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A piece by Indonesian woodcut artist Ari Aminuddin. Rise for Climate

Artists and Activists Rise to Fight Climate Change

Environmentalists and creative minds around the world are gearing up for this month's major climate action events.

This weekend, people in 89 countries will mobilize for the Rise for Climate global grassroots movement. It will feature 748 local events and rallies across the globe, as well as the largest-ever West Coast climate march to be held in San Francisco this Saturday.

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Sunrise near Mt. Sumeru, Indonesia. Aditi / Flickr

Indonesia's Deforestation Dropped 60 Percent in 2017

By Hidayah Hamzah, Reidinar Juliane, Tjokorda Nirarta "Koni" Samadhi and Arief Wijaya

In the midst of the second-worst year for tropical tree cover loss in 2017, Indonesia saw an encouraging sign: a 60 percent drop in tree cover loss in primary forests compared with 2016. That's the difference in carbon dioxide emissions from primary forest loss equivalent to 0.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide, or about the same emissions released from burning over 199 billion pounds of coal.

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Damaged houses are seen in Pemenang, North Lombok on Aug. 6, the day after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the area. ADEK BERRY / AFP / Getty Images

Nearly 100 Dead After Powerful Earthquake Strikes Indonesia

At least 98 people have died and another were 200 seriously injured after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the Indonesian resort island of Lombok Sunday evening.

Nearly 20,000 people were displaced by the powerful temblor and housed in temporary shelters, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia's National Disaster Management Board.

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A Bornean orangutan in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. An endangered species, the ape is threatened by the unbridled expansion of oil palm plantations into their forest homes. Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay

What’s Worse Than Palm Oil for the Environment? Other Vegetable Oils, IUCN Study Finds

By Hans Nicholas Jong

Banning palm oil in favor of other vegetable oils deemed less destructive to the environment could lead to greater biodiversity losses, a new report says.

The report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) comes amid mounting debate about the use of palm oil, with the European Union seeking to phase out the use of the ubiquitous commodity in biofuels by 2030, citing environmental and human rights violations in the production of the commodity.

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Aerial view of the Amazon Rainforest, near Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. Neil Palmer, CIAT / CC BY 2.0

Tropical Forests Lost 40 Football Fields of Tree Cover Per Minute in 2017

New University of Maryland data published by Global Forest Watch (GFW) Wednesday revealed 2017 as the second-worst year on record for tropical tree cover loss, a GFW blog announced.

Tropical tree cover decreased by an area the size of Bangladesh—a total of 39 million acres. That amounts to 40 football fields worth of trees cut every minute of last year in a devastating blow to biodiversity and the global climate.

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Oceans
Seagrass meadows are vital ecosystems for marine animals. P. Lindgren / Wikimedia Commons

There’s Now an App for Mapping Seagrass, the Oceans’ Great Carbon Sink

The launch of an online crowdsourcing database for seagrass hopes to breathe new life into efforts to conserve the underwater flowering plants, which act as both important habitats for marine species and a major store of carbon dioxide.

Patchy mapping of seagrass meadows has hampered efforts to protect the plants (which are distinct from seaweed) from threats such as coastal development, sedimentation, coral farming and sand mining, according to Richard Unsworth, a marine biologist at Swansea University in the UK and co-founder of environmental charity Project Seagrass.

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Climate
Rising carbon dioxide levels could lead to fewer moisture clouds forming over the Amazon rainforest. Ana_Cotta / CC BY 2.0

Climate Change Could Bring Drought to Amazon, Greater Rain to Pacific and African Forests

Scientists have discovered another factor that might interact with rising carbon dioxide emissions to influence climate change—tropical forests.

In a study published in Nature Climate Change Friday, researchers found that the way tropical forests interact with increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could alter rainfall patterns, drying out the Amazon rainforest and increasing precipitation in African and Indonesian forests.

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Landcover, forest clearance and plantation development in PT Megakarya Jaya Raya palm oil concession. PT MJR is part of the Hayel Saeed Anam group which has a number of palm oil related interests including Pacific Inter-Link which controls HSA's palm oil refining and trading interests. Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace

Exclusive New Video from Greenpeace Reveals Massive Deforestation in Indonesia

A palm oil supplier to Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever is destroying rainforests in Papua, Indonesia, a new investigation by Greenpeace International has revealed. Satellite analysis suggests that around 4,000 hectare of rainforest were cleared in PT Megakarya Jaya Raya concession between May 2015 and April 2017—an area almost half the size of Paris.

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Energy
Xinhua

Oil Spill Now Larger Than Paris Ravages Indonesian Island, 5 Dead

By Basten Gokkon

An oil spill in Borneo that began over the past weekend has now spread across an area greater than the city of Paris and is heading out to the open ocean, the Indonesian government said.

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