JAKARTA — A new analysis has found a Switzerland-sized area of tropical peatland in Indonesia is at high risk of fire. More than half of the 3.8 million hectares (9.4…
MENDAHARA ULU, Indonesia — At the end of 2018, three communities in this subdistrict on the island of Sumatra were given rights to manage their local peatland by Indonesian President…
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a $61 million fine against an oil palm company over massive fires on its plantation that razed an area seven times the size…
Editor's note: Mongabay has withdrawn this article from publication. On July 6, Mongabay published a news article based on a scientific journal article entitled "Prioritization of peatland restoration and conservation…
When battling to protect Indonesia's peatlands during wildfire crises in 2015 and 2019, most volunteer firefighters confronted the infernos with a dire shortage of equipment and technological resources. For community…
JAKARTA — Most peatlands in Indonesia that need protection are currently not protected, a new study has found. It identifies 5.65 million hectares (13.96 million acres) of peatlands — an…
JAKARTA — When Indonesia embarked on its Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s, it cleared vast swaths of forest for farmland, mostly in the peatlands of Borneo — only to…
The Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest rainforest at a staggering 178 million hectares (just under 440 million acres). It is also one of the biggest carbon sinks on the…
JAKARTA — When the Indonesian government announced its food estate program in 2020, it envisioned the establishment of large-scale agricultural plantations across the country. These plantations of crops like rice,…
The dry season of 2015 was a devastating one for Indonesia, with around 100,000 fires engulfing thousands of hectares of tropical rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands on the islands of Sumatra,…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — Lithan, 68, grew up eating fish caught from the rivers and freshwater swamps near his village in Ogan Ilir district, near the southern tip of the island…
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.…
Temperate peatlands sequester tremendous amounts of carbon, but many have experienced extensive harm. Now, as climate change worsens, land managers are urgently moving to restore these vital ecosystems.
PEKANBARU, Indonesia — Intensive efforts in recent years to prevent fires in Indonesia’s Riau province, the country’s perennial epicenter of forest and land fires, will be put to the test…
Planting trees may seem like a simple, unifying endeavor to restore ecosystems and meet climate goals. But once the saplings are in the ground and event photos posted online, forest…
On Dec. 6, legislators in Argentina’s southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego approved a law to permanently protect the land and sea of the Mitre Peninsula at the tip of…