Newly established oil palm plantation in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay
By Hans Nicholas Jong
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 whose apparent gains have been criticized by environmental activists as mere "propaganda."
Sustainability activist and Instagram influencer Margarita Samsonova speaks with EcoWatch on her experience as a volunteer worker abroad. Facebook Live
EcoWatch teamed up with sustainability activist and Instagram influencer Margarita Samsonova via Facebook Live to give you the tools you need to make a massive impact on this planet through volunteer work.
Here are five steps including valuable "pro-tips" to get you on your way to a life-changing experience as a volunteer abroad.
Art direction: Georgie Johnson. Illustrations: Freya Morgan
By Joe Sandler Clarke
"Don't expect us to continue buying European products," Malaysia's former plantations minister Mah Siew Keong told reporters in January last year. His comments came just after he had accused the EU of "practising a form of crop apartheid."
A few months later Luhut Pandjaitan, an Indonesian government minister close to President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, warned his country would retaliate if it was "cornered" by the EU.
Residents of Makassar, Indonesia are evacuated following flooding this week. INDRA ABRIYANTO / AFP / Getty Images
More than 20 people have died and more than 3,000 have been displaced by landslides and flooding following heavy rain in the southern part of Indonesia's Sulawesi Island, AFP reported Thursday.
Damage left after a tsunami struck Indonesia Saturday. AZWAR IPANK / AFP / Getty Images
A tsunami struck Indonesia without warning Saturday night, killing at least 373 people and injuring more than 1,400, The Associated Press reported Monday. With 128 still missing, the death toll is expected to rise further in the second deadliest tsunami to inundate the country this year.
Deforestation on peatland for palm oil plantation in Borneo, Indonesia. glennhurowitz / Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0
The world's largest
palm oil trader released plans on Monday to increase its efforts to eliminate deforestation from its supply chain.
Wilmar International, which supplies 40 percent of the world's palm oil, has teamed up with the sustainability consultancy Aidenvironment Asia to develop a comprehensive mapping database to better monitor the company's palm oil supplier group.
A sperm whale that washed up in Indonesia's Wakatobi National Park had plastic bottles, bags and cups in its belly. @WWF_ID/ Kartika Sumolang
Yet another
whale has suffered from plastic pollution. A sperm whale that washed up dead in a national park in Indonesia had nearly 13 pounds of plastic waste in its stomach, park officials told the Associated Press.
Researchers from the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the park's conservation academy uncovered more than 1,000 other pieces of plastic, including 115 plastic cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, 2 flip-flops and a nylon sack.
Indonesia's devastating
earthquake-tsunami combo last week has left 70,000 people homeless in the city of Palu, CBS News reported Thursday.
The death toll has climbed to more than 1,420 people since Friday, when the 7.5 magnitude earthquake and the 18-foot tsunami it triggered struck the island of Sulawesi.
"To achieve this, we encourage animal welfare organisations, community groups, youth and children's clubs, businesses and individuals to organize events in celebration of World Animal Day. Involvement is growing at an astonishing rate and it's now widely accepted and celebrated in a variety of different ways in many countries, with no regard to nationality, religion, faith or political ideology," the event's website says.
