A new company has begun clearing rainforest in an area of Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province earmarked to become the world’s largest oil palm plantation, in a vast project that has been mired in allegations of lawbreaking. If seen through to completion, the Tanah Merah project will generate an estimated $6 billion in timber and create […]
By Ayat S. Karokaro and adapted by Basten Gokkon Two Indonesian journalists who had reported on an illegal oil palm plantation in Sumatra while also allegedly trying to gain control of the crop have been found dead at the plantation. The body of Maraden Sianipar, 55, was found on Oct. 30 in a ditch in […]
By Sakinah Ummu Haniy, Hidayah Hamzah and Mirzha Hanifah Indonesia’s forest fires have made headlines globally over the past few weeks. This year’s forest fires have affected millions of people. Schools have closed in some areas due to unsafe levels of air pollution, while many people are suffering from respiratory illnesses. The haze has spread […]
Nearly 200 people have been arrested in Indonesia over their possible connections to the massive wildfires raging in the nation’s forest, officials said this week. Hundreds of wildfires have burned nearly 840,000 acres of forest in Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra this year, in the country’s worst fire crisis since 2015. Officials say that some 80 […]
By Taufik Wijaya The planned construction of a bridge and private port in southern Sumatra threatens to damage one of the last remaining habitats of the island’s critically endangered elephants. The project is part of the South Sumatra provincial government’s tourism development drive, under which it plans to build a bridge from the Sumatran mainland […]
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.” Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said President Joko Widodo […]
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. 1.Imagine Your […]
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 […]
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 […]
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