JAKARTA — Funds from illegal logging, mining and fishing are flowing into election campaigns in Indonesia, authorities have revealed. The announcement by the national anti-money-laundering watchdog, known as the PPATK,…
Bearded pigs play a prominent role in the lives of many people living on the island of Borneo. For some ethnic groups, they're a hunter’s most-prized quarry, providing an important…
In Sumatra, villagers occupied an oil palm plantation and set tires on fire; in the Bangka-Belitung Islands, they filled the local parliament building demanding action; in Borneo, paramilitary police were…
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 — The Indonesian government has rolled out a new fisheries management policy that, among other things, caps the catch quota for industrial fishers, but also allows foreign investment back…
JAKARTA — Activists have lambasted the Indonesian government’s proposal to include gas in its clean energy transition program funded by industrialized countries. They said the inclusion of gas-fired power plants…
In 2020, the Indonesian government set a goal of restoring 600,000 hectares, or nearly 1.5 million acres, of mangrove ecosystems by 2024. Progress toward that goal has been slow: Indonesia’s…
SEPAKU/BALIKPAPAN/JAKARTA, Indonesia — In 1977, when Darna was about 8 years old, her family moved from Indonesia’s central island of Java to Borneo, its largest. They were among the tens…
JAKARTA — Two major palm oil companies recently exited a committee that helps identify forest areas for protection, bringing the total number of firms quitting the framework since 2000 to…
MEDAN, Indonesia — An investigation into the violent death of an orangutan in northern Sumatra in January has shone a light on the persistent problem of human-wildlife conflict and illegal…
On his ninth birthday, Robertus Darren Radyan gave a present to each person who came to his party. Each guest got to take home a light-red flower pot that had…
JAKARTA — Marine observers in Indonesia have warned of a potential rise in illegal and unreported fishing in the wake of a new policy for how the government collects revenue…
Ahead of the presidential election in Brazil last October, deforestation in the Amazon reached its highest level in 15 years. Was this an anomaly, or part of a pattern? Are…
BATANG TORU, Indonesia — With fewer than 800 individuals remaining in the wild today, the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan isn’t just the most threatened great ape species in the world…
As mass coral bleaching events grow in frequency and intensity, scientists are finding out more about how corals, which make up the physical foundation of reefs, respond during times of…
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.…
When the palm oil industry began growing rapidly in Indonesia in the 1980s, the government developed a scheme aimed at ensuring communities would benefit. To gain subsidized funding, companies routinely…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has welcomed a recent decision by fisheries regulators to curtail the use of controversial fish-aggregating devices, or FADs, which critics blame for a steep decline…
In 2009, a group of Indonesian researchers published a report on the vulnerability to climate change of the eastern Indonesian island of Lombok, home to about 4 million people. Their…
SICANANG, Indonesia — In October 2019, the Sicanang Mangrove Forest ecotourism project launched as a mangrove tourism destination. At its launch, the project, in Sicanang village on the outskirts of…
More than a third of all elasmobranch (shark and ray) species are at risk of extinction due to overfishing. Indonesia is both a hotspot of elasmobranch biodiversity and one of…
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 — The Indonesian government is designing a new scheme to measure the long-term benefits provided by the country’s marine and coastal ecosystems. The mechanism, known as ocean accounting and…
EAST TANJUNG JABUNG, Indonesia — Ambo Angke trudged through the cemetery knowing he had been right to worry. A high tide surge had inundated the resting place here on the…
EAST LUWU, Indonesia — Environmental journalists investigating the impact of nickel mining on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have won a freedom-of-information ruling against local authorities, whose inability to release…
Each year, the European Union imports an estimated 4,000 metric tons of frogs’ legs. That sum is the equivalent of around 200 million frogs killed to feed demand, the majority…
AMBON, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia’s Maluku province say they will establish new marine protected areas this year, following from five created last year alone, as part of wider efforts…
BATAM, Indonesia — “There’s no more fish,” says Abdul Ganip, holding up a mostly empty flask containing a few prawns. “It's a quiet catch.” For decades, the 57-year-old has lived…
JAKARTA — Indonesia must develop a new feedstock alternative to palm oil as the government intensifies an ambitious biofuel program meant to move away from diesel, observers say. From February…
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…
