Between Aug. 4 and Aug. 7, security guards for a palm oil company allegedly shot and wounded five Tembé Indigenous people, in the latest flareup linked to a long-running land dispute. The incidents occurred in a part of the Amazonian state of Pará that’s been dubbed the “palm oil war” region, where Mongabay has over the past year documented the escalating tensions.
SAROLANGUN, Indonesia — On a night in early July, Solikin was awake chasing elephants past sunrise. The animals had entered the community’s oil palm fields and raised hell, mashing hundreds…
TALANG PARIT, Indonesia — For more than two decades, the residents of this Indigenous community in Riau province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, have watched as their lakes dried…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Karla Mendes is a fellow. A prominent Indigenous leader was shot in the head on May 14…
Indonesia’s biofuel program was supposed to be a boon for small farmers. But although the country’s biodiesel production has skyrocketed, many farmers complain that the program hasn’t benefited them. Farmers…
Think of a tropical rainforest being cleared for an oil palm plantation, and the first animal that comes to mind is probably an orangutan. But there’s another tree-dwelling species, not…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Nestled between a vast palm oil plantation and the Sumatran rainforest is Alue Buloh, a hamlet in Cot Girek village, North Aceh district. To reach it,…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Saleh Kadri, a young farmer from Leubok Pusaka village in North Aceh district, was on his way to his plantation when he spotted eight elephants on…
On Sunday mornings, my mother would grate coconut meat. She would squeeze the milk from the grated shreds, then cook the coconut milk in a saucepan over a medium heat.…
Indonesia is the biggest palm oil producer in the world. Alongside Malaysia, both countries dominate 85% of the global market. Palm oil is considered one of the strategic commodities in…
Climate protection policies restricting the import of goods produced through deforestation have increased in recent years, but there has been little research into whether these measures have had their intended…
The price of palm oil has doubled since the early weeks of the pandemic. In May 2020, the price of palm oil contracts sold on the Bursa Malaysia, the main…
New research comparing the carbon costs of oil palm plantations with those of rubber production finds that while oil palm cultivation is the more efficient process in terms of land…
Loans and credit from the British bank HSBC have helped support the unsustainable clearing of forests for oil palm plantations in Indonesia, Greenpeace said in a report published Tuesday. The…
As palm oil has become one of the most in-demand global commodities over the past several years, oil palm plantations have proliferated quickly throughout the tropics. Oil palm is currently…
2015 was supposed to be a big year for the palm oil industry — the year it proposed to reach a “tipping point” and begin predominantly producing and trading palm…
Agricultural expansion into tropical forests is an important driver of biodiversity loss — which scientists say has already become so severe across 60 percent of the Earth’s land surface that…
A new civil action group staged a protest against deadly haze pollution in the capital of Indonesia's Riau province on Monday. The Riau Pos newspaper reported hundreds demonstrated against the smoke…
President Joko Widodo visited a health center in the haze-hit province of Riau on Friday, as medical workers diagnosed more cases of respiratory diseases across the archipelago and Indonesia's neighbors…
Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s flight to visit firefighting efforts in Sumatra was diverted on Thursday after the region’s haze kept flying visibility below the legal minimum. Jokowi and Health Minister…
Singapore formally requested Wednesday that the Indonesian government provide details of companies it suspects of causing haze pollution. If Indonesia complies it could forerun a wave of new Singaporean legal…
Haze pollution continued to cover much of Southeast Asia on Tuesday as Malaysia said it would draft new laws and Indonesian officials maintained the archipelago was doing all it could…
International pressure on Indonesia to address haze pollution escalated on Monday after Malaysia’s prime minister closed thousands of schools and called on Jakarta to “take action.” Meanwhile, Indonesia’s state media…
Farmers in South Sumatra, an epicenter of Indonesia’s haze crisis, unfurled banners last week expressing their readiness to protect forests and peatlands from fire – and calling for President Joko…
mid cries that Indonesia’s central government is more concerned about stamping out the fires belching haze in Sumatra, which is downwind from Singapore and Malaysia, than in Kalimantan, which has…
As fires burn across Indonesia as badly as since the disaster of 1997, blanketing parts of the country and its neighbors in a noxious haze, a variety of assertions have…
Indonesia’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from oil palm developer PT Kallista Alam, which had been ordered to pay a staggering 366 billion rupiah ($26 million) in fines and…
With forest and peatland fires raging across large swaths of Indonesia, an oil palm developer in South Sumatra faces having its permit revoked after President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo paid one…
wo weeks ago, senior Indonesian officials slammed a commitment by five giant palm oil companies to purge their supply chains of deforestation, saying it hurts farmers, usurps the government's authority…
ith the demand landscape for Indonesian palm oil set for a seismic shift from export to domestic consumption, the result of a huge new government intervention, experts are wondering how…
