topic: Peatlands

topic: Peatlands

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Indonesian company defies order, still clearing peatlands in orangutan habitat
- Indonesian Pulpwood producer PT Mayawana Persada is continuing to clear peatlands on critical Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) habitat, despite a government order to stop clearing.
- An NGO coalition analysis found that 30,296 hectares (74,900 acres) of peatland, including 15,560 hectares (38,400 acres) of protected lands, had been converted as of March; 15,643 hectares (38,700 acres) of known Bornean orangutan habitat were cleared between 2016 and 2022.
- Conservationists are calling on the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to revoke the company’s permits.

Report links pulpwood estate clearing Bornean orangutan habitat to RGE Group
- NGOs have accused PT Mayawana Persada, a company with a massive pulpwood concession in Indonesian Borneo, of extensive deforestation that threatens both Indigenous lands and orangutan habitat.
- In a recent report, the NGOs also highlighted links that they say tie the company to Singapore-based paper and palm oil conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle (RGE).
- RGE has denied any affiliation with Mayawana Persada, despite findings of shared key personnel, operational management connections, and supply chain links.
- The report also suggests the Mayawana Persada plantation is gearing up to supply pulpwood in time for a massive production boost by RGE, which is expanding its flagship mill in Sumatra and building a new mill in Borneo.

Palm oil deforestation persists in Indonesia’s Leuser amid new mills, plantations
- Deforestation for palm oil persists in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, including inside a national park that’s supposed to be off-limits to plantation activity, a new investigation has found.
- The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) characterizes the current deforestation trend as a “death by a thousand cuts,” with a large number of small operators hacking away at the ecosystem, in contrast to past deforestation carried out by a small number of large concession holders.
- RAN’s investigation also identified two new palm oil processing mills near the deforesting concessions, indicating that the presence of the mills, which need a constant supply of palm fruit, may be a driver of the ongoing deforestation.
- There’s a high risk that mills in the area may ultimately be supplying deforestation-linked palm oil to major global consumer products companies, including those with stated no-deforestation policies.

Sumatra firefighters on alert as burning heralds start of Riau dry season
- On the northeast coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, the first of two annual dry seasons led to a spike in wildfires in some peatland areas in February.
- In the week ending March 2, Indonesian peatland NGO Pantau Gambut said 34 hotspots, possibly fires, were identified by satellite on peatlands in Riau province.
- Emergency services in the province have been concentrated to the east of the port city of Dumai, where a fire started in the concession of a palm oil company, according to local authorities.

Palm oil deforestation makes comeback in Indonesia after decade-long slump
- Deforestation for oil palm plantations has increased for the second year in a row in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, bucking a decade-long decline in forest loss.
- A third of the 2023 deforestation occurred on carbon-rich peatlands, raising the potential for massive greenhouse gas emissions as these areas are cleared and drained in preparation for planting.
- Historically, deforestation for plantations in Indonesia was concentrated on the island of Sumatra, but the surge in the past two years has been mostly on the islands of Indonesian Borneo and Papua.

2023 fires increase fivefold in Indonesia amid El Niño
- Nearly 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres, an area 15 times the size of Jakarta) burned in Indonesia between January and October 2023, according to environment and forest ministry data; El Niño and burning for new plantations contributed to this.
- 2023 was the worst fire season since 2019, when that year’s El Niño brought a prolonged dry season and fires so severe, they sent billowing smoke across Malaysia and Singapore.
- In the absence of local jobs, some people burn abandoned farmlands and turn them into new plantations as a way to make a living and survive.

Reversing progress, Indonesia pulp & paper drives up deforestation rates again
- Reversing years of progress, deforestation caused by Indonesia’s pulp and paper industry is on the rise, increasing fivefold between 2017 and 2022, according to a new analysis.
- The increase in deforestation follows dramatic declines that occurred after major wood pulp and paper companies adopted zero-deforestation commitments due to public pressure.
- In addition to deforestation, the pulp and paper industry is linked to land and forest fires and peat subsidence, which contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) that speed up global warming.

Video: For farmer imprisoned over wildfires, fear and poverty linger
- Sarijan, a farmer in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province, spent seven months in jail for setting a controlled fire on his land in 2019.
- Throughout the ordeal, he says he experienced violence in jail and extortion by the authorities.
- Sarijan is one of at least 200 farmers in Indonesian Borneo prosecuted for this offense since 2016, amid a crackdown by the government on land burning.
- To this day, Sarijan hasn’t resumed farming his land; as a result, he now has to buy food instead of growing it, driving an increase in his living costs.

Traditional small farmers burned by Indonesia’s war on wildfires
- An investigation by Mongabay based on court records and interviews shows police in Indonesia are increasingly charging small farmers for slash-and-burn practices.
- Prosecutions surged following a particularly catastrophic fire season in 2015, in response to which Indonesia’s president threatened to fire local law enforcement chiefs for not preventing burning in their jurisdictions.
- Most of those prosecuted were small farmers cultivating less than 2 hectares, and many were of old age and/or illiterate; several alleged they suffered extortion and abuse during their legal ordeal.
- Experts say law enforcers should be more judicious about the charges they bring, noting that a “targeted fire policy” should differentiate between various kinds of actors, such as traditional farmers, land speculators, and people hired to clear land by plantation firms.

New study pushes for protection of one of Africa’s ‘least understood treasures’
- A new study reveals the extent of a tropical water tower in Angola, which performs the same role as snow-capped mountains in the Northern Hemisphere.
- The Angolan Highlands Water Tower contains peatlands and freshwater lakes that supply major rivers in the region, and the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta in Botswana.
- Despite this vital hydrological role, the water tower currently has no formal protection.
- The team behind the study hopes it will help to strengthen the case for recognition of a vast portion of the water tower as a Ramsar Site of International Importance.

Burn now, pay later: Fines trickle in from Indonesia’s crackdown on forest fires
- Ten years since a landmark lawsuit over forest fires, the palm oil company at the center of the case has finally begun paying its $23 million fine in installments.
- The case against PT Kallista Alam (KA) was supposed to set an example for how the government is cracking down on companies that allow burning in their concessions, but has instead highlighted the difficulty of collecting on the fines.
- KA has paid just $3.6 million of its total fine, and despite a 2021 regulation barring fine payments in installments, the company has been allowed to stagger its payments over time.
- The company is one of 22 sued by the government since 2013 for fires; 14 of these have been found liable and ordered to pay a combined 5.6 trillion rupiah ($353 million), but only one has paid in full.

Indonesian activist Gita Syahrani wins $3m award for work on sustainable growth
- Global philanthropy Climate Breakthrough has awarded Indonesian environmental activist Gita Syahrani $3 million in grants along with capacity-building resources to support her projects in developing alternative economic models for local governments across Indonesia.
- Gita has for many years focused on supporting district governments protect peatlands and forests while developing policies for sustainable economic growth.
- Gita said she is keen to explore and include approaches that are more mindful and spiritual in encouraging more people to be active in protecting, rehabilitating and recovering the balance between people and the environment.
- Gita is the second Indonesian awardee of Climate Breakthrough grants, following environmentalist Arief Rabik in 2019; her fellow awardee this year is Jane Fleming Kleeb of the U.S., a prominent activist against the Keystone XL pipeline.

In Venezuela, a mysterious fire sparks concerns for rare mountain wildlife
- A fire on the top of Mount Roraima in Venezuela has baffled scientists, park guards and local community leaders, who have never seen a fire in the area and worry that the rare mountain ecosystem could face increasing threats.
- A photography expedition encountered a mysterious fire that may have been manmade, a lightning strike — or something much more spectacular.
- More resources are needed to educate tourists and locals about the tepuy ecosystem, as well as to monitor human behavior there, experts said.

Report alleges APP continues deforestation 10 years after pledge to stop
- A new Greenpeace report alleges that pulp and paper giant APP continues to clear forests and develop peatlands 10 years after adopting its landmark 2013 pledge to stop destroying natural forests for its plantations.
- The report identifies 75,000 hectares (185,300 acres) of deforestation in APP supplier concessions or companies connected to APP between February 2013 and 2022 — an area the size of New York City.
- APP has also changed the start date of its no-deforestation policy from 2013 to 2020, which would allow the company at some point in the future to accept new suppliers that deforested between 2013 and 2020.
- APP denies allegations of continued deforestation and says its suppliers have ceased forest conversions since 2013; the company also says it has committed to peatland restoration.

Young firefighter killed battling inferno in Borneo orangutan habitat
- Said Jaka Pahlawan, an oil palm plantation foreman, was killed on Sept. 30 while fighting a fire in Indonesia’s Tanjung Puting National Park, a key orangutan habitat.
- The 23-year-old worked for PT Kumai Sentosa, a plantation company that had been fined in 2019 by an Indonesian court over wildfires on its concession.
- The fire this time around was in the national park, where Jaka and other employees went to tackle the blaze as government firefighters responded to fires elsewhere.
- Friends of the young firefighter told Mongabay that Jaka was a dedicated professional who had participated in conservation activities in the area.

Deforestation surges in hotspot of critically endangered Bornean orangutans
- Deforestation within a pulpwood concession that overlaps with key orangutan habitat in Indonesian Borneo has escalated in recent months.
- Concession holder PT Mayawana Persada cleared 14,000 hectares (34,600 acres) of forest between January and August, or 40 times the size of New York’s Central Park, of which 13,000 hectares (32,100 acres) were areas identified as orangutan habitat.
- In July alone, the company cleared 4,970 hectares (12,300 acres), the highest monthly deforestation figure recorded.

Calls for crackdown intensify as fire crisis heats up across Indonesia
- A senior member of Indonesia’s parliament has called for tougher law enforcement as firefighters continued to battle wildfires across the archipelago.
- Indonesia’s environment ministry says it had sealed off 35 land concession, including several oil palm concessions, in the year to date.
- The fires are also fueling a diplomatic spat with neighboring Malaysia, which blames poor air quality there on the haze blowing from fires in Sumatra and Borneo.

Indonesia’s peatland restoration claims in question as fires flare up
- The Indonesian government says companies have restored 3.7 million hectares (9.1 million acres) of peatland — an area larger than Belgium — in an effort to prevent the annual peat fires.
- But this claim has come into question following an increase in the number of hotspots in peatlands, including inside oil palm concessions that had burned in past years and went up in flames again this year.
- An investigation by The Gecko Project found the government appeared to have inflated the figure of 3.7 million hectares, with the actual figure derived from the government’s own methodology closer to 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres).
- Fires on carbon-rich peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions from Indonesia, which in turn is one of the world’s biggest emitters.

Sumatran province hangs on for late rain as El Niño fires bring heat and sickness
- Wildfires have returned to Indonesia as the country enters its dry season amid an El Niño year.
- In Palembang city, new respiratory infections will likely soon eclipse the total diagnosed in 2022.
- Meteorology officials expect the monsoon to begin in parts of Sumatra and Borneo islands in October, but warn dry conditions will persist in much of Indonesia until November.

Experts slam massive ‘discount’ in fines for Indonesian palm oil billionaire
- Environmental experts have criticized an Indonesian court ruling that extends a palm oil billionaire’s sentence for corruption by just one year while slashing his fines by nearly 95%.
- The country’s highest court of appeal upheld the initial conviction of Surya Darmadi for conspiring with a local official to illegally obtain licenses for his oil palm plantation, but cut his fines from $2.7 billion to just $144 million.
- Experts who testified in Surya’s prosecution say the latest ruling sets a bad precedent for future law enforcement against corruption and environmental crimes in the country.
- And without fines, they warn, there can be no efforts to recover the carbon-rich and biodiverse peat ecosystems in Sumatra that Surya’s plantations destroyed.

As fires threaten Indonesian forests, actions like agroforestry promotion are needed (commentary)
- Indonesia contains the world’s third largest swath of rainforest, but the country’s forested areas have been declining sharply each year.
- Alongside the usual causes, fire has also become a significant driver of deforestation: since 2001, fires have accounted for 10% of forest loss, and this trend is currently intensifying amid the El Niño weather phenomenon, which brings drier conditions.
- “Promoting and supporting agroforestry, alongside other sustainable land use practices, can be a powerful step toward preserving Indonesia’s forests, mitigating climate change, and safeguarding the well-being of both local communities and the global environment,” a new op-ed via the country’s Ministry of Finance argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Deforestation for palm oil continues in Indonesia’s ‘orangutan capital’
- Carbon-rich peatlands continue to be cleared and drained in an Indonesian protected wildlife reserve known as the “orangutan capital of the world,” with 26 kilometers (16 miles) of new canals dug so far in 2023, up from 9 km (5.6 mi) in 2022, according to an investigation by the advocacy group Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
- While new plantations appeared to have not been established yet along the new canal channels, there is a mosaic of illegal oil palm around the locations of the new canal, indicating a future development of palm oil.
- As new canals continue to be dug, deforestation has also picked up, reaching 372 hectares (919 acres) in the first six months of 2023, a 57% increase from the same period in 2022.
- RAN has called on global brands like Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever to address the development of new canals and illegal plantations as their supply chains are tainted with illegal palm oil from the wildlife reserve.

El Niño leads to more fires and toxic air pollution in Indonesia
- Indonesia saw an increase in land and forest fires recently as the El Niño weather phenomenon brings a prolonged dry season.
- Official data show a fourfold increase in hotspots up to September, compared with the same period last year.
- Residents in some major cities like Palembang have fallen ill due to toxic smog from the fires.
- Carbon-rich peatlands, which have been protected and partly restored through government policies and measures, are also burning, with more than 14,000 hotspots detected in peat landscapes in August alone.

Palm oil, pulpwood firms not doing enough to prevent peat fires, analysis shows
- More than 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of oil palm, pulpwood and other concessions across Indonesia are at high risk of being burned because of companies’ failure to restore the peat landscape, according to a new analysis.
- This represents more than half of the Switzerland-sized area of tropical peatland throughout Indonesia that’s considered a high fire risk.
- With many concession holders still not doing enough to restore the peat landscapes in their concessions, researchers question the effectiveness of government mandates and certification schemes in preventing peat fires.
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) credits its early fire detection system with helping member concessions achieve lower numbers of hotspots than noncertified concessions, but groups like Greenpeace dispute the findings.

In Sumatra’s Jambi, community forest managers fish to protect peatlands
- A community in Indonesia’s Jambi province has resorted to fish farming to raise money for its efforts to prevent wildfires in the community.
- In 2015, around 80% of the province’s peat forest was damaged during the Southeast Asia wildfire crisis.
- Jambi-based nonprofit KKI Warsi cites the number of peatland canals as the greatest barrier to replenishing the wetland.

Indonesian oil palm firm slapped with $61m fine for fires on its plantation
- Indonesia’s Supreme Court has upheld a $61 million fine against palm oil company PT Rafi Kamajaya Abadi for fires on its oil palm plantation in western Borneo.
- The fires burned an area spanning 2,560 hectares (6,326 acres), or more than seven times the size of New York City’s Central Park.
- To date, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry has filed lawsuits against 22 companies for fires on their concessions, 13 of which have been found liable and must pay fines after exhausting all avenues of appeal.

Nearly 85% of Indonesian peatlands aren’t protected, study shows
- This article has been withdrawn from publication by Mongabay.

With El Niño likely, Indonesia’s volunteer firefighters gear up — with new gear
- More than 11,000 community firefighters across Indonesia are readying for a likely El Niño year, better prepared than ever before.
- One community outfit of five volunteers in Sumatra’s province is monitoring the local peatland with the help of a drone procured from the village budget.
- Officials hope that a legal crackdown on farmers burning combined with improved community capacity can limit wildfires this year.

Peatlands, Indonesia’s carbon trove, are mostly unprotected, study finds
- A new study finds that less than 16% of Indonesia’s peatlands in need of conservation measures are currently protected.
- The remainder, covering a combined area nearly twice the size of Belgium, are located outside of protected areas.
- This indicates that current conservation and restoration efforts aren’t sufficient and need to be increased, researchers say.
- They offer their study as a tool for policymakers to precisely identify peat areas where different types of interventions should be prioritized.

High-carbon peat among 1,500 hectares cleared for Indonesia’s food estate
- A number of reports have found that an Indonesian government program to establish large-scale agricultural plantations across the country has led to deforestation.
- More than 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of forests, including carbon-rich peatlands, have been cleared in Central Kalimantan province for the so-called food estate program, according to a spatial analysis by the NGO Pantau Gambut.
- Last year, the NGO Kaoem Telapak detected 100 hectares (250 acres) of deforestation in food estate areas in North Sumatra.
- Villagers whose lands have been included in the program have also reported an increase in the severity of floods since their forests were cleared to make way for the food estates.

Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the world’ is at a turning point
- Mongabay Explores is a podcast series exploring the world’s unique places, species and the people working to save them.
- This first episode in our fourth season explores the Congo Basin, its vast biodiversity, environmental challenges and conservation solutions.
- Home to the world’s second-largest rainforest, it also contains unique flora and fauna found nowhere else and some of the world’s most carbon-rich peatlands.
- Featured on this episode are Conserv Congo founder Adams Cassinga and Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, who discuss the roadblocks to protecting peatlands and rainforests from resource extraction, the challenges with foreign aid and the difficult situation locals face in a nation wracked by conflict and insufficient critical infrastructure.

Report: Indonesia’s ‘food estate’ program repeating failures of past projects
- Some of the large-scale food plantations established by the Indonesian government under a “food estate” program have reportedly been abandoned.
- A field investigation in 2022 and 2023 found wild shrubs and abandoned excavators on plots of lands that had been cleared for cassava and rice in Central Kalimantan province.
- Activists say the program’s failings were apparent from the start, with a lack of proper impact assessments carried out prior to selecting sites and clearing forests for crops ill-suited to the soil.
- The program’s trajectory mirrors that of the Mega Rice Project from the mid-1990s, which failed spectacularly to boost yields, and left in its wake widespread destruction of carbon-rich peatlands.

Deforestation drives fire risk in Borneo amid a warming climate, study finds
- Annual peatland fires in Indonesia affect ecology, air quality, nutrient distribution of the soil, and human health.
- A modeling study finds that under current climate change projections and with rapid deforestation in Borneo, fire risk increases by the end of the century.
- The findings show that deforestation is a significant factor in fire risk.
- While local governments can’t control global climate change, they work to stem forest lost and invest in reforestation of tropical forests and revitalization of peatlands to mitigate fire risks in the future, researchers say.

Loss of wetlands threatens South Sumatra’s rich fish-preserving tradition
- Rural communities in South Sumatra, an Indonesian province that’s two-fifths wetlands, have long relied on catching freshwater fish as a source of livelihood.
- The region is renowned for its variety of preserved fish products, which are sold throughout Indonesia.
- However, the wetlands are disappearing at a rapid rate, filled in to make way for oil palm plantations and highways, and threatening the region’s long-running fish-preserving tradition.
- Today, most of the freshwater fish processed here comes from fish farms, and include exotic species not native to the region, which some say doesn’t taste as good as the traditional species.

Indonesian palm oil billionaire gets 15 years for corruption
- A Jakarta court has sentenced palm oil tycoon Surya Darmadi to 15 years in prison for corruption that allowed him to establish illegal palm oil plantations in Indonesia’s Riau province.
- The court also ordered him to pay more than $2.7 billion in fines and restitution for the environmental and social damage caused by the illegal plantations, believed to be the costliest corruption case in Indonesia’s history.
- Surya fled Indonesia in 2014 after being charged in another corruption case, and only surrendered to the authorities last year.
- Palm oil from his plantations was exported to six countries: India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Kenya, Italy and Singapore.

Peatland restoration in temperate nations could be carbon storage bonanza
- Much maligned and undervalued over the centuries, temperate peatlands have seen a lot damage in that time — drained for agriculture, planted with trees, mined for horticulture and fuel. But in an age of escalating climate change, people are now turning to restoration.
- As potent carbon sequesters, peatlands have only recently been given new attention, with active restoration taking place in many nations around the world. This story focuses on groundbreaking temperate peatland restoration efforts in the U.S. Southeast, Scotland and Canada.
- Every temperate peatland is different, making each restoration project unique, but the goal is almost always the same: restore the natural hydrology of the peatland so it can maximize carbon storage and native biodiversity, and improve its resilience in the face of climate change and increasingly common fires in a warming world.

As dry season looms, Sumatra villagers hope their peat restoration pays off
- Community-led efforts to restore degraded peatlands in Indonesia’s Riau province could be put to the test in early 2023 as the dry season sets in.
- Riau is the perennial epicenter of the burning season on Sumatra Island, and is expected to have a more intense dry season after three consecutive years of wetter-than-usual conditions due to La Niña.
- A broad coalition of local governments, communities, researchers and NGOs have been working to restore peatlands that had been drained in preparation for planting, with the hope that restoring water levels will prevent burning.
- As part of the restoration programs, communities are also adapting their farming practices, learning to prepare the land without the use of fire, and picking crops that are suited for the wetter soil conditions.

Nearly half of replanted trees die, but careful site selection can help
- A recent survey of reforestation efforts in South and Southeast Asia found that about half of trees planted as part of such projects died within a decade.
- The study also identified factors that increase the chances of survival; for example, trees planted in sites with existing forest were more likely to survive than trees planted on open land.
- The researchers also noted that few projects carry out long-term monitoring after the initial planting, even though it takes decades for forests to regrow.

Peat on land and kelp at sea as Argentina protects tip of Tierra del Fuego
- Argentinian legislators recently approved a law to permanently protect the Mitre Peninsula at the tip of South America, which harbors vast peatlands and kelp forests that host an assortment of species.
- The Mitre Peninsula is thought to hold about 84% of Argentina’s peatlands, which are known to sequester about 315 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, roughly equivalent to three years of emissions in Argentina.
- The region also holds more than 30% of the world’s kelp forests, another key store of carbon.

Scientists plead for protection of peatlands, the world’s carbon capsules
- As the United Nations Biodiversity Conference begins, a group of researchers from more than a dozen countries are calling for worldwide peatland protection and restoration for the protection of species and because of the vast amounts of carbon they contain.
- In a signed statement released Dec. 1, more than 40 scientists note that peatlands contain twice as much carbon as is found in all the world’s forests.
- As long as peatlands remain waterlogged, that carbon will stay in the soil; but if they’re degraded or drained, as around 12% of the world’s peatlands have been, they quickly become a source of atmospheric carbon.
- The scientists are asking for a more prominent role in international negotiations to address climate change and species’ global loss.

Protecting the peatlands and woodlands in Angola’s ‘source of life’
- As negotiations over slowing climate change unfold at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, a group of scientists and conservationists is pushing for recognition of the Angolan Highlands as a vital carbon sink.
- The network of rivers, lakes and peatlands surrounded by miombo woodland in these highlands together maintain the year-round flow of water into the Okavango River Basin, and ultimately the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta in Botswana.
- Isolated for decades by civil war, in peacetime the Angolan Highlands have increasingly attracted returning populations to log, drain its bogs, and clear forests for agriculture.
- The National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project is pushing for protection of vital parts of the highlands to safeguard their role as a “water tower” for countries in the region — and prevent the peatlands from turning from a carbon sink into a carbon source.

Report unveils ties between Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas and Canada’s Paper Excellence
- An investigative report has revealed that Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas has hidden ties with Canadian paper company Paper Excellence, which indicates that the former is secretly controlling the latter.
- The ties are hidden through a multilayered corporate structure with holding companies in numerous offshore jurisdictions that are characterized by high levels of corporate secrecy, such as the Netherlands, Labuan (Malaysia), the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong, according to the report.
- Paper Excellence could soon become one of the biggest pulp and paper suppliers in North America, as it’s in the process of acquiring Resolute Forest Products, Canada’s third-largest producer of sawn wood.

Clothes sourced from plants could expand deforestation – or abate it
- Cellulose fabrics are fibers extracted from plants and transformed into clothing. Fuelled in a large part by promises of higher environmental integrity, cellulose fibers are the fastest growing feedstock of the textile market.
- Companies dominating the market have brought with them systemic problems that have seen primary forests felled, peatlands drained and waste management poorly managed.
- Despite ongoing sustainability issues, the future of the market is promising, experts say, as new innovations and companies have a fighting chance to bring new materials and manufacturing processes to market.

Locals in the dark about oil auctions in DRC: report
- Greenpeace Africa and a group of environmental organizations have released a report in one of the first field investigations into local views on a wave of anticipated oil exploration.
- Researchers visited fourteen villages in four of the proposed oil blocks, finding that most residents didn’t know about the government’s plans.
- This week the DRC’s environment minister rejected an appeal by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry to remove some blocks from the auction.

Nearness to roads and palm oil mills a key factor in peatland clearing by smallholders
- A new study in Indonesia’s palm oil capital of Riau has found that proximity to roads and processing mills are key factors determining whether small farmers expand their cultivation into peat swamp forests.
- This is because of the need to transport freshly harvested palm fruit to mills quickly: without the transport infrastructure that large plantations enjoy, easy access to roads and mills is paramount for smallholders.
- The study also identified zoning and geographic factors as other important drivers of smallholder oil palm expansion into peatland, along with the presence of large concessions.
- The study’s authors say the findings can help inform policies targeting areas of peatland for protection, and on helping small farmers improve their income without clearing more land to plant oil palms.

In Brazil’s Pantanal, early flames signal a ‘new normal’
- Fresh fires are engulfing swaths of the Pantanal, including Pantanal do Rio Negro State Park, a protected reserve with a rich biodiversity of plant and animal species. The flames have affected at least 10,062 hectares of the 78,302-hectare park.
- These fires follow devastating blazes in 2020 and 2021, which consumed huge parts of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetlands which straddles the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia.
- Fire brigades fear more fires may be in store for the Pantanal, as ranchers and farmers continue to use fire to clear agricultural plots of land, despite a ban prohibiting this practice during the region’s dry season.
- Environmentalists warn a changing climate is having a devastating impact on the Pantanal, fueling fires that are more frequent.

In Indonesia’s forest fire capital, the dry season brings yet more burning
- The onset of the dry season in Indonesia’s Riau province has seen flare up and multiply, some of them believed to have been set deliberately.
- More than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of land has burned so far this year, a sharp increase from the 169 hectares (417 acres) in the first three months of 2022.
- The number of fires has prompted the provincial government to declare an emergency status and call for urgent measures, including cloud seeding to induce rainfall.
- Police have arrested nine people for suspected arson; although the practice is banned by law, farmers and plantation operators often use fire as a cheap tool to clear their concessions of vegetation ahead of planting.

A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’
- Sadikin, a resident of Indonesia’s Riau province, converted his parents’ abandoned vegetable garden into an arboretum of peat-friendly tree species.
- In 2020, he won an award for his dedication to local firefighting efforts, including his innovation to dig shallow “hydrant” wells to speed up firefighting in peatlands.
- Sadikin and his fellow villagers have also adapted their pineapple cultivation system to include firebreaks, and use their crop to weave containers that can replace plastic bags.

In Congo, a carbon sink like no other risks being carved up for oil
- New research has revealed that the peatlands of the Congo Basin are 15% larger than originally thought.
- This area of swampy forest holds an estimated 29 billion metric tons of carbon, which is the amount emitted globally through the burning of fossil fuels in three years.
- Beginning July 28, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where two-thirds of these peatlands lie, will auction off the rights to explore for oil in 27 blocks across the country.
- Scientists and conservationists have criticized the move, which the government says is necessary to fund its operations. Opponents say the blocks overlap with parts of the peatlands, mature rainforest, protected areas, and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Palm oil producer mired in legal troubles still razing Sumatran forest
- A palm oil company has resumed clearing forest in its concession in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, the only place on Earth where tigers, orangutans and rhinos coexist.
- Analysis of satellite imagery by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) shows the company, PT Cemerlang Abadi (CA), cleared 309 hectares (761 acres) of secondary and regenerating forests between September 2021 and February 2022.
- RAN says it’s possible that palm oil from trees grown on this deforested land may have entered the global supply chain, as CA isn’t blacklisted by any of the major brands or traders that buy palm oil.

As dry season starts in Indonesia, risk of fires — and haze — looms
- There’s a degree of risk that Southeast Asia may see the return of transboundary haze this year from forest fires in Indonesia, according to a new report by a Singaporean think tank.
- The key driver of that risk is the currently high price of palm oil on the world market, which could pose an incentive for farmers in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of palm oil, to expand their plantations, including by clearing land with fire.
- In anticipation of the dry season, which starts in July, some local governments in Indonesia are putting in place policies to prevent fires, including sanctions for companies using fire to clear their concessions.

Draining tropical peatlands for oil palms isn’t just bad — it’s unnecessary, study shows
- Oil palms growing in rewetted peatlands show no decline in palm fruit yields compared to those in drained peatlands, a new study shows.
- This debunks the long-held thinking in the palm oil industry that draining the carbon-rich peat soil is necessary to maintain yields on peatlands.
- Instead, rewetting peatlands should have net positive effects for smallholders by reducing the risk of fires that can damage property, plantations and human health.
- The study also finds that conserving peatland forests supports bird biodiversity, as a richer variety of bird life is found in peat forests than in adjacent oil palm plantations.

In the DRC’s forests, a tug-of-war between oil and aid
- At the COP26 climate summit, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Féelix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced a $500 million aid package to protect forests in the Central African country.
- Part of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, the announcement was one of the top headlines at the summit.
- Now, with the DRC set to auction off oil blocs in carbon-rich peatlands, questions are being raised about whether the package addresses the threat posed by industrial logging and oil drilling.

Canada mining push puts major carbon sink and Indigenous lands in the crosshairs
- A massive mining project called the Ring of Fire is being proposed in Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, a region that houses one of the biggest peatland complexes in the world and is home to several Indigenous communities.
- According to the federal and provincial governments, this region hosts one of the “most promising mineral development opportunities,” which is expected to generate jobs and revenues in the remote region.
- Environmentalists say the proposed development threatens to degrade peatlands, which act as a massive carbon store, and could lead to an increase in emissions; First Nations communities have also voiced concerns about mining impacts on traditional lands and livelihoods.
- Many of the affected First Nations have issued moratoriums against the project or have taken the provincial government to court, citing treaty violations and lack of consultations by the governments prior to greenlighting the project and issuing mining claims.

Sumatra palm plantations the usual suspects as unusual burning razes peatlands
- Fires have swept through large swaths of peatland forest in the western part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island since the start of the year, an area that usually sees much smaller, controlled fires.
- Environmental activists say they suspect the fires might be linked to palm oil companies with plantations in and around the burned areas.
- They warn the burning could get worse in the coming months, with the dry season in this part of Sumatra expected to peak only in August.

Oil exploration in DR Congo peatland risks forests, climate and local communities
- The Democratic Republic of Congo is putting 16 oil exploration blocks up for auction, including nine in the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale.
- Environmentalists warn that oil exploration and infrastructure for production could release huge amounts of carbon stored in the peatland and threaten the rights of local communities.
- The Congolese government says it needs to exploit its natural resources in order to generate income to develop the country, much as countries in other parts of the world have done before it.

2021 tropical forest loss figures put zero-deforestation goal by 2030 out of reach
- The world lost a Cuba-sized area of tropical forest in 2021, putting it far off track from meeting the no-deforestation goal by 2030 that governments and companies committed to at last year’s COP26 climate summit.
- Deforestation rates remained persistently high in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the world’s two biggest expanses of tropical forest, negating the decline in deforestation seen in places like Indonesia and Gabon.
- The diverging trends in the different countries show that “it’s the domestic politics of forests that often really make a key difference,” says leading forest governance expert Frances Seymour.
- The boreal forests of Eurasia and North America also experienced a spike in deforestation last year, driven mainly by massive fires in Russia, which could set off a feedback loop of more heating and more burning.

Indonesia’s Riau province declares state of emergency ahead of fire season
- Almost every year vast swaths of Southeast Asia are covered in toxic haze, which causes air quality to reach hazardous levels and creates major health, environmental and economic problems.
- Recorded since the early ’70s, the smoke is almost entirely a result of large forest and peatland fires in Indonesia that are often illegally started to clear land for oil palm plantations.
- The governor of Indonesia’s Riau province in Sumatra, which, along with Borneo, is a primary location of the fires, has declared an emergency alert status to increase and expedite prevention and extinguishing efforts ahead of this year’s fire season.
- A national environmental NGO says the alert status shows the government has again failed to prevent the fires, and that the existing mitigation efforts fail to tackle the root of the problem.

Chocolate frog? New burrowing frog species unearthed in Amazon’s rare peatlands
- Researchers dug up a new-to-science species of burrowing frog in the Peruvian Amazon that resembles chocolate. The frog has been nicknamed the tapir frog for its distinctive-looking snout.
- Herpetologists used the frog’s call to locate and dig up three individual frogs. DNA analyses confirmed that, although the species was known to locals, it had not yet been described by science.
- The team found the small frogs in one of the rarest habitats in the Amazon rainforest, the Amazon peatlands. A past study found that peatlands in the Peruvian Amazon store 10 times the amount of carbon as nearby undisturbed rainforest.
- The discovery was made during a rapid inventory of the Lower Putumayo Basin. A conservation area is proposed for the region and researchers say the tapir frog is yet another reason to conserve this peatland and the surrounding area.

Climate change a threat to human well-being and health of the planet: New IPCC report
- The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report on the impacts of climate change on people, detailing areas of vulnerability and steps for adaptation to the changes brought about by Earth’s warming temperatures.
- The report, the second of three that will be part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment, highlights the importance of Indigenous and local knowledge in grappling with climate change and its effects on weather, water availability and food sources.
- It also notes that some segments of society, especially the most vulnerable, will bear a disproportionate burden as a result of climate change.
- The authors of the report and other climate researchers emphasize that urgent action is needed, both to address the causes of climate change and improve the capability of people to adapt to it.

Fires threaten vital peatland in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego
- Fires that started in mid-January continue to burn through forest, peatland and grassland near Chile’s Karukinka Natural Park on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of the Americas.
- Conservationists are especially worried about the damage being done to the peatlands, an ecosystem that sequesters twice as much carbon as the Earth’s entire forest cover.
- Members of the Selk’nam Indigenous group, which was expelled from the area more than a century ago and is now attempting to return, say they’re concerned about the preservation of their ancestral territory.
- Due to the logistical difficulties of combating fires in such a remote area, rangers at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) say they’re hoping for international assistance from Argentina and the United States.

Indonesia on track with peatland restoration, but bogged down with mangroves
- Programs to restore areas of degraded tropical peatland and mangroves had mixed fortunes in their first year, with the former racing to 25% of its four-year target, and the latter achieving less than 6%.
- Officials and experts say a key obstacle to the mangrove restoration program is the opposition of the communities clearing the mangrove forests to establish shrimp and fish farms.
- Lack of funding was also an issue, with the mangrove budget slashed and redirected toward Indonesia’s COVID-19 pandemic response.
- Experts say the government needs to find a middle ground with shrimp and fish farmers, including by helping them boost their productivity so they can operate smaller farms and dedicate a greater area to rehabilitation.

The year in rainforests 2021
- 2021 was a year where tropical forests featured more prominently in global headlines than normal thanks to rising recognition of the role they play in addressing climate change and biodiversity loss.
- Despite speculation in the early months of the pandemic that slowing economic activity might diminish forest clearing, loss of both primary forests and tree cover in the tropics accelerated between 2019 and 2020. We don’t yet know how much forest was cut down in 2021, but early indications like rising deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon suggest that forest loss will be on the high end of the range from the past decade.
- The following is a look at some of the major tropical rainforest storylines from 2021. It is not an exhaustive review.

The past, present and future of the Congo peatlands: 10 takeaways from our series

This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay published a four-part series on the peatlands of the Congo Basin. Only in 2017 did a team of Congolese and British scientists discover that a […]
Indonesian peat restoration has more benefits than it costs, study finds
- The benefits of effective Indonesian peatland restoration — blocking drainage canals to restore water levels and reestablishing vegetation cover — will outweigh the cost of restoration, according to a new study.
- Following the severe fire season of 2015 that destroyed vast swaths of peatland, the administration of President Joko Widodo has targeted restoring 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) of degraded peatland across the archipelago.
- The authors of the new study used satellite data and models to estimate that, if completed, peatland restoration would have contributed significant reductions for 2004-2015 in fire losses and damages, CO2 emissions, PM2.5 particle emissions, health-related losses, and land-cover losses.
- Indonesia has 21 million hectares of peatland that stores an estimated 57 million metric tons of carbon, roughly 55% of the world’s tropical peatland carbon.

Carbon and communities: The future of the Congo Basin peatlands
- Scientific mapping in 2017 revealed that the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale in the Congo Basin are the largest and most intact in the world’s tropics.
- That initial work, first published in the journal Nature, was just the first step, scientists say, as work continues to understand how the peatlands formed, what threats they face from the climate and industrial uses like agriculture and logging, and how the communities of the region appear to be coexisting sustainably.
- Researchers say investing in studying and protecting the peatlands will benefit the global community as well as people living in the region because the Cuvette Centrale holds a vast repository of carbon.
- Congolese researchers and leaders say they are eager to safeguard the peatlands for the benefit of everyone, but they also say they need support from abroad to do so.

‘Cooling the climate for 10,000 years’: How saving wetlands can help save the world
- From the vast frozen mires of the arctic to the peat swamps of Asia: “all wetlands are under threat,” said Jane Madgwick, CEO of Wetlands International. “We’re losing them three times as fast as forests.”
- Peat swamps, or peatlands, are particularly effective at storing carbon, which has accumulated over centuries and even millennia as dead plant matter became trapped in waterlogged soil.
- But if drained or otherwise damaged, peat quickly turns from carbon sink to carbon source.
- As nations race to protect and replant forests in an effort to curtail global warming, wetlands experts such as Madgwick are urging leaders to place similar importance on wetland conservation and restoration.

Holding agriculture and logging at bay in the Congo peatlands
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin are perhaps the most intact in the tropics, but threats from logging, agriculture and extractive industries could cause their rapid degradation, scientists say.
- In 2021, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced that it was planning to end a moratorium on the issuance of logging concessions that had been in place for nearly two decades.
- The move raised concerns among conservation groups, who say the moratorium should remain in place to protect the DRC’s portion of the world’s second-largest rainforest.
- Today, timber concession boundaries overlap with the peatlands, and though some companies say they won’t cut trees growing on peat, environmental advocates say that any further issuance of logging concessions in the DRC would be irresponsible.

Layers of carbon: The Congo Basin peatlands and oil
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin may be sitting on top of a pool of oil, though exploration has yet to confirm just how big it may be.
- Conservationists and scientists argue that the carbon contained in this England-size area of peat, the largest in the tropics, makes keeping them intact more valuable, not to mention the habitat and resources they provide for the region’s wildlife and people.
- Researchers calculate that the peatlands contain 30 billion metric tons of carbon, or about the amount humans produce in three years.
- As the governments of the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo work to develop their economies, they, along with many policymakers worldwide, argue that the global community has a responsibility to help fund the protection of the peatlands to keep that climate-warming carbon locked away.

The ‘idea’: Uncovering the peatlands of the Congo Basin
- In 2017, a team of scientists from the U.K. and the Republic of Congo announced the discovery of a massive peatland the size of England in the Congo Basin.
- Sometimes called the Cuvette Centrale, this peatland covers 145,529 square kilometers (56,189 square miles) in the northern Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and holds about 20 times as much carbon as the U.S. releases from burning fossil fuels in a year.
- Today, the Congo Basin peatlands are relatively intact while supporting nearby human communities and a variety of wildlife species, but threats in the form of agriculture, oil and gas exploration and logging loom on the horizon.
- That has led scientists, conservationists and governments to look for ways to protect and better understand the peatlands for the benefit of the people and animals they support and the future of the global climate.

With La Niña conditions back, is it good news for tropical forests?
- La Niña conditions have developed across the Pacific Ocean for the second year in a row, according to forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
- A phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation ocean-atmosphere cycle, La Niña heralds broadly cooler and wetter conditions across the tropics, with above-average rainfall predicted for important tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia and South America.
- Although the current conditions emerge toward the end of the fire season in the Amazon and Indonesia, experts say these biomes will benefit from wet conditions conducive to forest and peatland growth and recovery.
- Studies indicate that climate change will increase the frequency and severity of La Niña and El Niño events, which will occur against the backdrop of a warmer world, with inevitable implications for natural ecosystems and livelihoods.

Palm oil firm that dried out its land held not liable for fires that followed
- Indonesia’s highest court has upheld a ruling clearing a palm oil company of responsibility for fires in its concession in Central Kalimantan province.
- Environmental experts say this flies in the face of evidence showing that the firm didn’t have adequate equipment to tackle fires and that the fires started in areas it had recently cleared and drained.
- They warn the verdict sets a worrying precedent for future prosecutions of companies with fires on their concessions, and counters Indonesia’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land use.

Paper giants’ expansion plans raise fears of greater deforestation in Indonesia
- Two paper giants, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL), plan to significantly expand their production capacity in Indonesia.
- Activists warn that these plans could lead to increased deforestation of natural forest and peatlands in Indonesia to plant the pulpwood trees needed to meet this capacity, exacerbating the annual fire season.
- They say the projects are benefiting from the Indonesian government’s deregulation initiative that strips away environmental and social protections across a wide swath of industries, including pulp and paper.
- In response to the expansion plans, a coalition of 33 NGOs has sent a letter to APP’s financiers and buyers, asking them to refrain from doing business with the company.

Win for Malaysian forest after government backs down on development plan
- Plans to remove protections from the Kuala Langat North Forest Reserve, a protected forest close to Kuala Lumpur in Peninsular Malaysia, have been cancelled by the local government.
- The Selangor state government will regazette the area as a protected forest following an intense civil society campaign against the plans to build a “mixed use” development covering half of the extant forest.
- Selangor state is unique in Malaysia for having laws that require public review of plans to convert protected forests for other use; activists are now calling for these regulations to be adopted more widely.

Indonesian pulpwood firms told to protect peat are doing the opposite: Report
- Pulpwood companies in Indonesia are continuing to plant on degraded peatlands inside their concessions, despite being required to protect and restore these ecosystems, a new report shows.
- The report focuses on 16 pulp and paper producers and found all of them in violation of peat protection and rehabilitation regulations.
- Among the violations are planting and harvesting acacia trees in previously burned peatlands, and digging new canals to drain peatland.
- Among the companies highlighted in the report are subsidiaries of two of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world, APP and APRIL.

Palm oil grower looks to make amends for past deforestation in Indonesia
- A major palm oil grower in Indonesia plans to rehabilitate 38,000 hectares (94,000 acres) in Borneo and New Guinea to make up for its past deforestation and peatland clearing.
- The recovery by KPN Plantation will be achieved through peat rewetting, reforestation, and assisting local communities to secure land tenure and access rights.
- Environmentalists have lauded the plan, but noted that challenges remain in the monitoring and implementation of the plan.

Indonesia eyes less severe fire season, but COVID-19 could turn it deadly
- This year’s forest fire season in Indonesia is expected to be less severe than in previous years, but the haze from the burning could still compound the coronavirus crisis in the country.
- Favorable weather conditions and ongoing efforts to restore peatlands point to a “relatively benign” fire season, and hence less risk of severe haze, a new report says.
- Even before the pandemic, haze from forest and peat fires was known to increase cases of respiratory infections fourfold in the hardest-hit areas; combined with COVID-19, haze this time around could stretch the country’s overwhelmed hospitals beyond breaking point.
- Indonesia has recently become the global epicenter of the disease, registering more daily cases than India and Brazil, with the country’s doctors’ association warning the health care system has “functionally collapsed.”

Wildfires turn up the heat on farmers growing Indonesia’s ‘hottest’ pepper
- Farmers in the south of Indonesian Borneo have built up a reputation and a lucrative industry around their Hiyung chili pepper, said to be the hottest in the country.
- The pepper grows well in the swampy peat soil of the region; farmers here began planting it after their rice crops failed in the same acidic soil.
- But the chili peppers, which local officials say have elevated farmers’ income to six times the local average, are under threat from the perennial fires that sweep across Indonesia’s drained peatlands.

Efforts to restore tropical peatlands need fire-free plantations (commentary)
- In Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, peatlands have been extensively drained and cleared using fire for agricultural purposes.
- One important step to reverse peatland degradation is to transition to fire-free sustainable peatland management in plantations.
- Insufficient law enforcement, lack of inter-agency coordination, relatively weak governance, and poor institutional capacity for forest and peatland management have been barriers to implementation of National Action Plans on Peatlands in ASEAN countries.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indonesian president slammed for ‘wait-and-see’ approach on climate action
- During last month’s climate summit of world leaders, top emitters announced more ambitious climate targets in a bid to combat climate change.
- Missing from that list was Indonesia, whose president, Joko Widodo, instead called on industrialized countries to set an example for other nations to follow.
- Climate and policy experts in Indonesia say his failure to announce a bold target for achieving net-zero emissions is a missed opportunity for Indonesia to show global leadership based on its success in reducing deforestation.
- They also criticized a government proposal, not yet officially endorsed by the president, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2070 — 20 years later than most other major emitters.

Companies and officials flout forest-clearing moratorium in Papua, report finds
- A new Greenpeace report has identified a litany of loopholes and violations in Indonesia’s forest and palm oil moratoriums as well as other forest protection regulations.
- The report alleges that government officials routinely flout their own regulations to continue issuing licenses to plantation companies in the country’s eastern Papua region.
- Among the alleged violations are the constant changes to maps of forest that should be off-limits for plantations, and forest-clearing permits granted to companies that don’t meet the requirements.

In Malaysia, the fate of a peat forest hinges on a powerful state official
- The government of Malaysia’s Selangor state appears intent on rescinding protected status for the remnants of a once-sprawling peat forest that’s home to Indigenous people and threatened wildlife.
- It wants to allow a “mixed development project” on 931 hectares (2,300 acres) of the Kuala Langat North Forest Reserve (KLNFR), which has drawn widespread opposition from Indigenous people, environmental organizations, and a former environment minister.
- Environmental activists point to prevailing regulations that they say should shield the area from being degazetted, but state laws largely favor the powerful leader of Selangor, Amirudin Shari.
- As chief minister, Shari heads both the state government and the board of one of the companies pushing for the development project, and has so far stood his ground against critics of the plan.

In Indonesia, pulp and paper firms stoke demand that may drive deforestation
- Pulp and paper companies are expanding in Indonesia by building new mills, putting more pressure on existing pulpwood plantations to increase their production.
- According to a new NGO report, this could reverse a declining trend of pulpwood-related deforestation in recent years, with producers seen as likely to clear more forests for plantations in order to meet the demand from the new mills.
- Activists, therefore, have called on the government to provide protection foron all natural forests in Indonesia from such an expansion.

Peatland on fire again as burning season starts in Indonesia
- Indonesia’s annual fire season has started again, with hotspots detected in 10 provinces.
- Some of the fires have been detected in protected areas with large swaths of peatland.
- The government says it’s preparing to carry out cloud seeding to induce rainfall in affected areas.
- However, environmentalists have called for more traditional methods of law enforcement to prevent fires breaking out in the first place.

Podcast: Restoration for peat’s sake
- Once drained for palm oil or other agricultural uses, Indonesia’s peatlands become very fire prone, putting its people and rich flora and fauna – from orchids to orangutans – at risk.
- Over a million hectares of carbon-rich peatlands burned in Indonesia in 2019, creating a public health crisis not seen since 2015 when the nation’s peatland restoration agency was formed to address the issue.
- To understand what is being done to restore peatlands, we speak with the Deputy Head of the National Peatland Restoration Agency, Budi Wardhana, and with Dyah Puspitaloka, a researcher on the value chain, finance and investment team at CIFOR, the Center for International Forestry Research.
- Restoration through agroforestry that benefits both people and planet is one positive avenue forward, which Dyah discusses in her remarks.

Paper giant APP failing its own sustainability goals, report alleges
- A new report urges bank and buyers to stop doing business with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), one of the world’s biggest paper producers, for its alleged failure to uphold its own sustainability commitments.
- The report, by the Environmental Paper Network (EPN), a coalition of NGOs, lists a litany of violations — from destruction of tropical peat ecosystems to the prevalence of burning to persistent community conflicts — associated with APP’s operations in Indonesia.
- The company has denied the allegations, saying it continues to make strides in restoring peat areas of its concessions and resolving land disputes with local and Indigenous communities.
- However, the EPN points to a lack of transparency and verifiable progress in both APP’s sustainability commitments and resolution of conflicts.

Indonesia renews peat restoration bid to include mangroves, but hurdles abound
- Indonesia’s peatland restoration agency has had its mandate renewed for four more years, with the added task of restoring mangroves.
- Known as the BRGM, the agency now has the job of restoring an estimated 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of degraded peatland and mangrove ecosystems across 13 provinces.
- Experts have lauded the mandate extension and expanded scope of work, but point out a number of challenges ahead, such as government policies and legislation that undermine environmental protection in favor of economic growth.

Indonesia’s ‘militarized agriculture’ raises social, environmental red flags
- The Indonesian government’s plan to push through an ambitious program of establishing massive crop plantations across the country has raised concerns about community disenfranchisement and the loss of rainforests.
- The government has put the defense minister in charge of part of the program and enlisted the military to assist, raising the prospect of a crackdown on civilian opposition to the program.
- Observers and activists have criticized what they call the militarization of agriculture, as well as the expedited process of environmental assessments, which bypasses the need for public consultation.
- The way the program is structured also appears to benefit agribusiness players over small farmers, despite Indonesia’s stated commitment to empowering family farmers.

‘Zero-deforestation’ paper giant APRIL justifies clearing of Sumatran peatland
- A subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest pulp and paper companies is alleged to have cleared carbon-rich and ecologically important peatland in Sumatra that should have been restored.
- The clearing was reported by villagers in July on a concession managed by PT Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper (RAPP), a subsidiary of Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL), which has a zero-deforestation policy across the group.
- The area included forest that had been burned in 2016 and that would therefore have qualified for priority restoration under a government program to protect peatlands.
- The government had previously warned RAPP for clearing peatland in 2016 in a different concession, but APRIL says the clearing this time around was legal and approved by the environment ministry.

Paper giant APRIL linked to Borneo forest clearing despite zero-deforestation vow
- One of the world’s biggest pulp and paper producers, APRIL, is alleged to have violated its own zero-deforestation commitment by sourcing wood from a company clearing rainforest in Indonesian Borneo, a new report says.
- APRIL denies the allegation and insists it sourced zero-deforestation wood from AHL; the NGOs say the company’s claim is premised on an exceedingly narrow definition of what constitutes deforestation.
- APRIL denies the allegation and insists it sourced zero-deforestation wood from AHL; the NGOs say the company’s claim is premised on an exceedingly narrow definition of what constitutes deforestation.

In Brazil’s Pantanal, a desperate struggle to save a hyacinth macaw refuge from fire
- Firefighters are working around the clock to protect a forested ranch in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state that’s an important refuge of the threatened hyacinth macaw.
- The Pantanal wetlands in which the ranch is located are experiencing severe wildfires, sparked by human activity and exacerbated by drought and climate change.
- The São Francisco do Perigara ranch is home to around 1,000 hyacinth macaws — 15% of the total population of the species in the wild, and 20% of its population in the Pantanal.

Paper giant APP linked to Indonesia peat clearing despite sustainability vow
- Greenpeace Southeast Asia has identified nearly 3,500 hectares (8,650 acres) of peatland clearing in pulpwood plantations in Sumatra supplying Asian Pulp & Paper.
- Analysis of satellite imagery showed the clearing began in August 2018 and continued through June this year, despite APP having a “no peatland” and “no burning” policy that it also imposes on its suppliers.
- Greenpeace and local NGO Jikalahari also found evidence of fires in the concessions in question, which appeared to have been set deliberately to clear the land for planting.
- APP has denied clearing the peatland or setting the fires, calling into question the accuracy of the maps used and saying the fires spread from neighboring farms.

Indonesia pushes rice estate project despite environmental red flags
- Planting will begin as soon as this October on a project that will eventually cover nearly a million hectares (2.47 million acres) of peatland in Indonesian Borneo.
- Experts have criticized the project, citing the spectacular failure in the mid-1990s of the identical Mega Rice Project that cleared and eventually abandoned vast swaths of peatlands, paving the way for fires nearly every year since.
- President Joko Widodo says the project is of strategic national importance and will be overseen by the Ministry of Defense.
- But questions remain over the suitability of growing rice in nutrient-poor peat soils, exacerbating the risk of fire by clearing more peatland, and destroying forests that are home to critically endangered orangutans.

Brazilian Amazon protected areas ‘in flames’ as land-grabbers invade
- The Área de Proteção Ambiental (APA) Triunfo do Xingu spans some 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres). Its dense forests boast a rich diversity of plant and animal species, and it is also home to Indigenous groups and traditional peoples who rely on the forest to survive.
- But the area has come under pressure, becoming one of the most deforested regions in the Amazon in recent years. Overall, the territory has lost nearly 30% of its forest cover, with some 5% cleared in 2019 alone.
- The number of fires has soared in Triunfo do Xingu too. Over the last two months, NASA satellites picked up 3,842 fire alerts in the territory. August and September – when Brazil’s fire season is normally at its peak – are expected to bring even more intense burning.
- The area has emerged as an epicenter of land-grabbing and illegal mining, amid a surge in invaders who are betting that the Bolsonaro administration will eventually loosen or scrap protections of the land they are occupying.

Fires in the Pantanal: ‘We are facing a scenario now that is catastrophic’
- Devastating wildfires that burned out of control in late 2019 and early 2020 in Brazil’s Pantanal wetland are back. Around 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) in the region have been burned so far.
- The Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland and straddles the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia – with Brazil containing the lion’s share.
- The Brazilian Pantanal has seen the number of fires more than double so far in 2020, up some 200% over the same period in 2019. Sources say the fires were started by human activity – likely to clear land for agriculture – and are difficult to control due to a lack of access to the region and because the fires are burning underground, fueled by highly combustible peat and exacerbated by drought.
- Faced with the surging number of fires in June and July, state and federal authorities moved to reinforce bans on burning. However, early signs suggest these measures are doing little to mitigate fires.

Upgrade of Indonesian palm oil certification falls short, observers say
- The Indonesian government’s planned update to its palm oil sustainability certification program doesn’t do enough to protect Indigenous communities from land grabs or prevent the destruction of forests, groups say.
- The Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) scheme prohibits the conversion of Indigenous lands to oil palm plantations, but relies on the official framework for recognizing Indigenous land claims that covers only a tiny fraction of such areas.
- It also fails to explicitly call for the protection of secondary forests, allowing an area greater than the size of California to potentially be cleared for more plantations.
- There is also no provision for independent monitoring of the ISPO certification scheme itself that would provide credibility and oversight to the system.

COVID-19 may worsen burning and haze as Indonesia enters dry season
- Reallocation of disaster preparedness funds for the COVID-19 pandemic could allow a flare-up of forest fires and haze as the dry season gets underway in Indonesia, with smog from Sumatra reported to have reached Southern Thailand.
- While the country is expected to see a milder dry season than last year, any haze episodes will exacerbate an already precarious public health situation as a result of the pandemic.
- Researchers in Singapore say Indonesian authorities are largely on the right track in preventing fires, which are typically set to clear land for plantations, but more needs to be done in terms of enforcement on the ground.
- They also suggest that small and medium plantation companies — rather than large companies or smallholder farmers — will have the most impact on how severe the fire and haze problem will be.

Palm oil from Indonesian grower that burned forest is still being sold
- An investigation by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) shows that palm oil from PT Kallista Alam, a company in Sumatra, entered the global supply chain and may have ended up in products made by Nestlé and Mars.
- The company was largely blackballed by buyers with sustainability commitments after a 2012 fire on its concession razed 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of pristine lowland rainforest that’s home to critically endangered Sumatran orangutans.
- An “oversight” in the second half of 2019 led to its crude palm oil being bought by a refinery run by the Permata Hijau Group, a top Indonesian palm oil processor that supplies commodities giant Cargill.
- Cargill, in turn, sells palm oil to multinational brands including Nestlé and Mars; RAN has called on the latter two companies to explicitly issue a no-buy order to their suppliers for Kallista Alam’s palm oil.

Experts see environmental, social fallout in Indonesia’s infrastructure push
- The Indonesian government has announced a list of 89 priority projects, tagged at $100 billion, to jump-start the economy out of the current COVID-19-induced slump.
- To speed up the projects, the government has issued a new regulation on eminent domain that will make it easier to take over community lands, including those of indigenous groups, and degazette forests to allow them to be cleared, experts warn.
- The new regulation is the latest in a slate of deregulatory policies that conservationists, environmental activists and indigenous rights defenders say will harm the country’s biodiversity, its climate commitments, and its most vulnerable communities.
- Among the projects are nickel smelters that are applying to dump their toxic waste into the sea; a high-speed railway line that’s part of the China-backed Belt and Road Initiative; and a rice estate spanning 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) on carbon-dense peatlands.

Indonesia to receive $56m payment from Norway for reducing deforestation
- Indonesia is set to receive $56 million from Norway as the result of the Southeast Asian country’s efforts to preserve its vast tropical rainforests to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
- The payment is for Indonesia preventing the emission of 11.23 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) through reducing its rate of deforestation in 2017.
- Indonesia will be the latest country to receive a results-based payment from Norway, a decade after Norway pledged to disburse $1 billion for Indonesia’s emission reduction from deforestation and forest degradation.
- Both countries have agreed to continue their partnership after the initial agreement expires this year.

In Indonesia’s new rice plan, experts see the blueprint of an epic past failure
- The Indonesian government plans to establish 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) of rice fields in the peatlands of Borneo, in what experts say is a worrying repeat of a near-identical project in the 1990s that failed.
- The earlier mega rice project (MRP) resulted in vast swaths of peat forests being drained and eventually abandoned as it became clear that the soil wasn’t suited for growing rice.
- The MRP left behind a wasteland of drained and degraded peat that has since burned during the annual dry season, spewing out a choking haze and large volumes of carbon emissions.
- The government says the new rice project will learn from past mistakes, but experts say it would still be unfeasible at that scale and would risk the clearing of even more peat forests.

Indonesia aims for sustainability certification for oil palm smallholders
- An update to the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) standard will require all smallholder farmers in the country to be certified, alongside large plantation companies that are already obliged to comply.
- Observers have welcomed the move, noting that 40% of palm oil plantation area in Indonesia — an area larger than Switzerland — is under smallholder management.
- Studies show that these small farmers often lack support and access to high-yield seedlings; as such, their productivity is low, and to make up for it, they clear more land for planting — often illegally.
- Enrolling them in ISPO certification is expected to help boost their productivity and prevent them from deforesting, but bureaucratic tangles threaten to undermine the program.

Forest fires in Indonesia set to add toxic haze to COVID-19 woes
- Forest fires have flared up in Indonesia, marking the start of the dry season and threatening to aggravate respiratory ailments amid the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.
- Haze from forest fires sickens hundreds of Indonesians annually, mostly on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo; many of them now suffer chronic respiratory problems that puts them at high risk of suffering acutely from COVID-19.
- Studies done in Italy have linked higher levels of air pollution to higher COVID-19 mortality rates, and experts in Indonesia fear that theory will play out in the country that already has the second-highest death rate from the pandemic in Asia.
- Social distancing measures imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus are already hampering fire prevention programs, and could do the same for firefighting efforts once the dry season intensifies.

Obstacles abound in bid to protect Indonesia’s forests and cut emissions
- Deforestation and land-use change are the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in Indonesia, making the protection of forests crucial in reducing the country’s emissions.
- But an analysis by academics finds a huge swath of forest can still potentially be cleared because it lies within logging and plantation concessions, with few requirements for concession holders to conserve them.
- The analysis finds the country can easily fall short of its pledged emissions reduction goal if these forests are allowed to be cleared, which looks increasingly likely under the provisions of a deregulation bill expected to be passed soon.
- Experts say the government should make it mandatory for concession holders to assess the conservation and carbon stock values of their land and to conserve it accordingly.

Oil exploration at odds with peatland protection in the Congo Basin
- A new report details an investigation led by the investigative NGO Global Witness into the exploration for oil in the world’s largest peatlands, found in Central Africa’s Congo Basin.
- The Republic of Congo and the company licensed to search for oil in a block containing more than 6,000 square kilometers (2,300 square miles) of peatlands argue for the right to extract the oil for the benefit of the country, and they say they are following strict environmental guidelines.
- But Global Witness found that the environmental impact assessment for the block is dated July 2013, nearly a year before scientists discovered the existence of the peatlands.
- The authors also point out that an agreement worth $65 million to protect the peatlands and the Republic of Congo’s other tropical forests doesn’t require that the carbon-rich peatlands be legally protected until 2025.

South Korea’s POSCO vows zero deforestation in Papua palm oil operation
- South Korean conglomerate POSCO International says it has committed to a policy of “No Deforestation, No Peatland, No Exploitation” (NDPE) in its palm oil operations in Indonesia’s Papua province.
- POSCO has long faced scrutiny over the actions of its local subsidiary, PT Bio Inti Agrindo (BIA), which cleared 270 square kilometers (104 square miles) of rainforest for an oil palm plantation between 2012 and 2018.
- The company has also been embroiled in disputes with indigenous communities claiming ancestral rights to the land, but now says it will protect and respect their rights.
- It has also pledged to compensate for the deforestation caused by its activities — a commitment that isn’t usually present in typical NDPE policies.

As 2020 fire season nears, Indonesian president blasts officials for 2019
- President Joko Widodo has chided his top officials for failing to anticipate the severity of the land and forest fires that hit Indonesia last year, saying they must do better as the 2020 dry season approaches.
- The fires are set annually to clear land for planting, and there had been ample warning that an intense dry season and El Niño weather system would exacerbate the problem in 2019.
- The president threatened again to fire officials for failing to prevent or control fires in their jurisdictions this year, and quashed their excuses that last year’s burning wasn’t as bad as in other countries.
- A key weapon in the government’s fight against future fires is a program to restore degraded peatlands; but activists say the program is opaque and flawed, with little public accountability of the progress made.

Wise use and wetlands: Why we need to nurture nature (commentary)
- Rainforests grab the headlines, but with 87% of wetlands lost globally, it is time to nurture these immensely productive and diverse ecosystems.
- Wetlands are some of the planet’s most productive ecosystems, supporting immense biodiversity. These relatively small areas are often home to hundreds, if not thousands, of individual plant, fish, bird, reptile, and mammal species. Wetland ecosystems also provide more social benefits, per unit area, than other ecosystems, including support for farming, recreation, culture, and urban flood control. And they play a vital role in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
- We lose wetlands three times faster than natural forests, but wise use of wetlands could help reverse this trend. The central idea behind wise use is that all the benefits wetlands provide must be considered and incorporated when people make decisions that affect them.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indonesia forest fires push orangutans into starvation mode, study finds

JAKARTA — The fires that raze vast swaths of Indonesian Borneo every year are having a lasting health impact on the region’s critically endangered orangutans that threatens them with extinction, a preliminary study has found. The fires, which in nearly all cases are started to clear land for plantations, such as oil palm, reduce the […]
2019: The year rainforests burned
- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.
- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.

Indonesian palm oil firm hit with $1.8m fine for 2015 fires
- Indonesia’s environment ministry has won a long-awaited court judgment and $1.8 million fine from a palm oil company that experienced fires on its concession in 2015.
- The company, PT Kaswari Unggul, had challenged the initial administrative sanctions issued in the wake of the burning, and continued to stonewall against the ministry’s efforts to hold it responsible for the burning.
- Ironically, the company’s resistance to the sanctions, which would have compelled it to introduce fire-prevention measures on its land, may have contributed to fires flaring up on the same concession again this year.
- The ministry has welcomed the recent judgment, but has yet to collect on any of the combined $224 million it’s been awarded in similar cases, thanks to legal stonewalling and a Byzantine court bureaucracy.

Indonesia’s fires burned mostly abandoned and degraded land, not forests
- More than three-quarters of the area burned during this year’s fire season in Indonesia were idle or abandoned lands, and not rainforest, a new analysis shows.
- Only 3 to 3.6 percent of the total burned area constituted forested landscapes, according to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
- The findings highlight the importance of protecting these areas and restoring them to prevent future recurrences of fires, CIFOR says.
- Much of these areas used to be peatlands, which according to a new report by Greenpeace continue to be burned by oil palm and pulpwood companies supplying some of the biggest household brands in the world.

Paper and fast fashion fan the flames burning Indonesia’s peat: Report
- Pulp and paper giants APP and APRIL continue to source their raw material from plantations located on carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia.
- The burning of these peat forests prior to planting accounts for much of the fires that have made Indonesia one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, and of the toxic haze that spreads out to neighboring countries.
- A report by a coalition of NGOs warns that these problems could get worse under the companies’ current peat-intensive business model and a relaxing of peat-protection regulations by the government.
- The companies have disputed the scale of the fires attributed to their suppliers’ plantations, and say they already carry out peat conservation initiatives.

Indonesia fires emitted double the carbon of Amazon fires, research shows
- Forest fires that swept across Indonesia this year emitted nearly twice the amount of greenhouse gases as the fires that razed parts of the Brazilian Amazon, new research shows.
- The Indonesian fires pumped at least 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in the atmosphere, largely as a result of burning of carbon-rich peatlands.
- The fires were the most intense since 2015 and threaten to set back Indonesia’s commitments to reduce its carbon emissions and contribute to global efforts to slow climate change.

Indonesian fire expert awarded for exposing destruction by plantation firms
- An Indonesian fire expert who has testified in 500 cases against companies accused of allowing fires on their concessions has been awarded the John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science.
- Bambang Hero Saharjo has weathered a series of threats as well as a retaliatory lawsuit over the years by companies he has testified against.
- The award committee lauded Bambang for continuing “to testify and stand up for the Indonesian people’s constitutional right to a healthy environment, one of the very few scientists in his field who are prepared to do so.”
- A further prize for an early-career recipient was awarded to Canadian pharmacist Olivier Bernard, who has challenged alternative-health proponents pushing for evidence-free high-dose vitamin C injections for cancer patients.

Photos: Peatland fires rage through Indonesia’s Sumatra Island
- Aerial images taken last month in the southern part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island show fires raging through peatlands and generating massive clouds of haze.
- The fires this year are the worst since 2015, exacerbated by an unusually intense dry season and an El Niño weather pattern.
- The fires are set deliberately to clear land for oil palm and pulpwood plantations, and the smoke they generate has sickened hundreds of thousands of people and spread as far as neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.

Indonesian court fines palm oil firm $18.5m over forest fires in 2015
- An Indonesian court has fined a palm oil company $18.5 million for fires that destroyed 970 hectares (2,400 acres) of forest on its concession in Borneo in 2015.
- The judgment is the latest in a growing number of cases where courts have taken a zero-tolerance approach that makes concession holders liable for any fires that occur on their land, regardless of whether or not they can be proven to have started the fires.
- Observers have welcomed the verdict, but say the challenge now will be to compel the company to pay up. Since 2015 the government has won $223 million in judgments in similar cases, but collected just $5.5 million.
- The company in the latest case, PT Arjuna Utama Sawit, is a supplier to Singapore-based Musim Mas Group, a major oil palm trader whose customers include consumer brands such Unilever. Musim Mas said it was seeking an explanation from PT Arjuna Utama Sawit.

Area the size of Puerto Rico burned in Indonesia’s fire crisis
- A spike in fires in September has contributed to the razing of 8,578 square kilometers (3,304 square miles) of land across Indonesia this year, or an area the size of Puerto Rico.
- More areas are expected to continue burning through to the end of the year, but the fire season this year isn’t expected to be as bad as in 2015, when 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles) of land was burned.
- The onset of rains has also reduced the incidence of transboundary haze that previously sparked protests from neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
- Almost all the fires this year occurred on deforested land that had previously been burned, where the vegetation has not had sufficient time to regenerate after the last fires.

$65 million deal to protect Congo’s forests raises concerns
- The Central African Forest Initiative negotiated a deal with the Republic of Congo for $65 million in funding.
- The aim of the initiative is to protect forest while encouraging economic development.
- But environmental organizations criticized the timing and the wording of the agreement, which they argue still allows for oil drilling and exploration that could harm peatlands and forest.
- Two companies in the Republic of Congo recently found oil beneath the peatlands that could nearly triple the Central African country’s daily production.

The unrecognized cost of Indonesia’s fires (commentary)
- As Indonesia’s forests go up in smoke, the world may be losing a lot more than we currently understand, argues Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler in this commentary that was originally published in Singapore’s Straits Times on September 30, 2019.
- In one instance, deforestation in Borneo nearly eradicated a potential anti-HIV drug before it was discovered. The near-miss with the drug, Calanolide A, provides one vivid illustration of what is at risk of being lost as Indonesia’s forests are cleared and burned.
- Other local and regional impacts from continued large-scale destruction of Indonesia’s forests may include hotter temperatures, more prolonged droughts, and increased incidence of fires.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

A newborn dies amid Indonesia fire crisis, as parents fear for their kids’ health
- A newborn child in Indonesia’s Riau province has become one of the latest fatalities of the haze blanketing large swaths of the region as a result of fires burning through Sumatra’s forests.
- Nearly 30,000 people in Riau alone have suffered from acute respiratory infections during this year’s fires, and nearly 310,000 have been affected by eye and skin irritation, dizziness and vomiting.
- Among those reporting worrying symptoms are pregnant women, one of whom said she’d miscarried five years earlier during a similar haze crisis.
- The fires burn nearly every year, emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases that have helped keep Indonesia among the top carbon polluters worldwide and spreading haze as far as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

‘We’ve been negligent,’ Indonesia’s president says as fire crisis deepens
- Indonesia’s government has been negligent in anticipating and preparing for this year’s fire season, the country’s president says.
- The fires, set mostly to clear land for planting, have razed huge swaths of forest and generated toxic haze that has spread as far as Malaysia and Singapore.
- The president’s acknowledgement of the government’s lack of preparation comes in the wake of his own ministers apportioning blame for the fires to other parties.
- Activists say the government has little moral standing to go after the companies that have set their concessions ablaze, noting that the government itself has refused to take responsibility for failing to do enough to tackle similar fires in 2015.

Worldwide deforestation rising despite bold commitments, report finds
- In 2014, the New York Declaration on Forests set out bold commitments to stem deforestation, cutting it in half by 2020 and ending it entirely by 2030, along with global forest restoration targets.
- But a new assessment finds that, globally, the loss of forests is on the rise, at rates that are around 40 percent higher than five years ago when the agreement was signed.
- The report’s authors say that, despite the “sobering” findings, the assessment should serve as a call to action that more needs to be done to address deforestation and forest degradation.

Photos: Forest fires rage on Sumatra oil palm concessions
- As Indonesia’s annual fire season gets underway, swaths of carbon-rich peat forests are being razed, and the subsequent toxic smoke has blanketed parts of Jambi province on the island of Sumatra.
- Dozens of hotspots have been detected on farmland, oi palm concessions, and even inside a protected peat forest in the province, according to the local disaster management agency.
- Mongabay visited one of the burning concessions, where minimally equipped workers are fighting to put out fires that have been burning for days without end.
- The workers deny that the oil palm company set the fire on the concession, claiming it started in a neighboring village. In 2015, three company employees were charged with setting fires on the same concession, though none were ever convicted.

Diplomatic row heats up as haze from Indonesian fires threatens Malaysia
- The number of fire hotspots in Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra has increased nearly sevenfold in a four-day period in early September.
- The surge has prompted calls from Malaysia, which has historically been affected by haze from fires in Indonesia, for its Southeast Asian neighbor to get the burning under control.
- The Indonesian government has refuted complaints that the recent increase in hotspots has resulted in transboundary haze.
- Indonesia faces what could be the worst fire season since 2015, fanned by an El Niño weather pattern.

Haze from fires, Indonesia’s national ‘embarrassment,’ are back
- Indonesia is experiencing its worst annual fire season since 2015, with the cross-border spread of haze once again threatening to spark a diplomatic row with neighbors Malaysia and Singapore.
- The government has acknowledged that measures adopted in the wake of the 2015 fires to prevent a repeat of that disaster may have fallen short, including efforts to restore drained peatlands and drill wells to provide water for firefighters.
- President Joko Widodo, scheduled to visit Malaysia and Singapore later this week, says he feels embarrassed by the return of the fires and haze, and has ordered the firing of officials found to have failed to tackle the problem.
- At the local level, however, governors of the affected provinces appear to be taking the matter lightly: saying the haze isn’t at a worrying level, offering a reward for shamans who can summon rain, and proposing questionable theories about the causes of the fires.

Top court holds Indonesian government liable over 2015 forest fires
- Indonesia’s Supreme Court has ordered that the government carry out measures to mitigate forest fires in the country, following a citizen lawsuit filed in the wake of devastating blazes in 2015.
- The decision upholds earlier rulings by lower courts, but the government says it will still challenge it, claiming that the circumstances that led to the 2015 fires were due to mismanagement by previous administrations.
- The plaintiffs in the lawsuit say they just want the government to implement common-sense measures to prevent the fires from recurring, and which existing laws already require it to carry out.
- The fire season is already underway again this year, as companies and smallholder farmers set forests ablaze in preparation for planting.

Congo government opens Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to oil exploration
- In 2018, the government of the Republic of Congo opened up several blocks of land for oil exploration overlapping with important peatlands and a celebrated national park.
- According to a government website, the French oil company Total holds the exploration rights for those blocks.
- Conservationists were alarmed that the government would consider opening up parks and peatlands of international importance for oil exploration, while also trying to garner funds for their protection on the world stage.

‘Dangerous’ new regulation puts Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands at risk
- The Indonesian government has effectively rescinded protection for much of its carbon-rich peatlands by issuing a new regulation that limits protection to the area of a peatland ecosystem where the peat is the thickest.
- Concession holders will now be allowed to exploit areas outside these “peat domes,” as long as they maintain the water table, in a mechanism seemingly borrowed straight out of the pulpwood industry playbook.
- Under previous regulations, areas with a layer of peat 3 meters (10 feet) or deeper were off-limits for exploitation, and any companies with such areas in their concessions were obliged to restore and protect them. These areas are now open to exploitation, as long as they’re not considered part of the peat dome.
- Activists warn the new regulation will encourage greater exploitation of Indonesia’s fast-diminishing peatlands, increasing the risks of fire, carbon emissions, and failure to meet the government’s own emissions reduction and peat restoration goals.

Travelogue: Ground-truthing satellite data in Borneo (Insider)
- Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler writes about his visit to Indonesian Borneo last month.
- The goal of the Kalimantan trip was to ground-truth some GPS points that satellite data via Global Forest Watch suggested could be areas of recent deforestation.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.

Indonesian ban on clearing new swaths of forest to be made permanent
- A temporary moratorium that prohibits the issuance of new permits to clear primary and peat forests is set to be made permanent later this year.
- Though largely ineffective in stemming deforestation in the first few years after its introduction in 2011, the moratorium has since 2016 been shored up by peat-protection regulations that have helped slow the loss of forest cover.
- Environmental activists have welcomed the move to make the moratorium permanent, but say there’s room to strengthen it, such as by extending it to include secondary forests.
- They’ve also called for the closing of a loophole that allows primary and peat forests to be razed for plantations of rice, sugarcane and other crops deemed important to national food security.

’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.

Video: Meet Indonesia’s go-to expert witness against haze-causing plantation firms
- Bambang Hero Sahajaro is the Indonesian government’s chief expert witness against plantation firms accused of causing wildfires.
- Last year, Bambang was sued by a company whose practices he testified against in court. The lawsuit against him was eventually thrown out, though observers say it is part of a trend of companies fighting back against their prosecution by trying to silence environmental defenders.
- “I won’t back off, not even one step, because there are already many cases waiting for me,” he told Mongabay. “I will keep fighting for the people’s constitutional right to a healthy environment.”

Peat protection rule may be a double-edged sword for Indonesia’s forests
- A government regulation issued in 2016 requires logging companies to restore peat with protected status in their concessions, mostly in Sumatra, and prohibits them from developing on it.
- But activists say this prohibition threatens a massive supply shortfall for two of the world’s biggest paper producers, which they warn could push the companies to source wood from unprotected forests in other parts of Indonesia.
- Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) face a supply crunch of up to 30 percent and 25 percent respectively, according to an analysis by NGOs.
- Both companies dispute this finding, saying their supplies remain secure even as they seek to boost their output.

Palm oil, logging firms the usual suspects as Indonesia fires flare anew
- Fires have flared up once again on concessions held by palm oil and logging companies in Riau province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
- For many of the companies involved, this isn’t the first time fires have sprung up on their land, prompting activists to question the government’s ability to enforce its own regulations against slash-and-burn forest clearing.
- Much of the affected area is peat forest, some of it being developed in violation of a ban on exploiting deep peatland, whose burning releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- A failure by the government to collect on fines levied against the few companies prosecuted for setting fires on their concessions means there’s little deterrent effect for other companies that see slash-and-burn as the cheapest way to raze forests for plantations.

Indonesia’s threat to exit Paris accord over palm oil seen as cynical ploy
- A top Indonesian minister says the country may consider pulling out of the Paris climate agreement in retaliation for a European policy to phase out palm oil from biofuels by 2030.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs, says Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, can follow in the footsteps of the United States, which has declared its withdrawal from the climate pact, and Brazil, which is considering doing the same.
- The threat is the latest escalation in a diplomatic spat that has also seen Indonesia and Malaysia, the No. 2 palm oil producer, threaten retaliatory trade measures against the European Union.
- The EU says its policy is driven by growing consumer concerns about the sustainability of palm oil, which in Indonesia is often grown on plantations for which vast swaths of rainforest have had to be cleared.

Climb confirms that the world’s tallest tropical tree tops 100 meters
- A team of scientists has found and mapped the tallest tree on record in the tropics, standing at more than 100 meters (328 feet).
- Climber Unding Jami with the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership scaled the tree and verified its height.
- The structure of the tree, determined from airborne lidar surveys as well as laser scans from the ground and drone photographs, provides insight into why these trees grow so high.

No more fires in Indonesia? Blazes on Sumatran peatland say otherwise
- Forest fires have flared up in Sumatra again this dry season, belying the government’s claims that it has brought the annual problem under control.
- All of the fires recorded so far have been on peat forests, a carbon-rich terrain that a slew of government policies have specifically targeted for restoration and protection since the disastrous fire season of 2015.
- Environmental activists say there’s no transparency to gauge how well peat restoration efforts are progressing, and little engagement with NGOs on the ground.
- They warn of a continuation of the “business-as-usual” approach that sees the government typically only respond to fires after they’ve broken out.

Malaysian state chief: Highway construction must not destroy forest
- The chief minister of Sabah, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, said that the Pan Borneo Highway project should expand existing roads where possible to minimize environmental impact.
- A coalition of local NGOs and scientific organizations applauded the announcement, saying that it could usher in a new era of collaboration between the government and civil society to look out for Sabah’s people and forests.
- These groups have raised concerns about the impacts on wildlife and communities of the proposed path of the highway, which will cover some 5,300 kilometers (3,300 miles) in the states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Companies to miss 2020 zero-deforestation deadline, report says
- Major companies around the world with a self-imposed deadline of ending tropical deforestation in their supply chains by 2020 won’t meet the target, a report released for International Forest Day says.
- The “Forest 500” report is an annual assessment of the zero-deforestation commitments made by 350 companies involved in four commodities — cattle, palm oil, soy and timber — and the 150 financial institutions bankrolling them.
- Those commodities are responsible for the bulk of agricultural expansion in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Agricultural expansion, in turn, is responsible for most of the deforestation in these regions.
- The report calls on the companies it assesses to do more to ensure their actions match their rhetoric on ending deforestation, regardless of the unlikelihood of meeting the 2020 deadline.

New maps show where humans are pushing species closer to extinction
- A new study maps out how disruptive human changes to the environment affect the individual ranges of more than 5,400 mammal, bird and amphibian species around the world.
- Almost a quarter of the species are threatened by human impacts in more than 90 percent of their range, and at least one human impact occurred in an average of 38 percent of the range of a given species.
- The study also identified “cool” spots, where concentrations of species aren’t negatively impacted by humans.
- The researchers say these “refugia” are good targets for conservation efforts.

Malaysia to ban oil palm expansion?
- Malaysia may ban further expansion of oil palm plantations in an effort to improve the oilseed’s reputation abroad, Minister of Primary Industries Teresa Kok told Bloomberg.
- Kok said the prime minister’s cabinet will weigh a proposal to cap Malaysia’s palm oil estate at 6 million hectares (14.8 million acres). Malaysia currently has 5.85 million hectares, so the cap provides allowances for about 150,000 hectares of expansion already underway.
- Kok said that Malaysia could continue to increase palm oil production despite the cap by improving yields of existing plantations.
- The proposed move comes in response to criticism over palm oil’s link to large-scale deforestation in Southeast Asia.

What’s in a name? The role of defining ‘wilderness’ in conservation
- In a recent opinion piece published in the journal Nature, several ecologists question recent efforts to delineate areas of wilderness and intactness around the world to define conservation targets.
- They argue that it would be better to build broadly supported consensus that includes the perspectives of local and indigenous communities.
- But the leader of a team that recently mapped out the remaining wilderness on land and in the ocean said that identifying these areas and developing new targets that incorporate their conservation is critical because current international agreements do not prioritize their protection.

Hazy figures cloud Indonesia’s peat restoration as fire season looms
- An El Niño weather system in the early months of 2019 could see forest fires flare up once again in Indonesia.
- The government rolled out a slate of measures following disastrous fires in 2015, centering on the restoration of degraded peatlands that had been rendered highly combustible by draining for agriculture.
- While the number and extent of fires since then have declined significantly, activists attribute this more to milder weather in the intervening years, rather than the government’s peatland management and restoration measures.
- Activists have also questioned figures that suggest the target of restoring 24,000 square kilometers (9,300 square miles) of peatland by the end of 2020 has been almost achieved, saying there’s little transparency about the bulk of the required restoration, being carried out by pulpwood and plantation companies.

The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
- This is our annual rainforests year in review post.
- Overall, 2018 was not a good year for the planet’s tropical rainforests.
- Rainforest conservation suffered many setbacks, especially in Brazil, the Congo Basin, and Madagascar.
- Colombia was one of the few bright spots for rainforests in 2018.

Climate change may turn Amazon peatlands from carbon sinks to sources
- A new study looked at peat in Peru’s Pastaza-Marañon foreland basin (PMFB) to see how carbon accumulation there responded to past changes in temperature and precipitation. They then used that information to predict how the peatland will respond to future climate conditions.
- It finds that under expected future climate conditions, the PMFB peatland may lose more carbon than it sequesters, making it a carbon source instead of a sink.
- In total, the study estimates that PMFB may release 500 million tons of carbon by the end of the century – roughly equivalent to 5 percent of the annual fossil-fuel emissions of the entire world.

RSPO adopts total ban on deforestation under sweeping new standards
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has adopted new standards that will prohibit its member companies from clearing any type of forest for palm plantations.
- RSPO-certified companies were previously permitted to clear secondary forests and peat forests with a peat layer no deeper than 3 meters (10 feet).
- The move comes amid a growing consumer backlash that has prompted companies to make zero-deforestation commitments.
- Environmental activists have welcomed the RSPO’s deforestation ban with cautious optimism, noting that enforcement of the certification body’s standards has historically been lax.

For the two Congos, lessons in a peatland partnership with Indonesia
- Officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo visited Indonesia recently to see firsthand the country’s experience with managing tropical peatlands.
- The three countries have committed to joint efforts to study and conserve peat forests, particularly in the Congo Basin.
- Protecting peat is seen as a crucial move in the fight against climate change, given the huge amounts of greenhouse gases locked in peat soils.

Deforestation-linked palm oil still finding its way into top consumer brands: report
- A new report by Greenpeace finds that palm oil suppliers to the world’s largest brands have cleared more than 1,300 square kilometers (500 square miles) of rainforest — an area the size of the city of Los Angeles — since the end of 2015.
- Greenpeace says palm oil-fueled deforestation remains rampant in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia because global consumer brands like Unilever, Nestlé and PepsiCo continue to buy from rogue producers.
- These brands have failed to commit to their zero-deforestation pledges and are poised to fall short of their own 2020 deadlines of cleaning up their entire supply chain from deforestation, Greenpeace says.
- Greenpeace has called for a transformation in the palm oil industry, particularly in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of the commodity.

Indonesia’s land swap program puts communities, companies in a bind
- The Indonesian government has a program in place that requires plantation companies to conserve and restore peatlands within their concessions, in exchange for land elsewhere, as part of a wider program to prevent peat fires.
- But part of the land bank designated for the swap program covers community lands that have also been earmarked for a social forestry program launched much earlier.
- Activists say the communities should not be sidelined at the expense of the plantation firms. The latter have also been wary about taking the land allocated to them by the government, citing the potential for conflicts.
- Activists have also criticized the government for allocating up to two-fifths of the land bank for the swap program from natural forests. They say the government earlier promised the land would come from unused and planned timber concessions.

DRC set to reclassify national parks for oil, open rainforest to logging
- An investigation by Greenpeace finds that since February, DRC’s environment ministry has handed over control of three logging concessions in Congo Basin rainforest to Chinese-owned logging companies. Two of these concessions are located in a massive peatland – the largest in the tropics – that was discovered last year.
- Fourteen more concessions are expected to be awarded to companies in the coming months.
- The DRC government is also reportedly planning to declassify large portions of Salonga and Virunga national parks to allow oil exploration. Virunga is one of the last bastions of critically endangered mountain gorillas.
- These moves threaten a long-standing logging moratorium in the country, as well as forest protection agreements between the DRC and other countries.

Revealed: Paper giant’s ex-staff say it used their names for secret company in Borneo
- Last December, it came to light that a plantation company clearing forest in Indonesia was owned by two employees of Asia Pulp & Paper, a giant firm that has promised to stop deforesting.
- APP claimed the employees had set up the company on their own, without management knowing. But an investigation by Mongabay provides evidence that contradicts APP’s story.
- The findings place APP squarely in the middle of an emerging debate about the presence of “shadow companies” among the holdings of the conglomerates that dominate Indonesia’s plantation sector.

Facebook video shows orangutan defending forest against bulldozer
- Dramatic footage released last week by an animal welfare group shows a wild orangutan trying in vain to fight off destruction of its rainforest home in Borneo.
- The video, filmed in 2013 but posted on Facebook on June 5th for World Environment Day by International Animal Rescue (IAR), was shot in Sungai Putri, a tract of forest in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province.
- Sungai Putri is one of the most important refuges for orangutans left in Indonesian Borneo. According to orangutan expert Erik Meijaard, Sungai Putri may be home to over 1,000 orangutans.

Illegal logging persists in Borneo orangutan habitat despite government ban
- Illegal logging continues inside an orangutan habitat in Borneo that the Indonesian government had decreed off-limits last year, an investigation by Greenpeace has found.
- The group reported at least six logging camps in the concession held by a timber company, but noted that it was unclear whether the company itself, PT Mohairson Pawan Khatulistiwa (MPK), was engaged in the illegal logging.
- This is the second time Greenpeace has found indications of commercial exploitation in the area since the government ordered PT MPK to halt its operations last year.

Time is running out for palm oil certification (commentary)
- A number of voluntary schemes have been set up to address the environmental impacts of palm oil, which has experienced rapid growth in demand and has been identified as one of the leading drivers of deforestation and biodiversity loss worldwide.
- While there is some variation between them, none of the schemes has been very effective in slowing down deforestation. The range of schemes, and the existence of different modules within each scheme that allow members to opt for varying degrees of ambition, are leading to a watering down of sustainability outcomes in general.
- For too long, certification has been considered as the one and only “possible and realistic” option for addressing the impacts of palm oil cultivation, but the fact is: we are running out of time.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Paper giant denies secretly owning ‘independent’ suppliers
- A new NGO report details the links between Indonesia’s Sinarmas conglomerate and its “independent” wood suppliers.
- Sinarmas and its Asia Pulp & Paper arm argue that some of the links are normal, but deny others.
- NGO investigators speculate that Sinarmas may have structured its operations to deflect blame for the fires that burn nearly every year in its suppliers’ concessions, or even to evade taxes.

To protect the Congolese peatlands, protect local land rights (commentary)
- In 2017, researchers reported the existence of the largest tropical peatland complex in the world in the Congo Basin.
- In early 2018, a team of scientists, including the author, traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to probe deeper into the peatlands, which cover an area about the size of England and hold some 30 billion tons of carbon.
- Around the same time, the DRC government has awarded logging concessions that overlap with the peatlands, in violation of a 16-year-old moratorium on logging.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Greenpeace disowns paper giant over deforestation allegations
- Environmental NGO Greenpeace will end its engagement with the Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas Group and its pulp and paper arm, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP).
- A new mapping analysis by the NGO showed 80 square kilometers of forests and peatlands has been cleared since 2013 in two concessions that are linked to the paper giant.
- Greenpeace said this finding put APP’s commitment to end deforestation in jeopardy.

The destruction of nature in S. Sumatra has given rise to a criminal generation (commentary)
- Reports of criminal activity have increasingly trickled out of Indonesia’s South Sumatra province.
- Could these incidents of violence, lawbreaking and general lack of respect for order be related to diminishing natural resources and destruction of the landscape? This article explores this idea.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author alone.

Indonesia enlists plantation companies to ensure haze-free Asian Games
- Organizers of the Asian Games in August are wary of the major sporting event being hit by haze from brush and peat fires, an annual occurrence in Sumatra, where one of the host cities is located.
- The government has called on pulpwood and oil palm companies with concessions in fire-prone areas to take steps to restore degraded peatlands and prevent fires during this year’s dry season, which runs from June through September.
- The companies are legally obliged to restore areas of deep peat, and some are fast-tracking their other fire-prevention programs in light of the Asian Games.

Failed rice fields may get new lease of life under Indonesian peat restoration project
- The Peatland Restoration Agency is looking at possibilities to develop agriculture on abandoned peat swamps from the failed Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s.
- The agency has identified 1,250 square kilometers of peat areas with agricultural potential.
- The search is a part of the agency’s pilot project to test methods of developing agriculture without using fires.

Major Islamic financier singled out for deforestation in Indonesia
- Lembaga Tabung Haji is a Malaysian Islamic financial institution whose listed palm oil arm, TH Plantations, owns dozens of estates in Malaysia and Indonesia.
- The firm was the subject of a recent report by Chain Reaction Research that alleges it cleared hundreds of hectares of carbon-rich forest and peatland for oil palm expansion in 2017.
- The firm supplies major refiners and users of palm oil, such as Wilmar, ADM, Nestlé and Unilever, some of which have promised to stop sourcing palm oil linked to environmental destruction.

Palm oil supplier to food giants clears forest, peatland in Indonesia, Greenpeace says
- The Yemen-based Hayel Saeed Anam Group, which sells palm oil to Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Unilever through subsidiaries, is responsible for clearing 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) of rainforest and peatland in Indonesia’s Papua province between 2015 and 2017, according to Greenpeace.
- Staff from the environmental organization shot video revealing the extent of the destruction.
- Greenpeace campaigners have raised concerns that Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever are not upholding their commitments to get rid of deforestation, peatland destruction and exploitation from their supply chains.

Indonesian billionaire using ‘shadow companies’ to clear forest for palm oil, report alleges
- Two plantation companies linked to Anthoni Salim, Indonesia’s third-richest man, are deforesting a peat swamp in Borneo, according to new research by Aidenvironment.
- In response to the findings, Citigroup said it was cancelling all lending agreements with IndoAgri, the Salim Group’s agribusiness arm.
- The Salim Group was previously accused of being behind four companies at the forefront of illegal oil palm expansion in Indonesia’s Papua region, employing a complex network of shared directorships and offshore companies to obfuscate its responsibility.
- “It is not just the Salim Group; most of the main palm oil groups have these ‘dark sides’ that continue to deforest,” said Selwyn Moran, founder of investigative blog awas MIFEE.

Indonesia land swap, meant to protect peatlands, risks wider deforestation, NGOs say
- Under a government program, pulpwood and logging companies in Indonesia are eligible for a land swap if their existing concessions include at least 40 percent protected peatland.
- However, a lack of transparency over how the substitute areas are selected has led to fears that up to half the land that could potentially be awarded may be natural forest, thereby speeding up deforestation in the name of protecting peatland.
- There are also fears that granting eligible companies these substitute areas, which the government says will be on abandoned or undeveloped timber concessions, will reignite conflicts with local communities.
- The government has promised to publish a map of the land swap areas, adding it wants to ensure the new lands don’t include natural forests and won’t spark conflicts with local communities.

Study: Indonesia’s ambitious peat restoration initiative severely underfunded
- Indonesia will need an estimated $4.6 billion to restore some 20,000 square kilometers (7,720 square miles) of degraded peatland by its self-imposed deadline of 2020, a study suggests.
- To date, however, funding for the project that began in 2016 amounts to less than $200 million, with the result that only 5 percent of the restoration target has been achieved.
- The study authors say the Indonesian government faces a dilemma over whether to concentrate its resources in a smaller area or risk potentially ineffective restoration methods to cover the entire target area.

How Indonesia’s Seruyan district became an epicenter of fires and haze

In the leadup to the release of the second installment of Indonesia for Sale, our series examining the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land-rights crisis, we are republishing the first article in the series, “The Palm Oil Fiefdom.” This is the third part of that article. The first part described a secret deal between the son of Darwan Ali, […]
Report finds projects in DRC ‘REDD+ laboratory’ fall short of development, conservation goals
- The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) released a new report that found that 20 REDD+ projects in a province in DRC aren’t set to address forest conservation and economic development — the primary goals of the strategy.
- The Paris Agreement explicitly mentions the role of REDD+ projects, which channel funds from wealthy countries to heavily forested ones, in keeping the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius this century.
- RRI is asking REDD+ donors to pause funding of projects in DRC until coordinators develop a more participatory approach that includes communities and indigenous groups.

NGOs seek suspension of forest-related funding to DRC in response to proposed end to logging moratorium
- More than 50 conservation and human rights organizations have called on international donors to halt forest conservation-related funding to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The call comes in response to signals by the country’s leaders of their intention to end a 16-year-old moratorium on new logging licenses in the country, including a secretive push to alter the DRC forest code.
- The NGOs argue that opening DRC up to logging will destabilize the country and damage the environment and forest-dependent communities.

Video: Arkani, the Dayak known as Jenggot Naga — Dragon Beard
- “The palm oil fiefdom” is an investigation by Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an initiative of the UK-based research house Earthsight.
- The article reveals how Darwan Ali, the former head of Indonesia’s Seruyan district, presided over an elaborate scheme to use shell companies as vehicles to make money from major palm oil firms.
- Short films produced in conjunction with the article feature some of those affected by Darwan’s licensing spree, including an indigenous man from Borneo named Arkani.

Indonesia braces for return of fire season as hotspots flare up
- Indonesia’s annual forest fire season has started, with reports of blazes in four peat-rich provinces, all of which have declared a state of emergency.
- The stake is high for Indonesia to prevent the fires and resultant haze this year, as it prepares to host tens of thousands of athletes and visitors for the Asian Games. One of the host cities is in South Sumatra province, a perennial tinderbox.
- The Indonesian government rolled out extensive measures to prevent fires in the wake of the 2015 blazes, focusing on restoring drained peatland, but questions remain over the effectiveness of those efforts.

Scientists from Indonesia, Germany and the Netherlands win Indonesian Peat Prize
- A team of scientists from Indonesia, Germany and the Netherlands has won the Indonesian Peat Prize for coming up with a fast, accurate and cost-effective way to map Indonesia’s vast tropical peatlands.
- The judges praise the winning methodology’s versatility, speediness and accuracy in mapping peatlands.
- Indonesia will have two years to fully adapt the winning methodology into the new peat-mapping standard, although some government agencies are clamoring to start adopting the system immediately.

Deforestation wanes in Indonesia’s Aceh and Leuser Ecosystem, but threats remain, NGO says
- Deforestation in Indonesia’s Aceh province last year fell 18 percent from 2016 — a trend activists attribute to better law enforcement and intensified campaigning about the importance of protecting the unique Leuser Ecosystem.
- Another factor is a government moratorium on oil palm planters clearing peatlands, but this hasn’t stopped many such operators from acting with impunity.
- Activists worry that future threats will come from road projects and planned hydropower and geothermal plants.

Indonesian palm, pulp companies commit to peatland restoration
- Some 125 palm oil and pulp companies have committed to restoring a combined 14,000 square kilometers (5,400 square miles) of degraded peatlands that fall within their leases over the next eight years.
- The move is part of government-driven efforts to prevent a repeat of the massive land and forest fires that flared up in 2015, largely as a result of peatlands being drained for planting and rendered highly combustible.
- At the heart of the rehabilitation work is the extensive blocking of drainage canals, which aims to restore moisture to the peat soil.

Indonesia prepares to adopt standardized peat-mapping technology
- The winner of a competition announced in 2016 to come up with a fast, accurate and cost-effective method to map Indonesia’s vast tropical peatlands will be announced on Feb. 2.
- The government currently lacks an authoritative map of its carbon-rich peat areas, which it urgently needs to enforce a policy of conserving existing peatlands and rehabilitating degraded areas.
- The country’s peatlands are important as stores of greenhouse gases and habitats for endangered species; but their drainage and deforestation, mostly for oil palm plantations, has made Indonesia one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters and contributed to loss of wildlife habitat.

Data fusion opens new horizons for remote imaging of landscapes
- Scientists use remotely sensed data from satellites to map and analyze habitat extent, vegetation health, land use change, and plant species distributions at various scales.
- Open-source data sets, analysis tools, and powerful computers now allow scientists to combine different sources of satellite-based data.
- A new paper details how combining multispectral and radar data enables more refined analyses over broader scales than either can alone.

Indonesian villages see virtually zero progress in program to manage peatlands
- Only one out of nearly 3,000 villages located in Indonesia’s peatlands has received a government permit to manage the forest under the administration’s “social forestry” program.
- At the same time, 80 percent of peatlands in key areas of Sumatra and Kalimantan fall within plantation and mining concessions.
- Activists have called on the government to speed up the process of granting permits to villages, arguing that they make better forest stewards than plantation operators.
- The government has acknowledged the slow pace of progress and accordingly cut its target for the total area of forest reallocated to local communities to a third of the initial figure.

Indonesian parliament pushes for passage of palm oil legislation this year
- Indonesian legislators have prioritized deliberations of a bill regulating the country’s palm oil industry, hoping to have it passed this year.
- The bill in its current form conflicts with the government’s own recently adopted measures to protect peatlands, a point that legislators have acknowledged must be addressed.
- While its proponents say the bill is needed to protect the industry, citing a Western conspiracy against Indonesian palm oil, environmental activists say it will do little to address the ills attributed to the industry.

Study on economic loss from Indonesia’s peat policies criticized
- A recent study estimates that Indonesia’s various peat-protection policies could lead to $5.7 billion in economic losses.
- Those losses arise mainly from the pulp and palm oil industries, which are now obliged to conserve and restore peatlands that fall within their concessions.
- Researchers and officials have criticized the study, saying it fails to make a holistic accounting of the environmental, social, health and climate costs from the continued destruction of carbon-rich peat areas.
- They warn the study’s findings could be used to undermine policies aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2015 fires that cost Indonesia an estimated $16 billion from economic disruption.

Rainforests: the year in review 2017
- 2017 was a rough year for tropical rainforests, but there were some bright spots.
- This is Mongabay’s annual year-in-review on what happened in the world of tropical rainforests.
- Here we summarize some of the more notable developments and trends for tropical forests in 2017.

Indonesia in 2017: A fighting chance for peat protection, but an infrastructure beatdown for indigenous communities
- 2017 brought a mix of good and bad news from Indonesia, pertaining primarily to its forest-protection efforts, its recognition of indigenous rights and its balancing of infrastructure needs with local livelihoods.
- Policies issued in the wake of the devastating 2015 forest fires led to a significant decrease in hotspots and burned area in 2017, but face opposition from industry, parliament and even government officials.
- The government is hopeful it can halve the number of annual hotspots by 2019 from business-as-usual levels, even as the weather agency warns of drier conditions this year.
- Efforts to recognize indigenous people’s rights continued at a glacial pace, and frequently clashed with the government’s ambitious infrastructure-building push.

Paper giant RAPP bows to peat-protection order after Indonesia court defeat
- A court has invalidated a bid by Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper (RAPP) to overturn a government order obliging it to conserve peatlands that fall within its concessions.
- The ruling means the company will have to submit revised work plans to the government, in which peat areas that it had previously earmarked for development would be conserved and rewetted to prevent fires.
- The government has also mulled the possibility of auditing RAPP and parent company APRIL to get a clearer picture of their operations on the ground.

Study: RSPO certification prunes deforestation in Indonesia — but not by much
- Oil palm plantations certified as sustainable by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil had less deforestation than non-certified plantations, according to a new analysis.
- Certification’s effect on the incidence of fires and the clearing of forest from peatlands was not statistically significant.
- The research demonstrates that while certification does reduce deforestation, it has not protected very much standing forest from being cut down.

Global tropical peatland center to be established in Indonesia
- A tropical peatland center will be established in Indonesia’s city of Bogor soon.
- The Indonesian government will discuss the detail of the establishment next year.
- Indonesia said other countries could learn much from its experiences in managing peatlands and dealing with recurring peat fires.

Pulp and paper giant sues Indonesian government over peat protection obligation
- A company owned by the billionaire Tanoto family of Indonesia is seeking to overturn a government decision to invalidate its plans to operate on peatlands.
- The parties are clashing over new rules issued by the Indonesian government in the wake of the 2015 fire and haze crisis.
- The government recently rezoned some areas within the company’s concession for conservation, but the company argues it should be allowed to keep operating on them for now.

COP23: Leaders vie for protection of ‘incredibly important’ African peatland
- The presence of the world’s biggest tropical peatland was recently confirmed in Central Africa. It is the size of England and straddles the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo (ROC).
- However, conservationists and scientists worry it may be at risk from logging and development. They caution its destruction could release “vast amounts” of carbon emissions. Others say the threats are overblown.
- Conservation leaders and representatives gathered this week at COP23 in Bonn, Germany, say protections could exist through REDD+ projects that could give local communities management rights and provide financial incentives for leaving the peat forest intact.

Indonesia tries to learn from Brazil’s success in REDD+
- Indonesia and Brazil both have billion-dollar REDD+ agreements with Norway to reduce deforestation and cut carbon emissions in exchange for funding.
- While Brazil has succeeded, Indonesia has not, and has even seen deforestation rates climb, surpassing those in Brazil.
- Fundamental differences in the way the two countries deal with forest issues, particularly in law enforcement and land reform, help explain their different outcomes.
- The Indonesian government hopes to breathe new life into its flagging REDD+ program by emulating the Brazilian model, and speed up the disbursal of funds from Norway by next year.

‘Much deeper than we expected’: Huge peatland offers up more surprises
- Scientists recently discovered the world’s biggest tropical peatland in the Congo Basin rainforest of Central Africa. The peatland straddles the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.
- Roughly the size of England, the massive peatland is estimated to contain more than 30 billion metric tons of carbon — equivalent to three years of global fossil fuel emissions.
- When the scientists went back to investigate the peatland further, they discovered the peat along its edges is deeper than they thought. This means it may contain more peat — and, thus, more carbon — than they originally thought.
- The scientists are racing to learn more about the peatland as loggers move to fell and drain the forests above it to make way for roads and developments like palm oil plantations. Meanwhile, local communities are hoping for greater protection of the region as government officials try to drum up more support for conservation initiatives at this week’s UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

How unhealthy is the haze from Indonesia’s annual peat fires?
- Indonesia’s vast peat swamp zones have been widely drained and dried for agriculture, rendering them highly flammable, and they often burn on a massive scale, blanketing the country and its neighbors in smoke.
- A recent survey on perceptions of the fires showed that while different groups have varying levels of concern about forest loss or carbon emissions, everyone agrees that protecting public health is a top priority.
- However, the first step to solving a problem is to agree on how critical the issue is.

Indonesian Supreme Court strikes down regulation on peat protection
- Indonesia’s Supreme Court has quashed a ministerial regulation obliging forestry companies to relinquish and protect carbon-rich concessions in protected peat areas.
- The regulation was part of a package of new rules meant to prevent a recurrence of the annual fires that burn across Indonesia’s vast peat swamp zones.
- Businesses, labor unions and politicians had expressed concern over the regulation, saying that it would result in loss of productivity and massive layoffs.
- The government says the court ruling will not hamper the nation’s efforts to protect its peatlands.

The world lost an area of tree cover the size of New Zealand last year
- A new analysis of satellite data found 29.7 million hectares of tree cover was lost in 2016. The number represents a 51 percent jump over 2015.
- The analysts say fire is the big culprit. The data indicate big upticks in fires around the around the world, both in areas where fire naturally occurs as well as wetter areas of the tropics where fire is a rare phenomenon.
- El Nino coupled with human-caused land disturbance like slash-and-burn clearing is thought to have been a big contributor to increase in fire activity around the world.
- Preliminary data indicate 2017 may also be a big fire year. The analysts recommend improved forest management to lower the risks of fire and tree cover loss.

The Palm Oil Fiefdom
- This is the first installment of Indonesia for Sale, an in-depth series on the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land rights crisis.
- Indonesia for Sale is a collaboration between Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an investigative reporting initiative established by UK-based nonprofit Earthsight.
- This article is the product of nine months’ reporting across the Southeast Asian country, interviewing fixers, middlemen, lawyers and companies involved in land deals, and those most affected by them.

Indonesia for Sale: in-depth series on corruption, palm oil and rainforests launches
- The investigative series Indonesia for Sale, launching this week, shines new light on the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land rights crisis.
- In-depth stories, to be released over the coming months, will expose the role of collusion between palm oil firms and politicians in subverting Indonesia’s democracy. They will be published in English and Indonesian.
- The series is the product of nine months’ reporting across the country, interviewing fixers, middlemen, lawyers and companies involved in land deals, and those most affected by them.
- Indonesia for Sale is a collaboration between Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an investigative reporting initiative established by UK-based nonprofit Earthsight.

Does social forestry always decrease deforestation and poverty? (commentary)
- Many governmental and non-governmental organizations see community forestry in Indonesia as a new approach to reducing environmental degradation and increasing social welfare. Despite a decade of experimentation with the concept, very little is known, however, about actual impacts.
- Studies by the Monitoring and Evaluation of Social Forestry program (MEPS) reveal that Village Forest (Hutan Desa) areas reduce deforestation in forests allocated for watershed protection and limited timber extraction
- In forest allocated to normal timber production and conversion, Hutan Desa areas, however, have higher deforestation than comparable forests not managed by communities. Community forestry can achieve positive outcomes, but not everywhere. The government needs to take this insight on board to help in allocating licenses and investments for this scheme.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author.

Palm oil giant FGV will ‘endeavor to rehabilitate’ peatlands it trashed in Borneo
- About a year ago, Felda Global Ventures promised to stop clearing rainforests and peatlands to make way for its oil palm estates.
- This year, though watchdogs reported that the company had continued to clear over 1,000 hectares of forest and peat in Indonesian Borneo, violating not only its green pledge but also its obligations as a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), as well as a new government regulation.
- Last month, FGV renewed its commitment and said it would try to rehabilitate the peatlands it planted since August 2016.

These 3 companies owe Indonesia millions of dollars for damaging the environment. Why haven’t they paid?
- The Indonesian government has been trying to collect penalties from three companies found guilty of damaging the environment.
- One of the companies is PT Kallista Alam, an oil palm plantation firm convicted of cut-and-burning rainforest in the Leuser Ecosystem.
- Another is PT Merbau Pelalawan Lestari, a timber plantation firm that was ordered to pay more than a billion dollars for illegal logging.
- The government plans to establish a task force for the express purpose of collecting the penalties.

Land-swap rule among Indonesian President Jokowi’s latest peat reforms
- To prevent another round of devastating wildfires, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration has issued a series of policies governing the management of peatlands — carbon-rich swamps that have been widely drained and dried by the nation’s agribusinesses, rendering them highly flammable.
- The administration hopes a new land-swap scheme will help it claw back peat from big oil palm and timber planters, providing a means to supply the firms with additional land elsewhere in the country.
- Business associations complain about the new policy, saying it’s not feasible for a company in Sumatra to move its operations all the way to Papua.
- Environmental pressure groups, meanwhile, call the regulation an unfair boon for large firms, providing a rapacious industry with more land than the vast amounts it already controls.

First real test for Jokowi on haze as annual fires return to Indonesia
- Land and forest fires have broken out in pockets of Indonesia since mid-July.
- Last year the country caught a break, when a longer-than-normal wet season brought on by La Niña helped mitigate the fire threat.
- This year, hotspots have started appearing in regions with no history of major land and forest fires, like East Nusa Tenggara and Aceh.
- The government has responded by declaring an emergency status as well as deploying firefighters.

Is the forestry project of the French Development Agency threatening the peatlands of the DRC? (commentary)
- An open letter to the Norwegian government rightly raises the question of the essential role of peatlands in carbon storage and the importance of not destroying them.
- It seems, however, that this open letter, signed by some thirty scientists, imputes motives to the AFD unjustifiably and relies on inappropriate comparisons with Indonesia.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Is Norwegian money funding Congo deforestation?
- A recent report by conservation NGO Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is decrying what they say is Norwegian government complicity in funding a project they allege could result in the clearance of vast tracts of Congo rainforest and the release of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
- RFUK’s report spotlights a project funded through Norway’s Central Africa Forest Initiative (CAFI) that would increase the area comprised by logging concessions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by 20 million hectares. Its analysis found the concessions stand to include 10,000 square kilometers of peat swamp, and if actively logged, could release as much as 3.8 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
- Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment says the report is overblown and the situation more complicated than RFUK contends.
- Per F. I. Pharo, director of the Government of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative, said an amended project proposal is under review and will not be accepted unless various conditions are met: “Among the key recommendations Norway has made to the program document is the importance that the program document should not conclude on important policy choices that should be the product of a thorough and inclusive process at country level.”

Mounting outcry over Indonesian palm oil bill as legislators press on
- The bill cements the right of oil palm planters to operate on peat soil, at a time when President Joko Widodo is trying to enforce new peat protections to stop another outbreak of devastating fires and haze.
- The bill has also been criticized for outlining a variety of tax breaks and duty relief schemes for palm oil investors, although those provisions have been dialed back — but not completely eliminated — in the latest draft.
- The bill’s main champion in the House of Representatives is the Golkar Party’s Firman Soebagyo. He says it will help farmers and protect Indonesian palm oil from foreign intervention.
- Responding to mounting public criticism, some cabinet members recently asked the House to abandon the bill, but Soebagyo, who is leading the deliberations, says they will continue.

Transforming business as usual in Indonesia: an interview with Aida Greenbury
- Aida Greenbury is the former Chief Sustainability Officer at Asia Pulp & Paper, a forestry giant with extensive operations in Indonesia.
- Greenbury was the lead internal architect for APP’s 2013 forest conservation policy, which is today one of the most ambitious zero deforestation commitments in the plantation sector.
- Greenbury left APP in May and is today working on collaborative initiatives to protect and restore ecosystems.

Indonesia blocks major artery in haze-causing Mega Rice canal network
- The Ministry of Public Works and Housing is narrowing and installing dams in one of the largest canals built as part of the failed Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s.
- Authorities are negotiating with local residents who rely on some of the canals for transportation through the peat swamps of Central Kalimantan.
- Officials say that to really solve the problem of dried out and flammable peat, not just the largest canals but the smaller ones too will have to be blocked.

Groundwater may play key role in forest fires
- Researchers compared groundwater dynamics to fire incidence in Borneo.
- During prolonged dry spells, groundwater levels can get so low that capillary action cannot take place, creating a condition called “hydrological drought.”
- The researchers found that when a fire occurs, almost 10 times more land is burned in a hydrological drought year than in a non-drought year.
- They write that their findings may help better predict fire occurrence and extent during El Niño events, and may provide a tool to help plan and adapt to climate change.

Norway bans government purchasing of palm oil biofuel
- The growth of the palm oil industry has been blamed for a host of damaging environmental impacts, such as deforestation and carbon emissions.
- Research indicates that biofuel made with palm oil may be even worse for the climate than fossil fuels.
- The Norwegian parliament responded to these impacts by voting in a regulation to its Public Procurement Act to stop using biofuel palm oil-based biofuel. The resolution further stipulates that the “regulatory amendment shall enter into force as soon as possible.”
- Conservationists laud the move, but say more countries need to follow suit. They recommend the EU’s biofuel policy be updated to reflect concerns about palm oil.

‘Give us back our land’: paper giants struggle to resolve conflicts with communities in Sumatra
- Plantation firms like Asia Pulp & Paper and Toba Pulp Lestari have a long history of land grabbing, often dating back to the New Order military dictatorship. More recently, they have pledged to eliminate the practice from their supply chains.
- Many of the conflicts remain unaddressed. The companies say they are working hard to resolve them.
- A new online platform launched by the Rainforest Action Network shows that communities are still suffering the impacts of having their traditional forests and lands seized to make way for plantations.

Indonesia’s plantation lobby challenges environmental law
- The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) and the Indonesian Association of Forestry Concessionaires (APHI) lodged a judicial review with the Constitutional Court last month.
- They want the court to edit the 1999 Forestry Law and the 2009 Environment Law so that companies are not strictly liable for fires that occur in their concessions.
- They also want to the court to extend the ban on using fire to clear land to small farmers.

Indonesian governor asks president to let timber firms drain peat in his province
- West Kalimantan Governor Cornelis asked President Joko Widodo to let some timber plantation companies drain peatlands, even though Jakarta banned the practice last year.
- In a letter to the president dated Apr. 25, Cornelis makes an economic argument for allowing the companies to proceed as usual.
- Cornelis is a member of an international consortium of governors dedicated to fighting climate change; Greenpeace said his request to the president amounted to a “double standard.”
- His request came just days after Jakarta sanctioned a timber firm in his province for building an illegal canal through the Sungai Putri peat swamp forest.

Palm oil firm pledges to stop deforesting after RSPO freezes its operations in Papua
- Goodhope Asia Holdings, an arm of Sri Lanka’s Carson Cumberbatch, is the latest palm oil company to promise to purge its operations of deforestation, peatland conversion and human rights abuses.
- Announcing such a commitment and implementing it are two different matters. Despite the growing prevalence of such pledges, no major user or processor of palm oil can say it has actually eliminated deforestation from its supply chain.
- Goodhope subsidiary PT Nabire Baru presides over what one watchdog called “possibly the most controversial plantation in Papua.”

Over the bridge: The battle for the future of the Kinabatangan
- Proponents of the project contend that a bridge and associated paved road to Sukau would have helped the town grow and improve the standard of living for its residents.
- Environmental groups argue that the region’s unrealized potential for high-end nature tourism could bring similar economic benefits without disturbing local populations of elephants, orangutans and other struggling wildlife.
- The mid-April cancellation of the bridge was heralded as a success for rainforest conservation, but bigger questions loom about the future of local communities, the sanctuary and its wildlife.

A Sumatran king’s 1,400-year-old vision for sustainable landscape planning
- Indonesia’s South Sumatra is an epicenter of the annual peat fires that ravage the archipelago country.
- The province has become a staging ground for projects like KELOLA Sendang, which is intended to promote sustainable landscape management in an important tiger habitat.
- More than a millennium ago, the ruler of the Srivijaya kingdom put forth his own vision for sustainable prosperity — one of which today’s policymakers could take heed.

As Thailand ramps up its palm oil sector, peat forests feel the pressure
- Thailand is currently the world’s third-largest producer of palm oil. As of 2015, around 70 percent of land used for oil palm cultivation was managed by small-scale farmers.
- Most of Thailand’s palm oil is grown in the southern part of the country. In one protected area, called Pru Kaching, the government is trying to reclaim land from palm oil growers. But complicating factors have mired the effort.
- In order to grow crops like oil palm in peatlands, the swampy peat must be drained – which releases carbon into the atmosphere and makes the forests that overlay them more susceptible to fire.

Discovering the Congo carbon sink
- Cuvette Centrale, as it is known, stores as much carbon as has been emitted by the U.S. over the last 20 years.
- The peatland ecosystem is home to wetland birds, forest elephants, and western lowland gorillas.
- Threats to the vast carbon sink include climate change and conversion to agriculture.

A Bornean village conserves a forest the government listed for cutting
- Residents of Bawan village in Indonesia Borneo applied for a permit to manage their land as a “village forest,” a form of community forestry being pushed by President Joko Widodo’s administration.
- The national government had designated the area as “production forest,” meaning it could be sold to a plantation or mining company, but residents chose instead to protect the land.
- “I consider Bawan’s village forest a champion project,” said Lilik Sugiarti, a USAID representative who helped to bring it about.

World’s largest tropical peatlands discovered in swamp forests of Congo Basin
- The peatlands, which weren’t even known to exist as recently as five years ago, were revealed to cover 145,500 square kilometres (or more than 17,500 square miles), an area larger than England, and to sequester some 30 billion metric tons of carbon.
- That makes them one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth, according to the researchers who made the discovery and subsequently mapped the peatlands.
- Professor Simon Lewis and Dr. Greta Dargie, who are both affiliated with the University of Leeds and University College London, first discovered the peatlands’ existence while doing fieldwork in the region in 2012.

Norway starts $400-million fund to halt deforestation, help farmers
- Norway contributed $100 million, and other donors are expected to contribute the balance of the $400-million commitment by 2020.
- The World Economic Forum figures that the financing will help protect 5 million hectares of peatland and forest.
- Small-scale farmers should receive support through the fund to increase their yields while avoiding further deforestation and degradation.

‘Revolutionary’ new biodiversity maps reveal big gaps in conservation
- The research uses the chemical signals of tree communities to reveal their different survival strategies and identify priority areas for protection.
- Currently, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory’s airplane provides the only way to create these biodiversity maps. But the team is working to install the technology in an Earth-orbiting satellite.
- Once launched, the $200 million satellite would provide worldwide biodiversity mapping updated every month.

Politician’s son named a suspect over illegal land clearing in Leuser Ecosystem
- Last October, authorities found three men and an excavator digging a canal through the Singkil Swamp Wildlife Reserve. They appeared to be preparing the land for oil palm cultivation.
- This week, the police announced that the son of the head of a local parliament is a suspect in the case.
- The reserve lies within the Leuser Ecosystem, the only place where elephants, tigers, rhinos and orangutans still coexist in the wild.

Green groups want paper giant to stop using drained peat in Indonesia
- Indonesia’s vast peat swamp zones have been widely drained and dried for agriculture. The practice underlies the devastating annual fires that in 2015 burned an area the size of Vermont and sickened half a million people.
- Asia Pulp & Paper is Indonesia’s largest paper company. About a quarter of its vast holdings consist of peat.
- The government has banned any new development on peatlands. NGOs want the company to go farther, rewetting and restoring all of the peat in its concessions, even that which has already been planted with acacia.

HSBC financing tied to deforestation, rights violations for palm oil in Indonesia
- HSBC has helped several palm oil companies accused of community rights violations and illegal deforestation pull together billions in credit and bonds, according to research by Greenpeace.
- The bank has policies that require its customers to achieve RSPO certification by 2018 and prohibiting the bank from ‘knowingly’ engaging with companies that don’t respect sustainability laws and regulations.
- Greenpeace contends that HSBC, as one of the world’s largest banks, should commit to a ‘No deforestation, no peat, no exploitation’ policy and should hold its customers accountable to the same standard.

How local elites earn money from burning land in Indonesia
- Members of political parties and local figures are organizing farmers to burn land for sale to a variety of large and small buyers, a new study shows.
- These elites pocket most of the profits from this destructive and illegal activity. Village officials who administer land documents and the workers who carry out the burning also receive a cut.
- For the fires to stop, the study says, these actors must be disempowered through law and policy.

A trip on Borneo’s Mahakam River in search of forgotten wildlife
- With funding from National Geographic we are retracing the footsteps of Henry Cushier Raven, a specimen collector who travelled extensively in East Kalimantan, Indonesia between 1912 and 1914.
- We want to know which species Raven found and whether we can still find these species today.
- In April 2016, we already covered the Berau and East Kutai parts of Raven’s journey. This is the story of his Mahakam travels.
- The story is published in four parts. This is part II.

Following in Raven’s Footsteps: 100 years of wildlife loss on Borneo
- With funding from the National Geographic Society we are retracing the footsteps of Henry Cushier Raven, a specimen collector who travelled extensively in East Kalimantan, Indonesia between 1912 and 1914.
- We want to know which species Raven found and whether we can still find these species today.
- In April 2016, we already covered the Berau and East Kutai parts of Raven’s journey. This is the story of his Mahakam travels.
- The story is published in four parts. This is part 1.

The year in tropical rainforests: 2016
- After 2015’s radical advancements in transparency around tropical forests between improved forest cover monitoring systems and corporate policies on commodity sourcing, progress slowed in 2016 with no major updates on tropical forest cover, resistance from several governments in releasing forest data, and some notable backtracking on zero deforestation commitments.
- But even without the pan-tropical updates, we know that deforestation increased sharply in the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for the world’s largest area of tropical forest.
- Low commodity prices may have bought some relief for forests.

As accusations fly, paper giant appears to stand by its replanting of burned peat in Sumatra
- After the 2015 fire and haze crisis, the Indonesian government barred plantation firms from replanting the peatlands that had burned in their concessions. Instead, the companies were ordered to restore the dried-out peat soil to prevent future fires.
- Some agribusinesses, however, are said to be resurrecting their drainage-dependent acacia and oil palm estates in violation of the directive from President Jokowi’s administration. One of them is Asia Pulp & Paper, an arm of the Sinar Mas conglomerate.
- APP declined to comment substantively for this article, except to imply that everything it does is in accordance with the rules. But a director in the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry explained that the company had been authorized to replant burned peat with acacia trees because, he said, it would serve to mitigate certain fire risks.
- NGOs surveyed by Mongabay rejected the contention that planting peat with drainage-dependent acacia constitutes a valid means of peatland restoration, although some were more understanding of the government’s position than others.

Green groups raise red flags over Jokowi’s widely acclaimed haze law
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo last week codified a much-praised moratorium on peatland development into law.
- Though widely reported as a permanent ban on clearing and draining the archipelago’s carbon-rich peat swamps, the prohibition will only last until the government finishes mapping and zoning the nation’s peatlands, although stronger protections have been put in place.
- Norway praised the policy’s legalization, announcing it would release $25 million to support the sustainable management of Indonesia’s peatlands.
- Some environmental groups tell Mongabay that the regulation pays insufficient heed to the scientific evidence of what is required to prevent the wholesale collapse of peatland ecosystems.

Palm oil culprits apprehended in the Leuser Ecosystem. Who sent them?
- Three men and an excavator were found digging a drainage canal through the Singkil Swamp Wildlife Reserve, the region’s largest, deepest and most intact peatland.
- The head of the Aceh Natural Resources Conservation Agency says the men appeared to be clearing the land for oil palm, which is illegal in the area.
- The arrest comes at a critical time for the broader Leuser Ecosystem, with a Jakarta court set to rule on a challenge to Aceh province’s controversial land-use plan next week. The allegedly illegal plan makes no mention of Leuser.

Parents who say Indonesia’s haze killed their children testify in citizen suit
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo has promised to prosecute companies linked to last year’s fire and haze disaster.
- In July, though, the Riau Police terminated investigations into 15 companies the environment ministry had listed in connection with the burning.
- At least two lawsuits challenging the dropping of the cases are now underway.

Hectare by hectare, an indigenous man reforested a jungle in Indonesia’s burned-out heartland
- In 1998, a Dayak Ngaju man named Januminro started buying up and reforesting degraded land not far from Palangkaraya, the capital of Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province.
- Today the forest spans 18 hectares and is home to orangutans, sun bears and other endangered species.
- Januminro uses funds from an adopt-a-tree program to operate a volunteer firefighting team. He has big plans to expand the forest.

Company poised to destroy critical orangutan habitat in breach of Indonesia’s moratorium
- Sungai Putri is a beautiful natural forest area in West Kalimantan that is home to between 750 and 1750 orangutans.
- This makes it the third largest population of this Critically Endangered species in the province. Sungai Putri has extensive deep peat areas, up to 14.5 meters deep in places.
- A company named PT Mohairson Pawan Khatulistiwa apparently plans to clear more than half of their license area for conversion into an industrial tree plantation.

Fires ravaged forests in Indonesian palm oil giant Astra’s land in 2015
- In September last year, Astra Agro Lestari earned plaudits for issuing a zero-deforestation pledge.
- A new Aidenvironment report tracks the company’s progress implementing its commitment.
- A major issue is Astra’s policy for preventing fires on its land. Fires raged across its concessions last year, but the firm has not elaborated how it plans to stop burning.

139 scientists shoot down ‘misleading’ reports from Malaysia peat congress
- The researchers issued an open letter in response to certain newspaper articles about the 15th International Peat Congress, held recently in Malaysia, a top palm oil producer.
- One article erroneously portrays an IPC executive as endorsing new studies finding drainage-based peatland agriculture to be not necessarily unsustainable, when the executive made no such comments.
- More broadly, the articles in question portray as fringely held the view that drainage-based peatland development is unsustainable, when in fact it is backed by an extensive body of research and held by a large number of scientists, not just by “militant environmentalists” and “green NGOs” as implied by the articles.
- The articles were published in The Jakarta Post and The Borneo Post.

Indonesia seeks foreign funds to aid peat restoration drive
- The head of Indonesia’s peat restoration agency said corporate social responsibility and donor funds would not be enough to meet the country’s target.
- Indonesia’s finance ministry is preparing a reform package to provide incentives to invest in peat rehabilitation.
- The environment ministry has moved to issue five timber companies with administrative sanctions for complicity in wildfires burning on their concessions.
- Three companies had their licenses altogether revoked; land from two of those concessions will be converted into a buffer zone for Tesso Nilo National Park.

Pulp and paper supplier denies draining peat on island near Singapore
- Haze-causing fires are continuing to burn in Indonesia, especially in West Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo.
- The CEO of PT RAPP, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s second-largest pulp and paper company, said the canals his firm was accused of digging recently in order to drain peat soil for planting were actually meant to serve as reservoirs to aid firefighting in the burned-out concession.
- Indonesia’s peatland restoration agency is investigating the company’s activities.

Another Indonesian court convicts a company of causing fires
- In December 2015, plantation company PT Bumi Mekar Hijau was acquitted in a civil suit the government had filed against it for letting fires ravage its land in 2014.
- Now, an appeals court has reversed that decision, ordering the company to pay $6 million in compensation.
- Environmentalists wished the company had been made to pay a higher penalty, given that the government was asking for more than $600 million. The 2015 Southeast Asian haze crisis cost Indonesia $16 billion, according to the World Bank.

Indonesian parliament to investigate fire-linked firms in Riau

Fire set for peatland clearing in Riau Province, Indonesia in July 2015. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

The Indonesian parliament will form a task force to look into the cancelling of investigations against 15 companies alleged to be complicit in fires in Riau, the country’s top palm oil producing province. Legislators made the announcement on Friday as burning in Sumatra and Kalimantan continued to spread, prompting emergency responses from authorities there. The fires are an […]
Indonesia’s peat restoration chief calls for protection of all peat domes

Drainage canal dug through peat swamp in Riau Province. Photo by Rhett A Butler

The Indonesian agency set up to prevent a recurrence of last year’s devastating forest and peatland fires is calling for all peat domes in the country to be designated as protected areas. Indonesian law already prohibits development on deep peatlands, where the carbon-rich peat soil can extend for many meters below the surface. But the country’s vague peat […]
Company ordered to pay record $76m over fires in Sumatra
- The case concerned fires that burned across PT National Sago Prima’s concession in Indonesia’s Riau province in 2014.
- The company was deemed to have been negligent in failing to prevent the fires because it did not have the proper firefighting equipment and infrastructure on hand.
- The fires were also deemed to have damaged the environment and the economy.

Hundreds sickened in Indonesia’s Aceh as peat fires burn
- In West Aceh, a school has had to close, with two students hospitalized with breathing problems.
- One hundred and fifty military and police officers are trying to put the fires in West Aceh.
- The fires are a result of slash-and-burn land clearing by oil palm planters, officials say.

IPOP’s demise undercuts palm oil industry progress [commentary]
- The Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge (IPOP) was a sustainability commitment signed by Indonesia’s biggest palm oil refiners in 2014.
- Dave McLaughlin, the World Wildlife Fund’s acting senior vice president for sustainable food, argues that the Indonesian and Malaysian governments must do more to promote sustainability in an industry plagued by environmental destruction and illegal practices.
- This post is a commentary — the views expressed are those of the author.

RSPO lifts suspension of Malaysian palm oil giant IOI
- NGOs have complained about IOI’s operations in Indonesia for years. In April, the RSPO suspended the company’s sustainable certification.
- On Friday, the RSPO lifted the suspension after IOI submitted an action plan to address the latest complaint.
- Green groups said the RSPO should have kept the suspension in place until IOI could demonstrate progress on the ground.
- It remains unclear whether consumer goods giants like Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, which moved to cut supplies from IOI in the wake of the suspension, will look to resume purchases from the company.

15 fire-linked firms escape prosecution in Indonesia’s Riau
- The police in Riau, Indonesia’s top palm oil-producing province and one of the hardest-hit by last year’s disastrous forest and peatland fires, closed cases against 15 plantation firms that the environment ministry had linked to the burning.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, who on Thursday was replaced as the country’s chief security minister, had expressed concern about the decision not to bring charges against the companies.
- In East Kalimantan, the head of a local policy implementation unit has also complained that the authorities are not moving quickly enough to prosecute errant plantation firms.

Indonesia declares national park in top palm oil-producing province
- The establishment of the Zamrud National Park was announced as part of World Environment Day on Friday.
- Zamrud is the third national park in Riau province.
- Other national parks in Riau, especially Tesso Nilo, have suffered extensive forest loss as a result of encroachment.
- More than 40% of Riau’s forests have been cleared for industrial concessions since 2001, according to the World Resources Institute.

Haze epicenter receives environmental award in Indonesia
- The government presented this year’s Adipura Awards in Siak, Riau province.
- The awards are usually handed out in Jakarta.
- Siak also won an Adipura Award, and it was the only district in Riau, which has traditionally been hard-hit by forest and peatland fires, to do so.

Indonesia’s palm oil permit moratorium to last five years
- Indonesia’s chief economics minister made the announcement after a meeting between ministers last week.
- The moratorium will take the form of a presidential instruction to be issued in the near future, he said.
- The forestry ministry has already taken steps to follow up on the moratorium announcement.

Indonesia’s energy, agriculture targets could undermine its climate goals: report
- Indonesia, a top carbon polluter, has pledged to reduce emissions by at least 29% over business-as-usual levels by 2030.
- At the same time, the country has set ambitious water, food and energy security goals.
- A new report looks at where these goals might conflict.

Fires begin to appear en masse as Indonesia’s burning season gets going
- Nearly 300 hotspots were detected over Sumatra and Kalimantan on Monday.
- By Wednesday, that number had dropped somewhat, though authorities said they expected the fires to increase as Indonesia enters the dry season.
- Police in Riau arrested a man for burning a small plot of land, while the NGO Walhi said authorities should focus on burning by large companies.

Bunge joins ranks of palm oil users to sanction Malaysia’s IOI
- In March, IOI lost its sustainability certification from the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production over allegations of environmental destruction in its Indonesian operations.
- Since then, a number of IOI’s customers have moved to disengage with the supplier.
- Among Bunge’s demands is for IOI to issue a more detailed sourcing policy.

Under gov’t pressure, palm oil giants disband green pledge
- The members of the Indonesia Palm Oil Pledge, a pact between six palm oil refiners to purge their supply chains of environmental destruction and human rights abuses, announced on Friday they were disbanding the agreement.
- The companies — Wilmar International, Cargill, Golden Agri-Resources, Asian Agri, Musim Mas and Astra Agro Lestari — feared being investigated by Indonesia’s anti-monopoly agency, according to the leaked transcript of a recent meeting between the firms.
- NGOs condemned the decision as a setback for the movement to clean up the palm oil industry, whose rapid expansion is eating away at Indonesia’s rainforests and dispossessing indigenous peoples.

What are South Sumatrans doing to prevent another haze crisis?
- Residents are still digging canals to drain peatlands, which dries out the soil and makes it prone to burning in the dry season.
- Villagers near pulp and paper supplier PT Bumi Mekar Hijau’s concession, much of which burned last year, say they are upset with the company.
- A small number of residents have been enlisted to serve as part of a Fire Care Community Group to patrol the area, but a local official says it needs to be expanded.

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