topic: Plantations

topic: Plantations

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NZ funding helps Indigenous farmers in Indonesia protect forests, boost incomes
- Two Indigenous villages in Indonesian Borneo have received initial funding of nearly $15,000 from the New Zealand government to improve their livelihoods while protecting their ancestral forests.
- Residents of the Dayak villages of Setawar and Gunam mostly grow oil palms, but also still rely on their ancestral forests for making medicinal herbs, producing handicrafts and carrying out traditional rituals.
- The funding, channeled through the Farmers For Forest Protection Foundation (4F), will go toward programs such as training and deployment of forest guards, forest management support, and implementation of good agricultural practices.

Latest palm oil deforester in Indonesia may also be operating illegally
- The biggest deforestation hotspot for palm oil in Indonesia is located on a small island off the southern Borneo coast, new data show.
- Up to 10,650 hectares (26,317 acres) of forest — one-sixth the size of Jakarta — were cleared from 2022-2023 inside the concession of PT Multi Sarana Agro Mandiri (MSAM), part of the influential Jhonlin Group.
- Activists say the company’s operations may be illegal, given the questionable process through which it obtained its permits.
- However, law enforcers have ignored calls to investigate, and previous efforts by journalists to expose the group’s business practices have led to their criminal prosecution on hate speech charges.

Desperation sets in for Indigenous Sumatrans who lost their forests to plantations
- The seminomadic Suku Anak Dalam Indigenous people have lived in two areas of what is now Jambi province on Indonesia’s Sumatra island for generations, but an influx of plantation interests has shrunk the customary territory available to their society.
- More than 2,000 Suku Anak Dalam have lost their land to oil palm and rubber plantations, which have also led to a loss of the native trees from which community members collect forest honey to sell.
- Several Suku Anak Dalam interviewees said state-owned rubber plantation company PT Alam Lestari Nusantara had failed to properly compensate them for their land.
- The company did not respond to several requests for comment.

Afro-Brazilian communities fight a rain of pesticides & the company behind it
- Quilombola communities in the Sapê do Norte region of Brazil’s Espírito Santo state have been reporting toxic crop dusting by pulp and paper company Suzano on its eucalyptus plantations.
- Inhabitants speak of damage to their gardens, dried-up water sources, dead fish and diseases.
- The use of aerial pesticide application has been prohibited in the EU since 2009; in Brazil, the number of people affected by the practice increased by 86% between 2021 and 2022.

Snack giant PepsiCo sourced palm oil from razed Indigenous land – investigation
- In the last few years it is likely that PepsiCo has been using in its production palm oil from deforested land claimed by the Shipibo-Konibo people in eastern Peru, a new investigation has found.
- Palm oil from Peru enters PepsiCo’s supply chain via a consortium that shares storage facilities with Ocho Sur, the second largest palm oil producer in the country which has been associated with deforestation and violation of Indigenous peoples’ rights. In the last three years, further deforestation occurred within the company’s land, the investigation found.
- Some of the forest loss on company-run oil palm plantations occurred on land claimed by the Santa Clara de Uchunya community of Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people.
- PepsiCo manufactures at least 15 products containing Peruvian palm oil that could be linked to deforestation. The company has pledged to make 100% of its palm oil supply deforestation-free by the end of 2022 and for its operation to be net zero by 2040.

Report links H&M and Zara to major environmental damage in biodiverse Cerrado
- A report by U.K. investigative NGO Earthsight links supply chains of fashion giants H&M and Zara to large-scale illegal deforestation, land-grabbing, violence and corruption in Brazil.
- The country’s Cerrado region, home to a third of Brazil’s species, has already lost half of its vegetation to large-scale agriculture and is under increasing pressure from a booming cotton industry.
- The two major producers linked to illicit activities, SLC Agrícola and Grupo Horita, deny the accusations, as does Abrapa, Brazil’s producer association, which also oversees cotton certification implementation in the country.
- Earthsight found that most of the tainted cotton it tracked had the Better Cotton label, raising the alarm over the practices and traceability of the certification system.

Conservationists welcome new PNG Protected Areas Act — but questions remain
- In February 2024, Papua New Guinea’s parliament passed the Protected Areas Bill, first introduced two decades ago, into an act, which aims to establish a national system of protected areas to achieve the conservation target of protecting 30% of PNG’s territory by 2030.
- The act lays out a legal framework for working with customary landowners in the country to earmark protected areas, establishes regulations to manage these areas and provides provisions for alternative livelihoods to forest-dependent communities.
- The act also mandates the establishment of a long-term Biodiversity and Climate Task Fund, which communities can access to implement their management plans and conservation objectives.
- While conservationists say the act is a good step toward protecting biodiversity, they raise concerns about its implementation and whether the promised benefits of protected areas will reach landowning communities.

As fires ravaged Indonesia in 2023, some positive trends emerged, data show
- Indonesia’s 2023 fire season saw 1.16 million hectares (2.87 million acres) of land and forest go up in flames, and while this was five times higher than in 2022, experts highlight a positive trend.
- The fires were exacerbated by an intense El Niño weather system, unlike in 2022; the last time similar conditions prevailed, in 2019, the area affected by fires was much larger, suggesting fire mitigation efforts may be working.
- Most of the burning occurred in scrubland and areas of degraded forest rather than in intact forests, meaning greenhouse gas emissions from the burning were also much lower than in 2023.
- But a worrying trend highlighted by the numbers is that severe fires are now occurring in four-year cycles, intensified and exacerbated by the impacts of a changing climate.

World Bank’s IFC under fire over alleged abuses at Liberian plantation it funded
- An investigation into the International Finance Corporation’s handling of human rights abuses at a project it financed in Liberia, the Salala Rubber Corporation, is expected to severely incriminate the World Bank’s private lending arm.
- The World Bank’s Compliance Advisory Ombudsman investigated whether the IFC did enough to address allegations of gender-based violence, land grabbing and unfair compensation by its client, Socfin, between 2008 and 2020.
- It’s anticipated that the report will find the finance institution didn’t act to prevent Socfin from violating its legal obligations to local communities and protect the environment; this finding would follow closely on a damning report into similar failures to hold another IFC client, Bridge International Schools in Kenya, to account
- The IFC missed a February deadline to respond to the CAO report and submit an action plan; the delay comes as a new remedial action framework for the IFC is due to be finalized and released

Tropical forest loss puts 2030 zero-deforestation target further out of reach
- The overall rate of primary forest loss across the tropics remained stubbornly high in 2023, putting the world well off track from its net-zero deforestation target by 2030, according to a new report from the World Resources Institute.
- The few bright spots were Brazil and Colombia, where changes in political leadership helped drive down deforestation rates in the Amazon.
- Elsewhere, however, several countries hit record-high rates of forest loss, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia and Laos, driven largely by agriculture, mining and fires.
- The report authors call for “bold global mechanisms and unique local initiatives … to achieve enduring reductions in deforestation across all tropical front countries.”

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.

PalmWatch platform pushes for farm-to-fork traceability of palm oil
- PalmWatch, an online, open-source tool, is seeking to bring greater transparency to the global palm oil supply web, to better help consumers trace the impact of the commodity.
- A key hurdle to transparency has long been the fact that batches of palm oil and their derivatives sourced by consumer brands like Nestlé and PepsiCo potentially contain product from hundreds of mills processing palm fruit from thousands of plantations.
- By scraping various websites with mill disclosure data and standardizing the information in one place, PalmWatch can come up with a supply chain map that can link specific mills, suppliers and consumer brands to harms associated with palm oil.
- Advocacy groups have welcomed the launch of the tool, saying it will allow for improved targeting of campaigns to get brands to push for more sustainable practices in their supply chains.

Toilet paper: Environmentally impactful, but alternatives are rolling out
- While toilet paper use is ubiquitous in China, North America, parts of the EU and Australia, its environmental impact is rarely discussed. Environmentalists recently began urging people to be more aware of the real price paid for each roll — especially for luxury soft, extra-absorbent TP made from virgin tree pulp.
- Though not the global primary source of tissue pulp, large tracts of old-growth forest in Canada and Indonesia are being felled today for paper and tissue products, impacting biodiversity and Indigenous communities. Eucalyptus plantations to provide pulp for TP are mostly ecological deserts, and put a strain on water supplies.
- The environmental impacts of toilet paper occur all along its supply chain. Making TP is an energy- and water-intensive process, and also requires toxic PFAS and other chemicals. Upon disposal, toilet paper can become an insoluble pollutant that resists wastewater treatment and adds bulk and chemicals to sewage sludge.
- Many large tissue makers are investing in improved technologies to lighten this impact. But emerging markets in the developing world, beyond the reach of environmental watchdogs, are raising alarms. Bidets, recycled paper, bamboo, sugarcane and other alternative pulp sources offer more environmentally friendly options.

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.

Brazil risks losing the Pampa grassland to soy farms and sand patches
- Nearly a third of the Brazilian portion of South America’s Pampa grassland has been lost since 1985, largely to agricultural expansion and forestry plantations.
- This biome is often overlooked in comparison to the higher-profile Amazon, Pantanal and Cerrado landscapes, but has greater plant diversity than the others.
- The expansion of agriculture may also be exacerbating an age-old problem in the Pampa, which is the spread of barren, sandy patches of land.
- Efforts to reverse this process, known as arenization, often involve growing eucalyptus plantations, but experts say this commercial approach solves nothing.

Studies still uncovering true extent of 2019-20 Australia wildfire catastrophe
- Australia’s 2019-20 bushfires burned with unprecedented intensity through a total of 24 million hectares (59 million acres), an area the size of the U.K.
- New research shows total costs incurred to the tourism industry from that single bushfire season may be 61% higher than previously calculated.
- Up to 1.5 billion wild animals may have perished in the fires, and new research is uncovering the cost to individual species as a result of the fires.
- One study published shows 15% of all known roost locations of the gray-headed flying fox, Australia’s largest bat species, may have been directly impacted by the fires.

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.

Sumatra community faces up to ‘plasma’ disappointment after palm oil policy shift
- A 2022 investigation by Mongabay, the BBC and The Gecko Project found that hundreds of thousands of hectares of land had not been handed to communities by palm oil companies despite provisions in a 2007 law.
- In 2023, Indonesia’s Directorate-General of Plantations published updated rules stating that companies with licenses issued prior to 2007 would not be required to hand 20% of their concession to local farmers, although companies licensed after 2007 would still be required to do so.
- In Tebing Tinggi Okura on the island of Sumatra, a community is coming to terms with this change after a near two-decade dispute from which they hoped to win rights to farming land for hundreds of families.

‘Shocking’ mortality of infant macaques points to dangers of oil palm plantations
- As oil palm plantations encroach on rainforests, wild primates increasingly enter them to forage, where they face the threat of being eaten by feral dogs, killed for raiding crops, or caught by traffickers for the pet trade.
- A new study from Peninsular Malaysia finds that exposure to oil plantations also significantly increases the risk of death among infant southern pig-tailed macaques.
- In addition to known threats, researchers speculate common pesticides used in oil palm plantations might play a role in the increased death risks for infant macaques, but their study stops short of providing direct evidence implicating any specific toxic chemical in these deaths.
- Conservationists call for using environmentally safe and wildlife-friendly agricultural practices in oil plantations to minimize risks and establishing wildlife corridors and tree islands so that endangered primates, like southern pig-tailed macaques, can move freely without being exposed to threats.

Andes community-led conservation curbs more páramo loss than state-protected area: Study
- In the central highlands of Ecuador, land managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities is associated with improved outcomes for drought adaptation and páramo conservation, according to a new study.
- The study finds that páramo areas managed by communities in this region are better protected than those under the care of the state.
- Due to the advance of the agricultural frontier in the highlands, approximately 4 hectares (9.9 acres) of páramo are lost every day, which threatens the water supply of the entire region.
- Community-led land management that incorporates inclusive participation, traditional knowledge and the cultural values of those who inhabit the areas, coined by reseachers as “social technology,” can aid in the conservation of the páramo.

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.

Jokowi’s land reform agenda stalls as conflicts nearly double, report shows
- Land conflicts in Indonesia have nearly doubled under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo as his administration pursues an investor-first economic agenda that has sidelined local communities and the environment, a new report shows.
- There were 2,939 pending disputes affecting 1.75 million households in the nine years to date of the Jokowi administration, compared to 1,520 disputes involving 977,000 households during the 10 years of the previous administration.
- The report by the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA) says the government has largely failed in its reform agenda, having previously promised to register community-owned lands and redistribute expired concessions back to communities.
- A key driver of land disputes are infrastructure projects that the Jokowi administration has designated as projects of “national strategic importance,” which gives the government eminent domain rights to evict entire communities.

Indonesian palm oil firm fined for fires sues expert a second time over testimony
- Environmental law experts say palm oil company PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa (JJP) is attempting to shirk its liability and fines for a forest fire by suing an expert witness who testified against it.
- The lawsuit is the second that JJP has filed against Bambang Hero Saharjo, an expert on fire forensics at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB); the company dropped its previous lawsuit against him in 2018.
- The company blames Bambang, who testified about the extent of the fire damage on JJP’s concession, for the high amount that it was fined, saying his testimony was “false and exaggerated.”
- Bambang and fellow experts refute this, saying JJP’s repeated lawsuits are a frivolous attempt to avoid having to take responsibility or to pay; to date, the company hasn’t paid any of the $36.7 million that it was fined for the fire.

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.

Palm oil giants push out smallholders in Guatemala; deforestation risks remain
- Thousands of traditional rural Guatemalan families are negatively impacted by the country’s fast-growing palm oil industry. Plantations now cover more than 180,000 hectares (about 450,000 acres), accounting for nearly 2.5% of the nation’s total arable land.
- Guatemala is now the third-largest palm oil producer after Malaysia and Indonesia (which produce 88% of the global supply) and is often seen as a more sustainable alternative. Today, more than 60% of Guatemala’s plantations are certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). High certification rates are largely attributed to plantations owned by a handful of producers, making it easier to certify large chunks of the industry, according to RSPO.
- Certification in Guatemala did not drastically improve deforestation rates, a recent study found. Between 2009 and 2019, certified plantations showed 9% forest loss compared with 25% on noncertified plantations.
- The palm oil industry’s expansion in Guatemala is causing a huge transfer of rural territory from traditional subsistence farming communities to a handful of palm oil mill owners. Local populations are cornered into working for these companies for low wages and often poor working conditions.

Sumatra coffee farmers brew natural fertilizer as inflation bites
- Farmers in Indonesia’s Lampung province are making their own organic fertilizer in order to lessen reliance on volatile external supply chains.
- They’ve also diversified the number of crops they grow, interspersing avocado and candlenut trees among crops like coffee and vanilla.
- Advocates of organic farming maintain that techniques like those on display in Lampung can boost yields while countering some of the costs and negative impacts of chemical products.

Indonesian districts trial a shift from commodity monocrops to sustainable produce
- A network of district governments across Indonesia is working on transitioning away from commodity-based economic development to sustainable, nature-based solutions.
- Many of these districts are heavily reliant on monoculture plantations like palm oil, or other extractive industries like oil and gas, and are making the shift to better preserve forests and peatlands, as well as indigenous Indonesian forest commodities.
- Among those making progress is the district of Siak in the palm oil heartland of Riau province, where large palm oil and pulpwood companies are supporting the development of nature-based commodities by local communities.
- The national government is also involved in this search to “innovate economic models outside of plantation commodities that can support forest conservation and are locally based.”

A decade of stopping deforestation: How the palm oil industry did the seemingly impossible (commentary)
- Wilmar International’s No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation policy, announced ten years ago, marked a significant milestone in environmental conservation by prohibiting deforestation, peatland destruction, land-grabbing, and labor abuses in their global supply chain, impacting thousands of palm oil companies.
- The policy, a result of global campaigning and intense negotiations, contributed to a dramatic reduction in deforestation for palm oil by over 90%, influencing other industries and contributing to the lowest deforestation levels in Indonesia, as well as progress in Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and tropical Africa, argues Glenn Hurowitz, the Founder and CEO of Mighty Earth, who led the negotiation with Wilmar.
- Hurowitz says this “success story” highlights the importance of private sector involvement, effective campaigning, diligent implementation, the necessity of continuous effort, and the insufficiency of data alone in driving change.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Some hemp with your wine? Study shows better soil, potentially flavors from intercropping
- A new study tests whether hemp is an effective plant for intercropping between wine grapes to increase soil health and potentially add another cash crop to vineyards.
- Vintners planted hemp with other cover crops on a vineyard in New Zealand, and found that while hemp was a robust grower, it didn’t compete with grape vines for water, even in dry conditions.
- Surprisingly, the wine made from grapes grown near hemp had a delicious, complex flavor profile, but researchers say more tests are needed to see if hemp was the driving factor.
- The researchers plan to investigate further whether hemp is an effective plant for intercropping to improve vineyard soil health and carbon storage.

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.

Indigenous groups rebuke court OK for palm oil company to raze Papua forests
- Indigenous Awyu tribal members in Papua lambasted a court decision that effectively greenlights palm oil company PT Indo Asiana Lestari’s plans to raze 26,326 hectares (65,000 acres) of primary forest that sit on ancestral lands.
- If developed in full, the project would replace 280,000 hectares (692,000 acres) of the third-largest stretch of rainforest on the planet with several contiguous oil palm estates run by various companies.
- The impending deforestation would subsequently release at least 23 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is 5% of Indonesia’s estimated annual carbon emissions.

Indonesia pushes carbon-intensive ‘false solutions’ in its energy transition
- Indonesia’s newly revised plan for a $20 billion clean energy transition has come under criticism for offering “false solutions” that would effectively cancel out any gains it promises.
- One of its most controversial proposals is to not count emissions from off-grid coal-fired power plants that supply industrial users without feeding into the grid.
- Emissions from these so-called captive plants alone would exceed any emissions reductions projected under the rest of the Just Energy Transition Partnership.
- The plan also puts a heavy emphasis on “false” renewables solutions such as biomass cofiring and replacing diesel generators with natural gas ones.

Poverty and plantations: Nigerian reserve struggles against the odds
- Located in southern Nigeria, Oluwa Forest Reserve is supposed to be a bastion for the region’s wildlife – which includes critically endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- But the influx of thousands of settlers into the reserve is coming at the cost of its rainforests, with satellite data and imagery showing ongoing clearing into primary forest.
- Palm oil companies are also establishing industrial plantations in the reserve.
- Conservationists and officials warn that vulnerable wildlife populations may be wiped out if forest loss and bushmeat hunting continues at its current rate.

As RSPO celebrates 20 years of work, Indigenous groups lament unresolved grievances
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) held its annual conference in Jakarta to celebrate 20 years of growth and impact — but activists and Indigenous communities say they’ve been waiting years for RSPO to resolve ongoing conflicts and long-standing complaints.
- Indigenous groups and local communities that have lost their lands and forests say the RSPO grievance system has left them without justice or resolution.
- While the RSPO says it has improved its methods of dealing with grievances, affected communities say their complaints have been dismissed for lack of evidence, they have awaited answers for years and their voices aren’t being heard.

Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea
- Papua New Guinea boasts the third largest rainforest in the world and houses about 7% of the planet’s biodiversity, including threatened species found nowhere else in the world.
- In recent years, fraudulent practices in the logging and agriculture industry have resulted in massive forest loss across the country while road network expansion plans threaten to further fragment forests and open them up for resource exploitation.
- Satellite data and imagery show logging activity on the rise in PNG, particularly in the province of Oro.
- Conservationists and officials say forest laws must be tightened in PNG and local communities included in decision-making to reduce forest loss, while incentivizing communities to conserve the remaining forests.

Forest restoration to boost biomass doesn’t have to sacrifice tree diversity
- Restoring degraded forests to boost biodiversity, store carbon and reconnect fragmented habitats is a burgeoning area of tropical forest conservation.
- But uncertainty remains around the long-term impacts of various restoration approaches on forest biodiversity and functioning, with experts suggesting, for instance, that overly focusing on biomass accumulation for climate mitigation can come at the expense of species diversity.
- A new study in Malaysian Borneo has found that actively restoring logged forest plots with a diversity of native timber species, coupled with management of competitive vegetation, actually boosted adult tree diversity after nearly two decades compared to plots left to regenerate naturally.
- While the results add to a growing body of evidence that active restoration can lead to biodiversity gains, the authors caution that restoration approaches must be conducted in ecologically sensitive ways to avoid unintended outcomes.

Do tree-planting projects on grasslands increase fire risk?
- Global tree-planting initiatives, aimed at storing carbon from the atmosphere, could include plantations in fire-prone African savannas.
- 58% of tree plantations grown in South African grasslands between 1980 and 2019 burned, polluting water and releasing carbon dioxide back into the air.
- As efforts to plant trees for carbon storage in Africa expand, researchers suggest cutting fossil-fuel emissions would be a better approach — but scientists are hotly debating the issue.

Investigation shows ‘shadow companies’ linked to Indonesia palm oil giant First Resources
- The investigation is part of Deforestation Inc, a reporting collaboration coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists involving journalists from 28 countries.
- The findings indicate that companies associated with First Resources may have been behind more deforestation in Southeast Asia during the last five years than any other corporate organization.
- First Resources continues to supply blue chip consumer goods companies with palm oil, including Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo.

Growing rubber drives more deforestation than previously thought, study finds
- A recently published study has used high-resolution satellite data to show that deforestation linked to rubber cultivation is much higher than previously thought.
- Deforestation for rubber in Southeast Asia, which produces 90% of the world’s natural rubber, was found to be “at least twofold to threefold higher” than earlier estimates.
- The underestimation of rubber-linked deforestation has led to gaps in policy setting and implementation when it comes to managing rubber cultivation, the study says.
- While synthetic rubber, made from fossil fuels, accounts for the most of the rubber produced today, rising demand for rubber overall drove the expansion of rubber plantation areas by 3.3 million hectares (8.2 million acres) from 2010-2020.

How scientists and a community are bringing a Bornean river corridor back to life
- Decades of deforestation to make way for oil palm monoculture have transformed the Kinabatangan River floodplain in east Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, dividing wildlife populations and confining many of the region’s most iconic species to small fragments of forest that cling on along the river.
- Local communities and conservation initiatives are working together to restore and reconnect pockets of remaining habitat along the river to preserve the vital wildlife corridor, but restoration in the unpredictable and often-waterlogged floodplain is notoriously difficult.
- One such initiative, Regrow Borneo, is facing the challenge by leveraging the expertise of scientists and local knowledge of community members who have been planting forests along the Kinabatangan for decades.
- They say that by focusing their approach on a model that benefits both people and wildlife, they hope their program inspires others to shift away from simply planting numbers of trees toward restoring forests where they’re most needed, including in areas that present challenging conditions.

Study links pesticides to child cancer deaths in Brazilian Amazon & Cerrado
- According to new research, for every 5 tons of soy per hectare produced in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, an equivalent of one out of 10,000 children under 10 succumbed to acute lymphoblastic leukemia five years later.
- The researchers estimate that 123 childhood deaths during the 2008-19 period are associated with exposure to pesticides from the soy fields, amounting to half the deaths of children under 10 from lymphoblastic leukemia in the region.
- Experts say that the research is just the tip of the iceberg, and many other diseases and deaths may be associated with chemicals used in crops; further studies are needed.

As fire season worsens, Indonesian activists report four companies for burning

JAKARTA — Activists have reported four companies — two industrial forest firms and two palm oil firms — to the local police over fires in their concessions in Central Kalimantan as Indonesia is grappling with its worst fire episode since 2019. According to satellite image analysis done Sept. 2-10, the activists found a total of […]
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.

World Heritage Site listing for Ethiopian park leads to eviction of farming community
- The new designation of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Ethiopia will also come with the relocation of the more than 20,000 people living inside Bale Mountains National Park, say park officials.
- Home to a wealth of biodiversity, the park has experienced a dramatic increase in illegal human settlements, which park officials and conservationists say threatens its natural resources, forest cover, and habitat for rare and endemic species.
- Community members have mixed feelings about the planned relocation, with longtime residents mostly opposing it due to attachment to the land and fear over their livelihoods, and others open to receiving fair compensation in exchange.
- The relocation strategy is still in its initial stages and hasn’t officially been shared with communities, though UNESCO and Ethiopian officials underline the importance of consulting the locals and supporting their livelihoods.

Indigenous Dayak ‘furious’ as RSPO dismisses land rights violation complaint
- The RSPO, the world’s leading sustainable palm oil certifier, has dismissed a complaint filed by an Indigenous community in Indonesia against a plantation company accused of violating their land rights.
- The company, MAS, arrived on the Indigenous Dayak Hibun’s ancestral land in 1996, and by 2000 had swallowed up 1,400 hectares (3,460 acres) of the community’s land within its concession.
- The community lodged its complaint in 2012, aimed at MAS’s parent company at the time, Malaysian palm oil giant Sime Darby Plantation, which is a member of the RSPO.
- In dismissing the complaint, 11 years later, the RSPO cited no evidence of land rights violations, and also noted that Sime Darby Plantation has sold off MAS — whose current owner isn’t an RSPO member and therefore isn’t subject to the roundtable’s rules.

Indonesia’s oil palm smallholders need both state and EU support (commentary)
- The EU’s recently adopted restrictions on the import of commodities linked to deforestation, such as palm oil from Indonesia, has a noble intention but could have unintended impacts on small farmers, argues Andre Barahamin, a senior campaigner at Kaoem Telapak, an Indonesian NGO.
- Smallholders account for 40% of Indonesia’s palm oil production, but lack the resources and capacity to comply with the new restrictions, and so must be provided with to training, technology, financing, and certification, Barahamin writes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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.

Indonesia’s besieged Tesso Nilo National Park hit hard by yet more deforestation, satellites show
- Sumatra’s Tesso Nilo National Park boasts one of the highest levels of lowland plant diversity known to science and harbors an estimated 3% of the planet’s mammal species.
- But industrial tree plantations, encouraged by the COVID-19 pandemic and boosted by high palm oil prices, are quickly supplanting the park’s remaining habitat.
- Satellite data show the park lost 87% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2022, most of which was cleared after the government expanded Tesso Nilo’s boundaries in 2009
- Preliminary data from GFW, along with satellite imagery, indicate 2023 has been another particularly bad year for the park’s remaining habitat, with clearings nearly severing Tesso Nilo’s last large tract of forest by September.

Report: Half of plantations in Indonesia’s palm oil heartland are illegal
- Nearly half of plantations in Riau province, Indonesia’s palm oil heartland, are illegal, according to a new report by the Eyes on the Forest, a coalition of NGOs based in Sumatra.
- With the illegal plantations spanning 2.52 million hectares (6.23 million acres) of land — an area nearly the size of Hawai‘i — Riau is home to more than half of illegal oil palm plantations in Indonesia.
- EoF has called on the government to focus its amnesty program, which gives operators of illegal plantations a grace period of three years to obtain the proper permits, in Riau.
- It has also called for greater transparency in the amnesty program to avoid corruption in the process.

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.

Indonesian police slammed after protester demanding rightful land is shot dead
- Indonesian police have reportedly shot dead one protester and injured two others in a flareup of yet another land dispute between communities and outside investors.
- Residents of the mostly Indigenous Dayak village of Bangkal in Central Kalimantan province have since Sept. 16 protested over palm oil company HMBP’s failure to allocate land to them as required by law.
- Police claim the protesters attacked security forces in the Oct. 7 clash, but video and witness accounts from the ground strongly suggest otherwise.
- Activists say the Bangkal case is emblematic of how the Indonesian government prioritizes commercial interests over those of communities, including using excessive force against protesters.

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.

Bolloré blacklisted over alleged rights violations on plantations in Africa and Asia
- French logistics giant Bolloré SE has been deemed an unethical investment by some of Switzerland’s most powerful pension funds.
- Bolloré failed to act to resolve accusations of human rights abuses committed by its subsidiary, Socfin, around oil palm and rubber plantations in West Africa and Southeast Asia, the Swiss Association for Responsible Investments (SVVK-ASIR) determined.
- Investigators commissioned by Socfin recently found credible claims of sexual harassment, land disputes and unfair recruitment in Liberia and Cameroon; field visits to other sites will take place later this year.

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.

10 years after land grab, local Nigerian farmers continue fight against palm oil producer
- A decade after transnational palm oil company Wilmar took control of a derelict oil palm plantation, local residents continue to fight for the farmlands, forests and rivers they use.
- The government leased land from several local communities in 1962, but abandoned it in the 1970s.
- In 2012, against the backdrop of a drive to expand Nigeria’s palm oil production, the land was transferred to Wilmar in a move bitterly resisted by local residents.
- Critics say expanding oil palm plantations are accelerating deforestation and local residents complain that Wilmar has encroached on their farms and wastewater from the plantation has contaminated watercourses.

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.

EU deforestation-free rule ‘highly challenging’ for SE Asia smallholders, experts say
- Millions of small-scale farmers in mainland Southeast Asia are at risk of losing access to European forest commodity supply chains unless serious action is taken to help them comply with the new EU deforestation-free regulation, experts say.
- Smallholders produce significant quantities of the region’s forest-related commodities, but many lack the technical capacity and financial capital to meet the hefty due diligence requirements of the new rule.
- Without support for vulnerable communities to comply, experts say farmers could be exposed to land grabbing, dispossession and other abuses, with some left with no choice but to retreat into forested landscapes to eke out a living.
- Sustainability groups, meanwhile, say the new EU rule is an opportunity to move forest commodity sectors toward improved responsibility, sustainability and transparency.

Group certification helps Malaysia’s Sabah aim for palm oil sustainability
- In 2015, the government of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo committed to gaining sustainability certification for 100% of the state’s palm oil by 2025, becoming the first region in the world to pilot such a jurisdictional approach.
- As the deadline nears, getting smallholders certified has proved to be a major challenge; out of an estimated 30,000 smallholders in the state, just 885 have been certified.
- The certification process can be difficult and expensive for small farmers, but NGOs like WWF are working to overcome this barrier by supporting growers’ cooperatives.
- Other obstacles in the statewide certification process include debate over whether any deforestation should be allowed for oil palm, and the continued issuance of licenses to clear forest in the state.

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.

Kellogg’s latest to freeze Indonesian supplier over palm oil violations
- U.S. cereal giant Kellogg’s has become the latest major consumer goods brand to suspend business ties with Indonesian palm oil giant Astra Agro Lestari (AAL).
- It joins the likes of Hershey’s, PepsiCo and Nestlé, which all stopped buying palm oil from AAL following a 2022 report alleging land grabbing, environmental degradation, and the criminal persecution of environmental and human rights defenders.
- AAL has denied the allegations and launched an independent investigation, but has not yet taken steps to remedy the harm allegedly done.
- Activists say the investigation unfairly puts the onus on local communities to prove their allegations against AAL, and have called on other consumer goods companies and investors to stand up to AAL.

Indonesian regulator gets 12 years’ jail for palm oil permit bribery
- An Indonesian court has sentenced a senior land agency official to 12 years in prison for taking bribes from palm oil and mining companies to expedite their permits.
- Muhammad Syahrir, formerly the head of the land agencies in Riau and North Maluku provinces, was found guilty of taking the equivalent of $1.38 million in bribes from various companies over the course of five years.
- In addition to the jail sentence, the court also imposed fines totaling $1.5 million; failure to pay could incur additional prison time of up to three and a half years.
- The case has spurred calls for a sweeping evaluation of the permitting process, not just in the palm oil industry, but across all sectors in Indonesia, where bribery is common.

Court ruling spares Papua forest from further clearing for palm oil
- An Indonesian court has rejected lawsuits filed by two plantation companies operating in the Tanah Merah mega oil palm plantation project in the country’s Papua region.
- The ruling means the companies are legally required to stop clearing forest in their concessions and preserve what remains.
- Activists and Indigenous Awyu people living in the area have welcomed the ruling, but point out that communities in the concession areas still don’t have legal recognition of their ancestral rights to these forests.
- They’ve called on the government to formally recognize their ancestral rights and ensure the companies’ permits to the concessions are revoked.

Agro giant Cargill tied to deforestation in Bolivia’s Chiquitano forest
- A new report from Global Witness uncovered a paper trail that ties food giant Cargill to more than 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of deforestation in Bolivia’s Chiquitano forest.
- It’s unclear whether Cargill is intentionally overlooking the connections to soy-driven deforestation or is simply failing to carry out the necessary due diligence.
- The findings also implicate financial institutions that back Cargill, including Bank of New York Mellon, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and HSBC.

DRC food sovereignty summit yields support for agroecology, local land rights
- The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (ASFA) recently held a meeting in Kinshasa to argue for the reorienting of food production around agroecology in the Congo Basin.
- Civil society groups, donors, government representatives and small-scale farmers gathered to exchange views on challenges and solutions to food security.
- Across Africa, agricultural policy is geared toward greater reliance on large-scale farms and mechanization, commercial seeds, pesticides and synthetic fertilizer.
- A declaration issued at the close of the summit instead called for investment in agroecological methods, as well as recognition of and protection for Indigenous and local peoples’ land rights.

Palm oil giants Indonesia, Malaysia start talks with EU over deforestation rule
- Negotiations have begun between the world’s top two palm oil producers and the EU to address sticking points in a deforestation law that would make it harder for the commodity to enter European markets.
- Indonesia and Malaysia account for 85% of global palm oil exports, and would be heavily impacted by the EU Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR), which prohibits imports into the EU of commodities sourced by clearing forests.
- At the first joint meeting of an EU-Indonesia-Malaysia task force, delegates discussed risk designations for producer countries as well as the role of certification schemes like the RSPO to help meet EUDR requirements.
- Indonesian officials say their main issue with the EUDR is that it discriminates against small farmers, who manage 41% of the total plantation area in the country and would have difficulty complying with the new regulation’s requirements.

Agroecology alliance calls for more food at less cost to nature in Congo Basin
- The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) will make the case for reorienting food production systems and agricultural policy at a meeting in Kinshasa from Aug. 29-31.
- Food security across the Congo Basin is threatened by impoverished soils, climate change, and displacement due to armed conflict, forum attendees say.
- Governments in the region back improved seeds and synthetic fertilizer for small-scale farmers as well as large-scale agriculture projects to boost yields and revenue.
- AFSA argues these strategies cause more harm than good to both farmers and forests, and calls for a turn to agroecological methods instead.

Indonesia permit payoff raises alarm about palm oil industry corruption
- The ongoing trial of an Indonesian official accused of taking bribes from palm oil companies to expedite their permits has prompted calls for greater scrutiny into corruption in the sector.
- Muhammad Syahrir, formerly the head of the land agencies in Riau and North Maluku provinces, is accused of taking 20.9 billion rupiah ($1.36 million) in bribes from various companies over the course of five years.
- In the case at the center of the trial, Syahrir is alleged to have solicited the equivalent of $228,000 from palm oil company PT Adimulia Agrolestari to renew its right-to-cultivate permit, known as an HGU.
- Environmental law experts say the secrecy around HGU permits is what allows corruption to flourish, and have renewed calls for the government to make the permit data publicly accessible.

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.

Investigation confirms most allegations against plantation operator Socfin
- After visits to plantations in Liberia and Cameroon, the Earthworm Foundation consultancy has confirmed many allegations against Belgian tropical plantation operator Socfin.
- Investigators found credible claims of sexual harassment, land disputes and unfair recruitment practices at both of the sites they visited.
- Activists in both countries remain unsatisfied, saying the consultancy should have spoken to a wider range of community members and calling for Socfin to answer directly to communities with grievances.

New farmers foundation supports deforestation-free products in Indonesia
- Palm oil farmers in Indonesia have established a new foundation to help farmers around the country in protecting forests and selling their sustainable products to the global market.
- The foundation was established after the Indonesian palm oil farmers union, SPKS, carried out a pilot project in six villages in western Borneo.
- The pilot project proved that smallholders could cultivate palm oil without clearing forests by implementing the high carbon stock (HCS) approach, but they needed incentives and benefits.
- This is where the new foundation, called the Farmers For Forest Protection Foundation (4F), comes in by providing farmers with both financial and non-financial support, like training.

Oil palm and balsa plantations trigger deforestation in Ecuadorian Amazon
- Roads constructed for the oil industry have facilitated timber extraction in the Amazon for decades. Recent deforestation alerts show that this problem is ongoing.
- In Via Auca, one of the most deforested areas of Ecuador’s Amazon, farmers are turning to planting oil palm under the contract farming model.
- On the Via a Loreto, Indigenous Kichwa people are focusing on cultivating balsa trees used for a material that has been in high demand in the wind energy industry for the last five years.

‘Sustainability is a continuous journey’: Q&A with RSPO’s Joseph D’Cruz
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the industry’s leading certifier of ethical compliance, has long faced scrutiny over its sustainability guidelines and how it responds to member companies’ frequent violations.
- Today, the organization is headed by veteran development professional Joseph D’Cruz, a self-professed newcomer to the industry who says he wants the RSPO to be less reactive and more proactive.
- In a wide-ranging interview with Mongabay, D’Cruz discusses why sustainability should be seen as an unending journey rather than an end goal, how the gap between sustainable and “conventional” palm oil is closing, and what role governments must play in driving greater sustainability.
- “When you watch the progress of platforms like the RSPO, sometimes on the outside it might seem frustratingly slow,” he says. “But that’s because you got to bring everybody along and that’s a very tricky challenge sometimes.”

Oil palms may be magnet for macaques, boars, at expense of other biodiversity
- A new study documents the “hyperabundance” of two generalist mammals around oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia, highlighting the indirect ecological impacts of oil palm expansion across the region.
- The research team found local numbers of wild pigs and macaques “exploded” in proximity to oil palm plantations, where they believe the animals derive enormous fitness benefits by consuming high-calorie palm fruit.
- Scientists caution that while these species can aggregate in some areas, their overall numbers are in decline due to a wide range of threats, including habitat loss, environmental degradation, disease outbreak, and poaching for the pet trade and biomedical research.
- The researchers call for the establishment of buffer zones around oil palm plantations and avoiding encroachment into intact forest as a way to address any problems arising from negative human-wildlife interactions and ecological impacts.

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.

Nursing oil palm plantations back to nature in Malaysian Borneo
- The Rhino and Forest Fund (RFF), a conservation NGO, is working to create wildlife corridors in eastern Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo, by reforesting land converted for oil palm plantations — a strategy that includes purchasing land legally being farmed.
- RFF works closely with the Sabah government, and reports that rare species are already making use of the developing corridor, including Bornean elephants, orangutans, sun bears and clouded leopards.
- However, raising funds to buy oil palm plantations has proven challenging, with many funders more focused on preserving intact forests or shying away from any involvement with the oil palm industry.
- Unable to rely on piecemeal donations, RFF is looking for other sources of revenue, including a plan to harvest and sell oil palm fruit while restoration gets underway.

Cambodia awards swath of national park forest to tycoon Ly Yong Phat’s son
- A Cambodian tycoon notorious for his association with illegal logging has expanded his grip over the country’s largest national park, with a swath of forest awarded to his son’s rubber company.
- This gives Ly Yong Phat, a ruling party senator, and his family members effective control of tens of thousands of hectares of land inside Botum Sakor National Park.
- The carving up of the park, awarded in parcels to politically connected tycoons, has led to widespread deforestation that’s driven both people and wildlife out of Botum Sakor.
- Longtime residents evicted by Ly Yong Phat’s various operations in the park have protested to demand their land back, but to no avail, with many even being jailed for their activism.

Most Indonesian palm oil firms not sharing land with small farmers as required: audit
- Only 21% of Indonesian oil palm plantation companies have fulfilled their legal obligations to allocate land for smallholder farmers under a scheme called plasma, a new government audit shows.
- To address the lack of compliance by companies, the government has established a task force.
- The task force will also address other issues in the plantation industry, such as tax avoidance.

Indonesia slammed for ‘bowing down’ in amnesty for illegal oil palm estates
- The Indonesian government says it has no other option in dealing with illegal plantations than to legalize them under an amnesty program.
- Activists have lambasted the justification, saying it signals the state’s capitulation to environmental violators.
- They say the government has the option of taking legal action against the plantation operators, for which there’s already legal precedent.
- The amnesty program is set to run until the end of this year, with the aim of legalizing illegal plantations spanning an area the size of the Netherlands.

Expanding agriculture could worsen flooding in South American plains, study says
- The South American plains, including Las Pampas and the Gran Chaco, have seen agricultural activity expand drastically to meet international demand.
- A new study published last month in Science found that agriculture is exacerbating flooding in the region, which could disrupt food supplies and prices in the future.
- The study said dedicating more space to deeper-rooted forests and developing crop rotations with more flexible water table depths could stave off disaster.

Indonesia claims record-low deforestation, but accounting raises questions
- Official data show Indonesia lost an area of forest two-thirds the size of London in 2021-2022, marking a third straight annual decline.
- The government attributes the continued drop to various forest protection policies, such as permanent ban on new permits to clear primary forests and peatlands as well as forest fire mitigation.
- However, data from the University of Maryland show Indonesia’s primary tree cover loss actually increased by 13% in 2022 compared to 2021 data — the first increase since 2017.
- The disparity in data comes from differences in methodology and definitions of deforestation and forests adopted by UMD and the Indonesian government.

Timber harvests to meet global wood demand will bring soaring emissions: Study
- At a time when the world desperately needs to reduce its carbon emissions, global timber harvests to meet soaring demand for wood products — including paper and biomass for energy — could produce more than 10% of total global carbon emissions over coming decades, a new groundbreaking study finds.
- Global wood consumption could grow by 54% between 2010 and 2050, creating a demand for timber that would result in a “clear-cut equivalent” in area roughly the size of the continental U.S., adding 3.5 to 4.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually for years to come.
- The study scientists warn that flawed national climate policies and faulty carbon accounting are failing to accurately forecast these potential carbon emissions resulting from the cutting of natural forests.
- The researchers point out that less natural forests need to be cut to meet the rising global demand for wood products. That demand could partially be met by increasing wood production in already existing plantation forests.

Civil society changes up campaign against jailed Kalimantan farmers
- In April, three farmers from Kinjil village in Central Kalimantan were arrested on suspicion of oil palm theft from land controlled by a plantation firm following a land dispute.
- The farmers’ case has been taken up by a coalition of civil society groups, and a complaint has been lodged with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.
- Several complaints have been launched against companies associated with Bumitama Agri Ltd., a Singapore-based plantation firm tied to Indonesia’s Harita Group.

Indonesia’s No. 2 palm oil firm faces global backlash over community conflict
- A growing list of global household brands, from PepsiCo to L’Oréal to Hershey’s, have suspended their purchases from Astra Agro Lestari (AAL), Indonesia’s second- largest palm oil producer.
- The move comes in the wake of reports of land grabbing, environmental degradation and criminal persecution of human rights defenders by AAL and its subsidiaries operating in Central Sulawesi province.
- AAL has launched an independent investigation into the matter, but NGOs say the process is unnecessary as the evidence of violations is plain.
- They say the company should instead focus on returning the land it claims to the farmers and communities who were there first.

Degraded, but not defunct: Modified land still has wildlife value, study says
- Researchers studying how species respond to repeated and rapid land cover changes say more focus needs to be placed on preserving the biodiversity value of human-dominated landscapes.
- With much of the world’s intact ecosystems now modified by humans, the study warns that without careful management, species will be lost each time land is converted from one land-use type to another, such as when forestry is transitioned to plantation or agriculture.
- The researchers call for biodiversity impact assessments when land is proposed for conversion, regardless of whether it is intact primary habitat or considered “degraded” land.
- They also recommend the identification, preservation and restoration of natural features of landscapes, such as forest fragments, large and old trees, and wetlands, which can serve as vital refuges for species between successive land conversions.

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

Jokowi focuses on El Niño as Indonesia’s dry season heats up
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo warned officials to anticipate risks from the first El Niño since the 2015 Southeast Asia wildfires crisis.
- Dry season conditions had emerged in 52% of Indonesian territory by early July, according to the country’s weather forecaster.
- Officials hope reforms enacted since the 2015 disaster will lessen the severity of wildfires as El Niño conditions become more pronounced.

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.

Report links paper giant RGE to Indonesia deforestation despite pledges
- A new investigative report alleges that the supply chain of one of the world’s largest producers of wood pulp and products, Royal Golden Eagle, is tainted with wood from deforestation in Indonesia.
- The allegation comes despite the company having adopted a no-deforestation policy since 2015.
- The report also reveals a chain of offshore shell companies pointing to RGE’s control of a new mega-scale pulp mill in Indonesia’s North Kalimantan province.
- This new mill threatens large-scale deforestation once it’s in operation, due to its huge demand for wood, the report says.

What can the U.K. do to fight its dependence on soy?
- A new report from the Landworkers’ Alliance, Pasture for Life, Sustain and Hodmedod analyzes the different changes that could be made to the pig and poultry sectors in order to reduce soy consumption and thereby lower the U.K.’s overseas land-use footprint.
- The report modeled different scenarios in which the U.K. reduces its dependence on soy for animal feed, either through the use of food waste or by replacing it with alternative sources of protein like home-grown legumes.
- While the model analyzing the use of homegrown legumes revealed that it would require too much cropland, using waste as feed proved much more promising.

New data show 10% increase in primary tropical forest loss in 2022
- Globally, the tropics lost 4.1 million hectares (10.1 million acres) of primary forest in 2022, 10% more than in 2021.
- These losses occurred despite the pledges of 145 countries at COP26 in 2021 to increase efforts to reduce deforestation and halt it by 2030; the new data, from the University of Maryland, puts the world far off track for meeting the goal of zero deforestation.
- According to Frances Seymour of World Resources Institute, there is an urgent need to increase financing for protecting and restoring forests.

In Indonesia’s Aru Islands, a popular eco-defender climbs the political ladder
- A decade ago, Mika Ganobal campaigned to prevent Indonesia’s eastern Aru Islands from becoming a sugar plantation.
- Mika has since risen from a village chief to the head of one of the Aru Islands’ 10 subdistricts.
- Mika and his wife, Dina Somalay, are raising their children to understand and value a rich landscape that was almost lost a decade ago.

Communities accuse Socfin and Earthworm Foundation of greenwash in West Africa
- A grievance assessment mission commissioned by Belgian oil palm and rubber company Socfin has been rejected by communities affected by the company’s operations in several African and Asian countries.
- Reasons include the Earthworm Foundation’s relationship with Socfin as a paying member, lack of adequate coordination with affected stakeholders, and the company’s history of refusing to enter conflict resolution suggested by third-party bodies.
- Phase one, consisting of missions to Liberia and Cameroon, has just been concluded without the participation of local groups, who say they were not included in the planning process.

Alleged torturers roam free as Indonesia struggles to bring charges in palm oil slavery case
- Prosecutors in Indonesia have still not charged the majority of men implicated in a slave-labor scandal at a local official’s oil palm plantation.
- The New York Times reported that only 13 of some 60 men, including military and police officers, remain free despite dozens of victims and witnesses accusing them of human trafficking and torture.
- The official, Terbit Rencana Perangin-angin, was jailed last year in a bribery case but never charged in the human trafficking case for enslaving the victims under the guise of a drug rehabilitation program.
- Prosecutor said a reliance on local police investigators whose own colleagues had participated in the forced-labor scheme had impeded their work.

Palm oil: The crop that cuts into southeastern Mexico’s jungles and mangroves
- When deforestation caused by oil palms expanded in Indonesia or Malaysia, Mexican federal and state officials did everything they could to encourage planting these native African palms around the Lacandon Jungle.
- Between 2014 and 2019, at least 5,400 hectares (13,343 acres) of forests and jungle were lost due to the expansion of oil palm in Chiapas, Campeche, Tabasco and Veracruz, according to cartographic analysis carried out by the authors of the study “Cultivation of Oil Palm in Mexico.”
- At least 4,000 ha (9,800 acres) of oil palm are found inside the La Encrucijada Biosphere Reserve, a protected natural area on the Chiapas coast. The most remarkable monoculture expansion has occurred in the last 10 years.

‘Tree islands’ boost diversity in oil palm plantations, study finds
- Having “islands” of trees peppered across oil palm plantations can boost the biodiversity of the landscape while maintaining crop yields, a new study shows.
- Researchers found that biodiversity and ecosystem functioning improved within five years of planting these tree islands, with larger patches providing greater benefits for species such as birds and bats.
- Though these islands can boost biodiversity, the study authors underline that they are no replacement for protecting natural forests.
- “It is very important for conservation to maintain natural forest and avoid deforestation as the top priority,” said first author Delphine Clara Zemp.

Sumatran farmers worry as government halts palm oil fertilizer subsidies
- Indonesia has removed palm oil from a list of commodities qualifying for subsidized chemical fertilizers.
- Farmers face an uncertain transition to using composting methods to boost nitrogen content in plantation soil.
- The government of Lampung province said it intended to offer support to farmers in the future.

Seas of grass may be dark horse candidate to fuel the planet — or not
- Several kinds of grasses and woody shrubs, such as poplar and willow, have undergone U.S. testing for years to see if they can achieve high productivity as cellulose-based liquid biofuels for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the global transportation sector. Some of these grasses also would have value as cover crops.
- While these experiments showed promise, the challenges for scaling up production of grass and woody shrub-derived biofuels over the next few decades remain significant. And time is short, as climate change is rapidly accelerating.
- Another roadblock to large-scale production: Millions of acres of land in the U.S. Southeast and Great Plains states would need to be earmarked for grass cultivation to make it economically and commercially viable as a biofuel.
- If many of those millions of acres required conversion of natural lands to agriculture, then deforestation and biodiversity loss due to biofuel monoculture crop expansion could be a major problem. On the plus side, grass biofuel crops likely wouldn’t directly displace food crops, unlike corn to make ethanol, or soy to make biodiesel.

Rare Amazon dark soils could help forest restoration, study shows
- A recent study shows that Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs), through their high nutrient and microbiological contents, could help to restore deforested areas in the Amazon region.
- Furthermore, these unique soils, enriched with beneficial microorganisms like bacteria and archaea, can boost the fertility of typically nutrient-depleted soils in the Amazon region.
- Building on these findings, researchers plan to further analyze the composition and microorganisms of ADEs, aiming to help restore and conserve the Amazon Rainforest.

Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area brings Indigenous communities into the fold
- Indigenous communities in the Lower Omo River Valley of southwestern Ethiopia have taken ownership and management responsibilities of the Tama Wildlife Reserve through the creation of the Tama Community Conservation Area (TCCA).
- The TCCA, spanning 197,000 hectares (486,000 acres), is Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area.
- The area is home to diverse wildlife, including the endemic black-winged lovebird, and is inhabited by the Mursi, Bodi, Northern Kwegu and Ari communities.
- The TCCA will be managed by a community council; however, guidelines on farming activities, natural resource use and preventing human-wildlife conflict have not yet been established.

In Indonesia, companies defy government’s decision to revoke their permits
- Logging, plantation and mining companies have continued to operate and have been mired in conflicts with communities since their permits were targeted for revocation by the Indonesian government, a new report says.
- In Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua alone, four palm oil companies cleared 943.3 hectares (2,331 acres) of forests in the first four months of 2023 — an area three times the size of New York’s Central Park.
- Civil groups have been calling on the government to redistribute the revoked concessions to local and Indigenous communities, but they say their calls haven’t been heard.

U.S. conservation investment routed to eucalyptus expansion in Brazil’s Cerrado
- The Timberland Investment Group (TIG), owned by investment bank BTG Pactual, is expanding its planted forest operations in the Cerrado. Its newest office is next door to the world’s soon-to-be largest paper and pulp factory, under construction.
- U.S. President Joe Biden pledged $50 million toward the initiative, claiming it would help conserve Latin America’s most critical ecosystems. The funds have not yet been released, but TIG has already started acquiring new land.
- From 2018-22, BTG Pactual financed $1.67 billion in forest-risky products including soy, beef, timber and pulp and paper, according to Forests & Finance data analyzed by Mongabay.
- The planted forest industry advertises environmental benefits and is increasingly joining bids for green finance. Critics say stored carbon is released after harvest and these monoculture plantations are distracting funds and attention away from real biome conservation.

Sumatra Indigenous community displaced by Samsung palm oil unit await justice
- The Talang Parit Indigenous community have witnessed their ability to sustain daily life become increasingly fraught since an oil palm plantation company, Inecda, began clearing their customary territory more than 25 years ago.
- The community faces water stress and blames difficulty in finding groundwater on the canals dug by the company to drain the landscape for its oil palm trees.
- The community has initiated a formal complaint to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and is awaiting the findings of site visits conducted by the Geneva-based organization.

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.

Report: Forest-razing biomass plant in Indonesia got millions in green funds
- An Indonesian oil and gas company is using government money to clear rainforest for a biomass power plant, according to a new report.
- The project has received a total of $9.4 million from two Ministry of Finance agencies, including one tasked with managing environmental protection funds from international donors.
- Criticism of Medco’s activities reflects a broader debate over whether clear-cutting rainforest can ever be considered sustainable, even when done in the name of transitioning a major coal-producing country away from fossil fuels.

Palm giants Wilmar, Indofood, RGE fined over Indonesian cooking oil shortage
- The Indonesian government’s business competition watchdog has ruled seven companies, including subsidiaries of palm oil giants Wilmar, Salim Group and Asian Agri, guilty of restricting sales of cooking oil amid an acute shortage in early 2022.
- The watchdog, the KPPU, has fined the companies $4.75 million for hoarding cooking oil after the government capped the retail price in response to a price surge.
- Wilmar says it’s disappointed with the ruling and is considering filing an appeal.
- A Wilmar board member was earlier this year convicted and jailed for redirecting palm oil meant for the domestic market to the export market, where prices were higher.

Indonesia, Malaysia deploy ministers to push back on EU palm oil restrictions
- Indonesia and Malaysia will send top officials to Brussels to voice concerns over a new regulation that bans the trading of commodities associated with deforestation, including palm oil.
- The officials will meet with European policymakers to discuss ways to minimize the regulation’s impacts on palm oil producers, particularly smallholders.
- The world’s two biggest palm oil producers have long protested EU policies against palm oil, calling them discriminatory and protectionist of Europe’s own oilseeds industry.

Study shows Kenyan elephant shrew may be adapting to human disturbance, drought
- The endangered golden-rumped elephant shrew has seen its population in a Kenyan forest reserve increase by 52% in a decade, upending researchers’ fears of extinction due to hunting and habitat loss.
- The latest population survey credits the rabbit-sized mammal’s high adaptability to human-disturbed landscapes, including plantations of exotic tree species.
- They also appear to be thriving amid Kenya’s long-running drought, which has caused trees to shed their leaves in large volumes, thus creating the thick carpets of leaf litter that are the animal’s favored habitat.
- Researchers say the increase may also reflect the gains made by conservation measures within the forest reserve, including a community-based conservation system known as participatory forest management (PFM) that has the support of NGOs and the government.

Indigenous communities in Argentina’s Chaco fear another heavy fire season in 2023
- Fires affected some 1.8 million hectares in Argentina in 2022.
- Many of the country’s 2022 fires occurred in the country’s northern Chaco region and were largely caused by industrial agriculture coupled with drought conditions, according to Indigenous residents and researchers.
- The arid Gran Chaco is the second-largest forest in South America after the Amazon, and extends across 110 million hectares and portions of four countries—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia
- Experts said deforestation of Argentina’s Chaco is affecting Indigenous communities’ access to resources.

As tourism booms in India’s Western Ghats, habitat loss pushes endangered frogs to the edge
- India’s Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot, is home to many endemic and endangered species of amphibians, some of which are new to science and others suspected of lying in wait of discovery.
- Deforestation due to infrastructure and plantation expansion in the southern Western Ghats threaten the region’s amphibian species, many of which have highly restricted habitats.
- Adding to their woes is an increased risk of landslides in parts of Kerala due to erratic, heavy monsoon rains and erosion due to loss of forest.
- To save them, experts are calling for a systematic taxonomic survey of amphibians in the region and for legal protection of endangered species.

Indonesian audit finds taxes unpaid on 22 million acres of oil palm plantations
- An Indonesian government audit finds that taxes are not paid on some 9 million hectares (22.2 million acres) — an area three times the size of Belgium — don’t pay taxes, an Indonesian government audit finds.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, a top government official, says the government will impose penalties on plantation owners who don’t pay taxes rather than take them to court.
- Activists have called on the government to address the root causes of the issue, which is irregularities in the permit issuance process.

Cycling oil palm biomass waste back into the soil can boost soil health, study says
- Oil palm growers in Indonesia can boost soil health and reduce their fertilizer use by adding waste biomass back to the soil, a new study says.
- Biomass such as pruned palm fronds and empty fruit bunches that have already been milled for their oil are rich in silicon, an important element in healthy oil palm plantations.
- Large palm oil companies already practice some form of this biomass cycling, but the high cost and effort means smallholder farmers are missing out on the benefits.
- There are 15 million hectares of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, with harvests taking place twice a week, which translates into an immense amount of biomass removal — and thus loss of silicon.

Dams and plantations upend livelihoods in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo River Valley
- Food insecurity, famine and malnutrition have blighted the agropastoralist communities of the Lower Omo River Valley in southwestern Ethiopia.
- A government source blames a long-term drought for the recent suffering and, in some cases, the deaths of people in this part of the country.
- But researchers and human rights advocates say the drought has only exacerbated fundamental changes to the cultures of these peoples brought on by the construction of a dam and the establishment of sugarcane plantations in the region.
- They say such “economic development” projects have dispossessed the Lower Omo’s peoples of their farming and grazing lands and irreversibly altered the natural cycles of the Omo River that was once the mainstay of their livelihoods.

From palm oil waste to cellulosic ethanol: Indonesia’s opportunity (commentary)
- Many Indonesian farmers say they haven’t seen benefits from the country’s biofuel program. Cellulosic ethanol could help fix the problem, a new op-ed says.
- Tenny Kristiana of the International Council on Clean Transportation argues Indonesia could develop a domestic cellulosic ethanol industry that would use leftover plant residues such as palm trunks, empty palm fruit bunches and palm press fiber.
- Currently, Indonesia exports these leftovers to countries like Japan, but developing an industry at home could aid local farmers and create new jobs in factories, transportation and plantation work.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Australia bushfires may have caused global climate phenomenon La Niña: Study
- The 2019-2020 Australian bushfires threw up so much ash into the atmosphere that it resulted in a cooling of the southern Pacific and hence a La Niña climate phenomenon, a new study says.
- Volcanic eruptions that send vast ash plumes into the atmosphere are thought to trigger La Niña events, but this is the first time a fire has been recorded as doing so.
- La Niña can produce ruinous weather conditions in contrasting ways, from additional hurricanes in North America and droughts in the Horn of Africa, to crop failures in South America.
- The study’s findings call into question the assumption in current climate models that biomass emissions — including from bushfires — will decrease over time.

New book by Mongabay Indonesia & Kaoem Telapak investigates palm oil industry
- A new book by Mongabay Indonesia and NGO Kaoem Telapak looks at five main issues in Indonesia’s palm oil industry.
- The book is written by 23 journalists who went to 20 palm oil-producing regions in Indonesia to investigate the industry.
- Among the issues highlighted in the book are land conflicts and deforestation.

EU deforestation tracking regulation sparks division among groups, producers
- The EU is poised to adopt a regulation that bans the trade of commodities from deforestation and illegal sources as the European Parliament recently passed the law.
- The proposed law continues to be divisive, with palm oil producing countries like Indonesia and Malaysia calling the regulation too stringent and unfair, whereas civil society groups say the bill is too weak.
- In a recent joint statement, a group of 44 Indonesian CSOs say the EU regulation only focuses on eliminating deforestation from its supply chain, without addressing the root causes of deforestation in producing countries.

Indonesia legalizes illicit oil palm farms in program slammed as opaque
- Indonesia has legalized oil palm plantations one and a half times the size of London that were operating illegally in forest areas.
- Critics say the amnesty scheme effectively whitewashes the crimes of setting up plantations inside areas zoned as forest, where deforestation, wildfires and land conflicts are rife.
- To qualify for amnesty, plantation operators must pay fines and apply for the requisite licenses, but the process to date hasn’t been transparent, prompting concerns over backroom deals.
- With the deadline for the amnesty program ending this November, shortly before campaigning for next year’s elections begin, activists have also warned of the potential for operators to bribe candidates and officials in exchange for amnesty.

Forests & Finance: Agroforestry in Cameroon and reforestation in South Africa
- An agroforestry initiative in a cocoa-growing community on Cameroon aims to prevent the expansion of cocoa farms into the nearby forest while also providing additional income to farmers.
- A community effort in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province is restoring the region’s mistbelt forest that’s home to the iconic Cape parrot, and since 2011 has planted 52,000 trees while allowing participants, mostly women, to earn a living.
- A program meant to ensure the legality of timber in Gabon’s supply chain was briefly suspended between March and April over what the government says was missing paperwork — a justification that proponents have called into question.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

With little will to fight it, corruption is major risk for Indonesian palm oil
- Indonesia’s top 50 palm oil companies have weak antigraft measures, rendering the industry highly prone to corruption, according to a new report by Transparency International Indonesia.
- It found that practices such as political lobbying and revolving door practices among the 50 companies are barely regulated, and many companies don’t disclose their tax data.
- Some companies also don’t have antibribery policies and programs that extend to all staff, including executives and directors, the report says.
- On average, the 50 companies scored 3.5 out of 10 on six criteria, such as anticorruption programs, lobbying activities and data transparency.

Violence escalates in Amazonian communities’ land conflict with Brazil palm oil firm
- Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities in Brazil’s Pará state have accused the country’s top palm oil exporter, Brasil BioFuels S.A. (BBF), of violence during attempts to repossess in a disputed area in the Acará region on April 12 and 16.
- The company denies the accusations, saying it’s the community leaders who attacked its employees, holding 30 of them “in private captivity for three full days due to the blocking of the road.”
- The Federal Public Ministry in Pará said it’s investigating the action of armed militias and private security companies in the region, and possible crimes and irregularities by palm oil companies.
- The Public Defender’s Office questioned the legitimacy of the injunction used to justify the repossession as it was issued by a civil court instead of the due agrarian court; a hearing with an agrarian judge is scheduled for April 28.

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.

Deforestation in Borneo threatens three endangered, endemic plant species
- The rampant deforestation for monoculture plantation and logging in western Indonesian Borneo has exacerbated the extinction risks of three plant species endemic to the island’s riparian lowland rainforests, a new study said.
- The researchers are calling for stricter protection of the forest fragments as a key conservation strategy for the three plant species and for further research to be done to better understand the species’ population status so as to improve their management.
- The island of Borneo, which is split between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, has for the last few decades lost more than a third of its forests due to fires, logging, mining and industrial plantations, particularly oil palms.

World’s newest great ape faces habitat loss, multiple threats: Will it survive?
- Scientists designated the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) as a new species in 2017, and it was immediately noted as being the rarest and most threatened great ape with fewer than 800 individuals in western Indonesia.
- The IUCN estimated the apes’ population fell by 83% in recent decades, and the species continues to face grave threats due to habitat loss, a gold mine, a hydroelectric plant and the expansion of croplands.
- While some conservation efforts offer hope, researchers say a coordinated plan is needed to ensure the species survives.

‘They have conned us out of our lands’: Conflict brews in Peru as Mennonite settlers clear forest
- Mennonite groups began arriving in the Peruvian town of the district of Padre Márquez in Peru’s Loreto region in 2020.
- Settling near the town of Tiruntán, one Mennonite colony has cleared hundreds of hectares of old growth rainforest since 2021.
- Tiruntán community members claim they were given plots of public land by the town mayor, which were then sold to “the Mennonites, some Chinese business owners, and a logging company” in an effort to get around regulations that prohibit the clearing of forested land.
- Similar situations are playing out in other parts of Peru, as well as elsewhere in South America.

Could biodiversity be a key to better forest carbon storage in Europe?
- A new project is reintroducing key species into Europe’s forests to help restore natural balance and boost the ability of woodlands to store carbon. But there are concerns that unless such reintroductions are made on a much wider, landscape scale, they will have little positive impact in a region so dominated by humans.
- Others argue that the best way to improve Europe’s carbon storage potential is via heavy forest management, even going so far as to clear-cut some older stands and replace them with fast-growing new forests to encourage rapid carbon uptake, and using thinnings from timber operations to burn as biomass to make energy.
- This heavy management approach has raised deep concerns within the scientific community. Many researchers say this method ignores the growing body of evidence that plantation forest monocultures are not only bad for biodiversity and store less carbon, but also increase the risk of spreading devastating diseases.
- A middle ground could see more natural management of some forests where timber is harvested, while other woodland areas are left undisturbed, with a mixture of tree species, deadwood allowed to rot where it falls, and native animals reintroduced to help restore a natural balance and healthy ecosystems.

Indonesian Indigenous group AMAN wins Skoll Award for defending land rights
- Indonesia’s main Indigenous alliance, AMAN, has won a 2023 Skoll Award for Social Innovation for its work in advocating for Indigenous rights.
- The group’s work includes mapping Indigenous territories and lobbying for legislation that supports and protects Indigenous rights to their lands.
- AMAN says the award fuels its spirit to work even harder, as there’s still much work to be done, with many Indigenous communities still lacking legal recognition of their land rights and an Indigenous rights bill being stalled in Parliament.
- Four other organizations have won this year’s award, including Conexsus, a Brazilian NGO that promotes sustainable forest management and forest-based economies by centering community-led efforts and Indigenous ecological knowledge.

Jatropha: The biofuel that bombed seeks a path to redemption
- Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “miracle” biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree native to Central America, it was wildly promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that could grow on degraded lands across Latin America, Africa and Asia.
- A jatropha rush ensued, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields led to plantation failures nearly everywhere. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was tainted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.
- Today, some researchers continue pursuing the evasive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they say, is dependent on cracking the yield problem and addressing the harmful land-use issues intertwined with its original failure.
- The sole remaining large jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have been achieved and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback falters, the world’s experience of jatropha holds important lessons for any promising up-and-coming biofuel.

Expansion of Mennonite farmland in Bolivia encroaches on Indigenous land
- Mennonites first began settling in Bolivia in the 1950s, primarily in the department of Santa Cruz.
- Today, Bolivia’s Mennonite population numbers around 150,000, most of whom are involved in mechanized, industrial agriculture.
- As Mennonite colonies continue to expand, so too are their massive crop fields, which are putting pressure on Santa Cruz’s Indigenous Territories and other protected areas.

RSPO suspension of Brazil palm oil exporter tied to Mongabay land-grabbing report
- Agropalma, the only Brazilian company with the sustainability certificate issued by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) — a members organization including palm oil growers, traders, manufacturers, retailers, banks, investors and others — has had its certificate “temporarily suspended” since February.
- In December 2022, Mongabay published a yearlong investigation revealing that more than half of the 107,000 hectares (264,000 acres) registered by Agropalma in northern Pará state derived from fraudulent land titles and even the creation of a fake land registration bureau. Part of the area overlaps ancestral land claimed by Indigenous peoples and Quilombolas — descendants of Afro-Brazilian runaway slaves — including two cemeteries, which is at the center of a seven-year legal battle led by state prosecutors and public defenders.
- Just a few weeks after the publication of the investigation, representatives from the certifiers contacted Quilombola leaders “to understand the denouncements” published by the report, they went to the region and carried out audits in all affected communities; soon after, IBD Certifications Ltd. suspended Agropalma’s RSPO certificate.
- Assurance Services International (ASI), which evaluates the work of certifiers, confirmed that “the report was a reason for ASI to conduct a compliance assessment to IBD, the certifier of Agropalma, at the Certificate Holder’s premises.” University professors hired by ASI as local experts also cited the Mongabay investigation and this reporter when they contacted other key sources quoted in the report, as shown in email correspondence seen by Mongabay.

How do oil palm companies get away with disregarding Indonesian law? (commentary)
- University of Toronto anthropologist Tania Li argues that companies can act with impunity because of corporate-state collusion and a lack of organised resistance.
- Impunity does not mean Indonesia’s plantation zone is the Wild West. Rather than lawlessness, Li writes, the law sits adjacent to a parallel system of informal rules that affect when and how the law is observed.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
- This article was produced by The Gecko Project and republished by Mongabay.

Mennonite colonies linked to deforestation of Indigenous territories and protected areas in Paraguay
- Satellite data and imagery show the expansion of large agricultural fields whittling away at already-fragmented tracts of primary forest in eastern Paraguay’s Pindo’I Indigenous Territory over the past several years.
- Deforestation in Indigenous territories is illegal in Paraguay.
- Indigenous residents and advocates told Mongabay that the clearing is being done by one of the region’s Mennonite colonies; a representative from the colony refuted these claims.
- Deforestation for large-scale agriculture is also expanding in western Paraguay, which sources attribute to other Mennonite colonies.

A liquid biofuels primer: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world impacts
- Liquid biofuels are routinely included in national policy pathways to cut carbon emissions and transition to “net-zero.” Biofuels are particularly tasked with reducing emissions from “hard-to-decarbonize” sectors, such as aviation.
- Three generations of biofuel sources — corn, soy, palm oil, organic waste, grasses and other perennial cellulose crops, algae, and more — have been funded, researched and tested as avenues to viable low-carbon liquid fuels. But technological and upscaling challenges have repeatedly frustrated their widespread use.
- Producing biofuels can do major environmental harm, including deforestation and biodiversity loss due to needed cropland expansion, with biofuel crops sometimes displacing important food crops, say critics. In some instances, land use change for biofuels can add to carbon emissions rather than curbing them.
- Some experts suggest that the holy grail of an efficient biofuel is still obtainable, with much to be learned from past experiments. Others say we would be better off abandoning this techno fix, investing instead in electrifying the transportation grid to save energy, and rewilding former biofuel croplands to store more carbon.

How we built a database of conflicts driven by Indonesia’s palm oil smallholder scheme
- Mongabay, The Gecko Project and BBC News recently published a joint investigation which found that many Indonesian smallholders have lost their cut of the country’s palm oil boom.
- In this article, Tom Walker, head of research at The Gecko Project, explains how our team built a database of public reports to shed light on the issue.
- The database enabled us to target field reporting, identify trends and connect plantation companies to major consumer goods firms.
- This article sets out how we developed the database, how we used it, what it includes, and its limitations. The data can be downloaded at the bottom of this article.

Companies eye ‘carbon insetting’ as winning climate solution, but critics are wary
- A tool that wields the techniques of carbon offsets is surging among companies claiming that it reduces their carbon footprints. The tool, known by some as “insetting,” had simmered for more than a decade on the fringes of climate action among brands that rely on agriculture, but is now expanding to other sectors.
- Insetting is defined as company projects to reduce or remove emissions within their own internal supply chains. Proponents say it is valuable for agriculture-based firms struggling to address indirect emissions from land that has already been deforested. Like offsets, insetting can bring social and economic benefits to communities.
- Some oppose the tool outright, saying it is subject to the same problems as offsets (including lack of permanence and enforceable standards), but can also be worse as it can lead to double-counting climate benefits and can have weaker oversight.
- Having now become popular with major corporations such as Nestlé and PepsiCo, insetting as a climate tool is poised to see increased scrutiny as companies and researchers figure out its place in corporate action and reckon with the urgency to reduce emissions from agriculture.

Logged and loaded: Cambodian prison official suspected in massive legalized logging operation
- A Mongabay investigation indicates that a three-star military general who also serves as a top interior ministry official appears to be the notorious illegal logger known as Oknha Chey.
- Family and business ties link Meuk Saphannareth to logging operations in northern Cambodia that satellite imagery shows are clearing forest well outside their concession boundaries.
- Officials at the provincial level could not give a clear answer as to why the concession had seemingly been awarded to Oknha Chey, while the interior ministry ignored Mongabay’s questions about the allegations against Saphannareth.
- Some names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

Conservationists decry palm oil giants’ exit from HCSA forest protection group
- Palm oil giants Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) and IOI Corporation Berhad have withdrawn from the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA), a mechanism that helps companies reach zero deforestation targets by distinguishing forest lands that should be protected from degraded lands that can be developed.
- The companies’ exit brings the total number of firms quitting the HCSA to four, with Wilmar International and Sime Darby Plantation stepping away from the committee in 2020.
- Environmentalists say this points to a startling industry trend in which industry giants are shirking responsibility for their harmful business practices.
- Both GAR and IOI say they remain committed to using the HCSA toolkit.

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.

Forests & finance: A lawsuit, an import ban, and restoring Zambian forests
- Campaigners sue Ghana’s government to block mining of Atewa Forest biodiversity hotspot.
- Conservationists assist a forest reserve in Zambia to restore itself.
- Forest certification is expanding rapidly across the Congo Basin.
- EU bans imports of products linked to deforestation.

Six steps to tackle exploitation in Indonesia’s palm oil smallholder scheme (commentary)
- An investigation by Mongabay, The Gecko Project and BBC News found villagers across Indonesia gave up their land to corporations in exchange for a share of the palm oil boom but have been left with empty promises.
- Some villagers got nothing at all and others are languishing in debt, while companies operate in flagrant violation of Indonesian law.
- Tom Walker, head of research at The Gecko Project, argues that increasing transparency, accountability and investigations of errant companies are critical steps that could be taken to solve the problem.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Palm oil plantation linked to Wilmar faces accusations in Liberia
- A report released by the Liberian and Dutch affiliates of Friends of the Earth says the Maryland Oil Palm Plantation in Liberia is abusing its workers and rural villagers.
- The company is owned by Côte D’Ivoire-based SIFCA, which is itself nearly 30% owned by the Singapore-based agribusiness giant Wilmar.
- Friends of the Earth’s Liberian affiliate said the company has polluted local waterways, beaten villagers it accuses of stealing palm fruit, and withheld pay from its contractors.

‘Development’ projects in Ethiopia leave starvation, disease in wake: Report
- Indigenous groups in southwestern Ethiopia are suffering from starvation and disease after being displaced from their land for construction of a dam and the installation of large-scale sugarcane plantations, according to a report from the Oakland Institute, a California-based think tank.
- These projects have deprived the communities living in the Lower Omo Valley of their ability to farm and maintain their livestock herds, but this “catastrophe” has gone largely unnoticed in the shadow of even wider hunger and displacement due to civil war in the northern Tigray region, the report says.
- Humanitarian NGO World Vision International delivered some food aid to the region in November 2022.
- But the Oakland Institute said more food and medical care is urgently needed, along with the return of the land back to the Indigenous groups who have lived in this region for centuries, and is urging the government and the humanitarian community to respond immediately.

Amid global mezcal craze, scientists and communities try out sustainable plantations
- Mezcal, an increasingly popular Mexican liquor, has seen a 700% increase in production in the last ten years, leading to the over-harvesting of wild agave and the expansion of monoculture plantations which ecologists say is threatening endangered bat species and ecosystems.
- Scientists from universities across Mexico are researching how to develop sustainable organic plantations in five states that can meet rising global demand while also benefiting local communities.
- In one of the projects, they are testing over 45,000 thousand agave plants of two native species in agroecological systems to observe which practices best support their growth.
- Because few studies have been done on the environmental impacts of the booming industry, regional studies are needed, says a biologist.

Indonesia and Malaysia assail new EU ban on ‘dirty commodities’ trade
- The governments of Indonesia and Malaysia have lambasted the EU regulation that will ban the trade of “dirty commodities,” including palm oil sourced from illegal plantations and deforestation.
- They argue that the regulation will harm the palm oil industry by increasing the cost of production.
- Activists, however, see the regulation as an opportunity for palm oil producing countries like Indonesia and Malaysia to have their palm oil globally recognized as legal and sustainable.

On Sumatra coast, mangrove clearing sparks scrutiny of loophole
- Last year, a 100-hectare patch of mangrove trees in eastern Sumatra was cleared to make way for an oil palm plantation.
- Residents say small landowners’ claims were packaged together to form a plantation, averting the need for environmental checks or permits required of a corporate concession.
- Mangrove restoration is a pillar of Indonesia’s climate change agenda, though the clearing of some intact forests has persisted.

At a rubber plantation in Liberia, history repeats in a fight over land
- Last year, Mongabay visited the Salala Rubber Corporation in Liberia, which has been accused of sexually abusing women working on its plantation and grabbing community land.
- Salala is owned by Socfin, the French-Belgian agribusiness giant that operates rubber and palm oil plantations across West and Central Africa.
- In 2008, Salala received a $10 million loan from the International Finance Corporation, which advocates say was used to clear community land.
- In 2019, 22 communities in and around Salala’s plantation filed a formal complaint with the IFC, but the investigation has dragged on for years.

Poisoned by pesticides: Health crisis deepens in Brazil’s Indigenous communities
- A recent report reveals communities in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region are contaminated by the agriculture industry’s increasing use of pesticides. About 88% of the plants collected, including medicinal herbs and fruits, on Indigenous lands have pesticide residue.
- Samples discovered high levels of pesticides in ecosystems and waters far from crop fields, including carbofuran — a highly toxic substance which is banned in Brazil, Europe and the U.S.
- Experts blame the lack of control by government officials for widespread environmental damage and an escalating health crisis among Indigenous populations, as communities report growing numbers of respiratory problems, acute poisonings and cancers.
- A spokesperson for the biggest agrochemical companies operating in Brazil disputes the findings of the report and numbers of people far from crop regions affected by pesticide usage.

Indonesia’s biofuel push must go beyond palm oil to reduce risk, experts say
- Indonesia faces deforestation, energy and security risks from its overreliance on palm oil as a feedstock for its biofuel transition program, observers say.
- The government will in February increase the biofuel blend in diesel to 35%, from the current 30%, with an eye on a 50:50 blend by 2025 — and eventually fossil-free biodiesel.
- But the program calls for a massive increase in palm oil production — and with yields largely stagnant, this will almost certainly mean clearing more land to establish new oil palm plantations.
- Experts say the government should diversify its sources of biofuel feedstock to curb the expansion of plantations into forests and to reduce the other risks that comes from relying on a single feedstock.

Indonesia prosecutors decry ‘lenient’ sentences in palm oil corruption case
- An Indonesian court has found a top trade ministry official, a prominent economist and three palm oil executives guilty for violating requirements to ensure supplies of palm oil for the domestic market.
- The five were convicted of conspiring to export crude palm oil to the international market, where prices are higher, rather than allocating it for the Indonesian market, where the government had imposed a price cap.
- Executives from three companies — the Permata Hijau Group, Wilmar Nabati Indonesia, and Musim Mas — were among those jailed.
- Prosecutors and anticorruption activists say the sentences and fines imposed by the court are far too lenient in light of the suffering they caused to the public; prosecutors say they will appeal for stronger sentences and higher fines.

Dollars and chainsaws: Can timber production help fund global reforestation?
- As global reforestation commitments grow, how will companies, governments and communities pay to restore forest ecosystems and help sequester carbon over the long-term?
- One option: Grow and sell timber on the same plots of land where reforestation work is underway, as exemplified by pioneering restoration projects in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, where a single harvest of fast-growing eucalyptus grows up amid restored native trees. Eucalyptus sales then help pay for long-term restoration.
- Another approach is to concurrently grow tree plantations and forest restorations on separate, often adjacent, plots of land, with a large portion of the profits from timber harvests going to support the long-term management of the reforestation projects.
- But some scientists and forest advocates worry that projects or businesses that become overreliant on timber revenues to finance restoration could undermine an initiative’s environmental benefits, and lock in unintended harvesting within native ecosystems. Experts ask: Can we truly pay for new trees by cutting others down?

For Indonesian smallholders, EU deforestation rule is a threat — and an opportunity
- Small farmers in Indonesia could be excluded from the European palm oil supply chain under a new EU deforestation regulation because they’re far from being able to comply, a new survey shows.
- The main challenges they face are in meeting traceability, legality and sustainability requirements, given the largely informal nature of transactions at the farm level and the lack of awareness about the need for documents like land titles and plantation certificates.
- The country’s main oil palm smallholder union has called on the EU to provide support for small farmers to be able to comply, such as setting a premium price for certified legal and deforestation-free palm oil.

Brazilian archbishop is threatened for defending Indigenous peoples — even during Mass
- Dom Roque Paloschi, president of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) and archbishop of Porto Velho in the state of Roraima, Brazil, has been under attack because he denounced Indigenous people’s rights violations.
- It has always been risky to live in Amazonia and defend social-environmental issues, but Paloschi says the situation has worsened greatly in the last four years — the period that coincides with Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.
- In 2021, 355 attacks against Indigenous people were reported in Brazil — the most since 2013, according to a CIMI report.

Video: In Brazil’s Amazon, Quilombolas fight major palm oil firm for access to cemeteries
- Areas along the Acará River in northern Pará state are at the center of a six-year legal battle where Quilombolas — descendants of Afro-Brazilian runaway slaves — accuse Agropalma, the country’s second-largest palm oil exporter, of land-grabbing over their ancestral lands, including cemeteries, as revealed by Mongabay’s yearlong investigation.
- One of these areas is Our Lady of Battle Cemetery, where Mongabay witnessed in November 2021 Quilombolas celebrating the Day of the Dead for the first time in decades. They say access to the area was hampered since it became Agropalma’s “legal reserve” — the proportion of land that the Brazilian legislation obliges a private property owner to maintain in its natural state — in the 1980s.
- In this video, Mongabay exhibits what is called a “historic moment” and firsthand footage and interviews with Quilombolas going to this cemetery for the first time. This video also has impressive images of palm trees just a few steps from the graves at Livramento Cemetery, completely surrounded by Agropalma’s crops. Quilombolas accuse Agropalma of destroying three-quarters of its area to make way for its plantations; the company denies.
- “To support future lawsuits,” prosecutors in Pará state have cited the Mongabay investigation in their procedures looking into the conflicts between Quilombola communities seeking recognition of their territory and areas occupied by Agropalma.

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.

Tobacco: Vaping and smoking drive environmental harm from farm to fingertip
- Electronic cigarettes heavily marketed via single-use flavored products are increasingly popular. These products require disposal of large amounts of hazardous waste, including huge quantities of lithium, a resource in demand for electric car batteries and rechargeable electronics for laptops and mobile phones.
- Even as vaping use grows, an estimated 6 trillion “traditional” cigarettes are still smoked annually; 4.5 trillion are thought to be discarded into the environment each year. Researchers and activists emphasize that the tobacco industry is responsible for considerable harm to nature and human health.
- Traveling along the supply chain, tobacco production and consumption has consequences for forests, oceans, the climate, and for farmers and their families who produce the crop — all to an extent not yet fully known or understood.
- Efforts are underway to rein in some of these negative impacts against the backdrop of an industry accused of consistently greenwashing to conceal an environmental footprint that is harming both nature and public health.

Mexican restoration dominated by non-environmental interests
- Mexico is one of the 12 most biodiverse countries in the world, yet more than 50% of the country’s land is degraded and deforested, driven mainly by agricultural expansion, timber extraction and forest fires.
- The Mexican government’s $3.4 billion Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) reforestation program is supposed to have planted more than 720 million trees since its inception in 2016, yet it has also been criticized for encouraging deforestation and focusing more on social rather than environmental outcomes.
- To obtain funds for Sembrando Vida, the government has been criticized for slashing 75% of funding for the national parks authority, severely limiting its ability to protect the country’s protected natural areas, which cover almost 91 million hectares (225 million acres).
- In April 2021, the Mexican Alliance for Ecosystem Restoration was launched as part of the U.N. Decade for Ecosystem Restoration and seeks to guide private and public sector restoration initiatives and drive investment in ecosystems, aiming to restore 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of forest by 2030.

Video: Stolen Quilombola cemeteries in the Amazon, and the probe that revealed it all
- Palm oil is a ubiquitous ingredient in products ranging from chocolate to cookies to lipstick, but its production in a corner of the Brazilian Amazon may be linked to a land grab from traditional communities, including cemeteries, a year-long investigation by Mongabay’s Karla Mendes has revealed.
- Prosecutors in Pará state have cited the Mongabay investigation in their procedures looking into the conflicts between Quilombola communities seeking recognition of their territory and areas occupied by Agropalma, the country’s second-largest palm oil exporter.
- In November 2021, Mendes went to Pará’s Alto Acará region to investigate these land-grabbing claims, and shares her reporting journey in this behind-the-scenes video, including witnessing a historical Day of the Dead celebration at a cemetery that the Quilombolas say they were locked out of by Agropalma.
- Mendes also witnessed another cemetery hemmed in by Agropalma’s oil palms, where Quilombolas accuse the company of planting the trees over the graves of their loved ones, and investigated other palm oil-linked issues reported by local communities, including water pollution and the threat of displacement from the paving of a trucking road.

Major Brazil palm oil exporter accused of fraud, land-grabbing over Quilombola cemeteries
- Agropalma, the only Brazilian company with the sustainability certificate issued by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), is accused of a wide range of land-grabbing allegations in Pará state.
- The claims allege that more than half of the 107,000 hectares (264,000 acres) registered by Agropalma was derived from fraudulent land titles and even the creation of a fake land registration bureau, which is at the center of a legal battle led by state prosecutors and public defenders.
- Quilombola communities say that part of the area occupied by Agropalma overlaps with their ancestral land, including two cemeteries visited by Mongabay. In one of them, residents claim that just one-quarter of the cemetery remains and that the company planted palm trees on top of the graves, which the company denies.
- There are also other financial interests in the land at stake, researchers say, pointing to the company’s moves into bauxite mining and the sale of carbon credits in the areas subject to litigation, further intensifying the disputes.

Japan’s example: Can forest planting reduce climate disaster risk?
- In disaster-prone Japan, torrential rains exacerbated by the climate crisis have caused serious flooding and landslides in recent years, including in the country’s many forests.
- While acknowledging the limits of forests’ ability to prevent landslides occurring in the bedrock, Japan’s Forestry Agency is implementing both forest improvement activities and erosion control facility construction to help mitigate future landslide disasters.
- Japan’s monoculture plantation forests, which represent 40% of the nation’s total forest cover, are seen by some experts and civil society members as insufficient to prevent mountain disasters. However, other experts say that a much wider range of geological and environmental factors, not just tree species, determine a forest’s disaster mitigation ability.
- Along Japan’s Pacific coast, others are using trees planted on raised embankments as an as-yet-untested countermeasure against future tsunamis, a type of disaster experts say can also be exacerbated by sea level rise due to climate change.

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.

How agroforestry can restore degraded lands and provide income in the Amazon
- As Brazil prepares to turn the page on the Bolsonaro government, finding sustainable and economically viable alternatives for the Amazon region remains challenging.
- Advocates tout agroforestry as a sustainable farming alternative to soy monocultures and cattle ranching. It can restore degraded pastures and provide a stable income for small farmers.
- One such project is RECA, a sustainable farming cooperative and an agroforestry pioneer in Brazil’s Amazon, with more than 30 years of experience.
- Yet expertise, financing, scale, science and technology are significant challenges.

‘Amazing first step’ as EU law cracks down on deforestation-linked imports
- The European Union has agreed to adopt a law that will ban the trade of commodities associated with deforestation and forest degradation.
- The law will be the first of its kind in the world, and aims to tackle deforestation caused by the EU’s consumption of various agricultural commodities that are the main drivers of global forest loss, including palm oil, cattle, rubber, soy and cocoa.
- Green groups have lauded the law, but say it falls short on several key points, including failing to protect other wooded ecosystems like savannas, and providing limited rights protection for Indigenous peoples.

To be effective, zero-deforestation pledges need a critical mass, study shows
- The importance of rapidly halting tropical deforestation to achieve net-zero emissions was a key message at this year’s climate summit, but corporate efforts to this end have stalled for decades.
- Cattle, soy and palm oil are the main commodities driving deforestation and destruction of other important ecosystems. Zero-deforestation commitments from the companies that trade in those commodities are seen as an important way to reduce deforestation globally.
- A new study compares the effectiveness of corporate commitments to reduce soy-related deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, showing that zero-deforestation commitments can reduce deforestation locally, but only if there is widespread adoption and implementation among both small and big soy traders.
- Overall, the study points to the limitations of relying just on supply chain agreements to reduce regional deforestation and protect biodiverse ecosystems, and highlights the need for strong public-private partnerships.

Report calls on palm oil firms to make up for nearly 1m hectares of forest loss
- Palm oil companies across Southeast Asia are liable for the recovery of a Puerto Rico-sized area of forest because of their history of environmental harm, a new report shows.
- The Earthqualizer Foundation derived the figure of 877,314 hectares (2.17 million acres) based on the deforestation that the companies continued to carry out after they became aware that an increasing number of buyers had adopted sustainability policies.
- The report also calls on buyers who bought from these suppliers to shoulder some of the liability, which it said could count toward the forest restoration goals pledged by many of the buyers, including Nestlé, Kellogg’s and Unilever.
- The Earthqualizer report highlights some palm oil companies that are already undertaking recovery initiatives, but notes that these are few and far between, and any progress will need to be assessed over the long term.

What can Half or Whole Earth conservation strategies do for orangutans?
- In a recent study, a team of researchers attempted to predict how the application of two global conservation ideas, Half-Earth and Whole Earth, would impact orangutan conservation on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia.
- Numbers of all three species of orangutans continue to drop due to habitat loss and killing by humans, despite an estimated $1 billion spent on conservation efforts in the past two decades.
- The researchers surveyed orangutan experts about their thoughts on the application of the two ideas on Borneo; the resulting analysis predicts continued declines for Bornean orangutans under both Half-Earth and Whole Earth paradigms, though they report that the species would fare better under Half-Earth.
- Proponents of the Whole Earth paradigm argue that the authors of the study misinterpreted some of the idea’s central tenets, however.

2022 Amazon fires tightly tied to recent deforestation, new data show
- Nearly 1,000 major fires burned in the Amazon during its 2022 fire season, according to the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP).
- The Brazilian Amazon accounted for the vast majority of the fires, and most burned in recently deforested areas.
- MAAP uses unique satellite data detecting aerosol emissions alongside regular heat alerts, which helps filter out small fires.
- Fires clearing logging debris are linked to soy-driven deforestation in some Brazilian Amazon areas, where many soy-trading companies have not signed zero-deforestation commitments.

Following the impacts of palm oil alliance: Violated regulations and penalty proceedings
- The journalistic partnership behind a 2021 database gathering information on the penalties for environmental violations given to palm oil producers in Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras has added two more countries: Costa Rica and Brazil
- In these six Latin American nations, between 2010 and 2021, at least 298 cases were opened against 170 companies and individuals involved in the palm oil industry, according to the details offered by authorities in response to requests from the journalists working on the database.
- The handing over of incomplete documents and lack of information are, once again, a common feature of how authorities across the region respond to journalists’ requests. In 181 cases, it was impossible to understand the stage of the penalty proceedings, while in 42 cases there was no concrete information on whether a sanction or fine had been applied. In 47 instances, the exact nature of the environmental violation committed by the target of the proceedings was not specified.

Breaking free from photosynthesis: Will high-tech foods save nature?
- Soaring industrial livestock production is dramatically increasing greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and biodiversity loss. Current meat production methods are unsustainable and fast pushing the natural world and the global food system to the edge of collapse, argues British environmentalist George Monbiot.
- Monbiot says conventional solutions, like a global switch to veganism and/or the large-scale implementation of sustainable agroecology, are advancing too slowly to avert looming disaster. The only solutions, he says, are rapid high-tech fixes.
- The best approach, he contends, is one that would free food production from photosynthesis, using hydrogen drawn from water to feed protein- and fat-rich bacteria. The revolutionary technology can produce meat and cheese from the air that, reportedly, tastes as good as the “real” thing.
- Critical voices fear this not-yet-widely-tested techno fix may be a “magic bullet” that doesn’t work in the real world. Others say the only path to averting climate catastrophe is via mobilization around food sovereignty — the right of everyone to healthy foods produced by ecologically sound and sustainable methods, including innovations by traditional peoples.

More than half of palm species may be threatened with extinction, study finds
- Using novel machine-learning techniques, researchers found that of the 1,889 species of palms with enough data to investigate, more than half (56%) may be threatened with extinction.
- Researchers hope that the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, paired with data from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, can speed up preliminary evaluations of a species’ conservation status, reduce costs, and avoid bias toward vertebrate animals.
- The study found that nearly half of the functionally distinct species were threatened, as well as nearly one-third of species used by humans (at least 185 palm species). The study also identified high-priority regions for palm conservation including Borneo, Hawai‘i, Jamaica, Madagascar, New Caledonia, New Guinea, the Philippines, Sulawesi, Vanuatu, and Vietnam.
- Like many other threatened plant and animal species, the greatest risk to palms is habitat destruction from agricultural and urban expansion.

Tensions boil in Sumatra over a palm oil promise villagers say has yet to be kept
- In West Sumatra province, tensions in a three-decade-old land conflict spiked this year after several residents of Nagari Aia Gadang village were detained by police.
- The dispute centers on the community’s entitlement to a proportion of oil palm company PT Anam Koto’s concession under Indonesia’s plasma program.
- Residents of Nagari Aia Gadang say the company’s refusal to cede the land has held back local livelihoods, elevating risks that parents will not be able to afford to send their children to school.

Agroecology can feed Africa and tackle climate change — with enough funding
- Advocates say agroecological systems are the way to meet the climate crisis in its fullness — from limiting emissions to coping with climatic shocks — provided it gets the support of national governments and international donors.
- They are pushing for agroecology to be considered a climate solution by leaders at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt later this month.
- The agroecology movement is forged around opposition to the mindless transplantation of large-scale industrial agriculture to African countries, which is also one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions in more industrialized nations like the U.S.
- But its direct impacts on carbon budgets and effectiveness as an adaptation tool are understudied. Proponents like Bridget Mugambe say this hurdle could be overcome with adequate funding.

Who decides on ‘priorities’ for ecosystem restoration?
- A set of maps from research published in 2020 in the journal Nature suggested that restoring ecosystems in “priority areas” offered a cheap and effective way to slow climate change and stem the global loss of species.
- Soon after the study’s release, however, researchers from around the world raised concerns about the areas identified by the study, whether the biodiversity- and climate-related gains would be as substantial as the authors claimed, and how decision-makers might use the maps to guide policy.
- The study aimed to point out optimal spots for restoration based on the biggest boost they could provide to avoid the extinction of species and sequester the most carbon at the lowest costs. But, the authors wrote, the study did not consider “socio-economic issues,” and the maps were not intended to directly inform local implementation.
- The study’s critics say that, in spite of the authors’ intentions, investors and policymakers could use the maps in ways that might not consider the impacts on local communities.

Avocado farming is threatening Colombia’s natural water factory
- To satisfy the world’s ever-increasing appetite for the popular fruit, Colombia is risking the páramo, one of its key ecosystems.
- These rare environments provide fresh water to tens of millions of people — the majority of the Colombian population.
- The country is now second to Mexico as the world’s top avocado producer, with a significant uptick in production in the last year, resulting in socioeconomic and environmental impacts for communities downstream.

In new climate deal, Norway will pay Indonesia $56 million for drop in deforestation, emissions
- This year, Norway will pay Indonesia $56 million for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
- Both countries struck a new climate deal in September, in which Norway will provide support for Indonesia’s bid to curb deforestation and forest degradation, with the aim that Indonesia’s forests will turn into a carbon sink by 2030.
- Norway was supposed to pay the $56 million in 2020 under its previous climate agreement with Indonesia, but the Nordic country failed to pay, resulting in Indonesia terminating the original agreement.

With FSC rule change, deforesters once blocked from certification get a new shot
- The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has adopted a number of significant changes during its recent general assembly in Bali, chief among them moving its cutoff date for eligibility from 1994 to 2020.
- With the change, logging companies that have cleared forests since 1994, but before 2020, will be allowed to obtain certification from the body, something they weren’t allowed to do before.
- To qualify, companies will have to restore forests and provide remedy for social harms done in the 1994-2020 period in their concessions.
- The decision has sparked responses from both critics and supporters, with the former saying the new rule rewards known deforesters, and the latter saying it opens opportunities for forest restoration and remedies for Indigenous and local communities.

Drive for restoration and remedy behind some NGOs’ cautious support for FSC changes (commentary)
- Earlier this month, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) held its General Assembly in Bali.
- Grant Rosoman, a senior campaign advisor to Greenpeace International, argues that decisions made at this year’s General Assembly marked “the most significant change in direction” for the certification scheme in the last 20 years.
- Rosoman specifically identifies stakeholders’ approval of Motion 37 which will allow certification of forest areas cleared for plantations after November 1994 provided the party involved commits to restore an equivalent area of natural forest.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Video: Life in the awe-and-terror-inspiring vicinity of the Sumatran elephant
- Villagers living on the forest’s edge in Indonesia often marvel at the intelligence of elephants, even as they struggle to keep the animals from trampling their farms and homes.
- Sumatra has lost around half its rainforest since the turn of the century, driving the forest-dwelling creatures into increasing contact with humans.
- Watch our short film Indonesians on the front lines of human-elephant conflict in northwestern Sumatra.

Illegal agricultural project moves ahead on Brazilian Indigenous lands
- Marked by a fine for illegal deforestation, Agro Xavante, an initiative created with the blessing of President Bolsonaro, moves ahead with leasing public lands and a failure to conduct prior consultation with the local population.
- Called Indigenous Independence Project, the initiative determines that 80% of the net profits go to the rural producers, with the Xavante people receiving 20%.
- The very essence of the project makes it unconstitutional because, according to the Brazilian Constitution, the Indigenous peoples enjoy the exclusive use of their territories, with the sole right to the exploitation of the natural resources contained therein.

Sustainability pledges help Indonesia produce palm oil with less deforestation
- Deforestation that’s associated with palm oil has fallen by 82% over the past decade in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of the commodity, according to a new analysis.
- This is despite a rise in palm oil prices, which historically has been associated with a rise in deforestation as land is cleared for new plantings.
- Researchers attribute the continued decline in palm oil deforestation to the rising adoption of zero-deforestation commitments as well as public supply chain reporting by companies.

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.

In Brazil, a heavily fined firm is also accused of waging a ‘palm oil war’ on communities
- Escalating violence triggered by land disputes between Indigenous and traditional communities and palm oil companies has intensified in recent months in the Brazilian region that accounts for most of the country’s palm oil production.
- On Sept. 24, community leaders reported the killing of a non-Indigenous person and wounding of two Turiwara Indigenous men and a non-Indigenous by gunfire in the municipality of Acará, in Pará state. The following morning, Sept. 25, the cultural house of an Indigenous village was burned.
- Federal authorities say they’re investigating these and previous instances of violence that have intensified in the region.
- A database compiled by the journalism alliance Tras las huellas de la palma (Following the palm prints) reveals that only 44 fines were imposed against palm oil producers in the country, of which only three were paid. Most of the fines were for deforestation and pollution.

Mongabay probe key as Brazil court rules on palm oil pesticide contamination
- Prosecutors in Brazil say the findings from a Mongabay investigation were key to obtaining a court decision this week to probe the environmental impacts of pesticides used by oil palm plantations on Indigenous communities and the environment in northern Pará state.
- On Oct. 4, the Federal Circuit Court for the First Region in Brasília approved a forensic investigation into pesticide contamination and the socioenvironmental and health impacts in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Territory and the production zone of the country’s largest palm oil operation in the Tomé-Açú region.
- The green light to carry out the expert report was finally issued eight years after the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) filed a lawsuit to hold palm oil company Biopalma — acquired by Brasil BioFuels S.A. (BBF) in late 2020 — accountable for environmental impacts.
- A 2017 University of Brasília study, contained in the Mongabay investigation, found traces of three pesticides (two of them typically listed among those used in oil palm cultivation) in the major streams and wells used by the Tembé people in Turé-Mariquita.

Labor groups seek to build on Indonesian palm oil court win in new cases
- Last year, Indonesia’s Supreme Court ordered one of the world’s largest palm oil companies to make severance payments worth tens of thousands of dollars, handing palm oil workers an important victory in a labor dispute.
- Asserting the decision as a new precedent, activists and union groups are mounting a case for two new lawsuits against the company, London Sumatra, on behalf of 200 workers over unfair dismissals.
- Indonesia is the world’s top palm oil producer but allegations of labor abuses have dogged the industry.

Palm oil firms not acting fast enough on no-deforestation vows: Report
- Only 22% of companies sourcing or producing palm oil in Indonesia have public and comprehensive no-deforestation policies, a new report by London-based nonprofit CDP says.
- The report also finds that only 28% of companies have robust public no-deforestation commitments that cover 100% of production and include a cutoff date before 2020.
- In light of the report, experts are calling for more companies to adopt robust no-deforestation policies that incorporate social elements including remediation, restoration, compensation of past harms, and/or commitment to protect rights and livelihoods of local communities.

Emissions and deforestation set to spike under Indonesia’s biomass transition
- Indonesia’s cofiring program — reducing the amount of coal used in power generation by cutting it with wood pellets — will result in massive deforestation and a net emissions surge, an energy policy think tank warns.
- Under the government’s 10% biomass cofiring plan, up to 1.05 million hectares (2.59 million acres) of forest could be cleared for acacia and eucalyptus plantations to provide wood pellets.
- This would result in up to 489 million metric tons of emissions — a vastly greater amount than the 1 million tons in reduced emissions that cofiring is expected to achieve.
- The analysis, by Trend Asia, also shows that, if anything, Indonesia’s coal consumption has only increased with higher biomass cofiring, and that this trend is expected to continue through 2030 as more new coal plants are built.

New tech aims to track carbon in every tree, boost carbon market integrity
- Climate scientists and data engineers have developed a new digital platform billed as the first-ever global tool for accurately calculating the carbon stored in every tree on the planet.
- Founded on two decades of research and development, the new platform from nonprofit CTrees leverages artificial intelligence-enabled satellite datasets to give users a near-real-time picture of forest carbon storage and emissions around the world.
- With forest protection and restoration at the center of international climate mitigation efforts, CTrees is set to officially launch at COP27 in November, with the overall aim of bringing an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability to climate policy initiatives that rely on forests to offset carbon emissions.
- Forest experts broadly welcome the new platform, but also underscore the risk of assessing forest restoration and conservation projects solely by the amount of carbon sequestered, which can sometimes be a red herring in achieving truly sustainable and equitable forest management.

Zero-deforestation commitments ‘fundamentally limited’ in tackling deforestation, study argues
- Researchers found that while 90-99% of tropical deforestation in 2011-2015 was driven by agricultural industries, only 45-65% of the cleared land was actually used to grow crops or raise cattle.
- The rest of the cleared land was the result of activities such as speculative clearing and out-of-control agricultural fires, the study says.
- The researchers also concluded that because three-quarters of tropical deforestation is driven by domestic demand, corporate zero-deforestation pledges geared toward expert markets are limited in their ability to reduce this forest loss.

Indonesia amnesties 75 companies operating illegally inside forest areas
- As many as 75 companies that operate illegally inside forest areas in Indonesia have been pardoned under an amnesty scheme.
- These companies paid fines totaling 222.7 billion rupiah ($14.93 million) to receive the pardons.
- Hundreds more plantation and mining companies will be pardoned, officials say, as the government has identified at least 616 companies operating illegally inside forest areas.

British Columbia delays promised protections as old growth keeps falling
- Two years after British Columbia’s majority party promised a logging “paradigm shift” to conserve what’s left of the province’s tall old growth forests, Mongabay observed dramatic clear cutting on Vancouver Island in forests slated for protection. Old growth harvesting continues across British Columbia (BC) today.
- The BC minister of land management told Mongabay that the government, in partnership with First Nations, has deferred logging on 1.7 million hectares of old growth forests. But critics contest those numbers and note that much of these deferrals are for scubby alpine forests that aren’t in danger of being logged.
- First Nation leaders have been tasked by the government to determine which old growth forests to protect. This presents Indigenous communities with an economic conundrum, as many tribes will lose much-needed logging revenue if they choose conservation.
- Today, BC has many second-growth tree plantations that give the appearance of vast wooded expanses. But as Mongabay observed in July, these tree farms are “ecological deserts” that store less carbon than tall tree old growth and harbor little biodiversity as BC experiences intensifying climate impacts partly due to decades of overlogging.

As a Cameroon palm oil firm gets RSPO certified, it’s also found in breach
- A verification assessment launched by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has acknowledged breaches around the plantations of Cameroonian palm oil producer Socapalm.
- Despite allegations against Socapalm and subsidiaries of holding company Socfin in other countries, the RSPO recently issued certification status to multiple plantations, saying verification and certification don’t contradict each other.
- Local and international organizations are calling for Socapalm’s RSPO certifications to be rescinded due to the ongoing irregularities.

Trial of palm oil tycoon Surya Darmadi begins in Jakarta
- Surya Darmadi returned to Indonesia on Aug. 15 and was arrested by awaiting officers at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
- Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office has estimated total losses amounting to almost $7 billion, including damages incurred by communities.
- Environmental groups have spent decades documenting harmful activities by Surya’s companies.

Biomass cofiring loopholes put coal on open-ended life support in Asia
- Over the past 10 years, some of Asia’s coal-dependent, high-emitting nations have turned to biomass cofiring (burning coal and biomass together to make electricity) to reduce CO2 emissions on paper and reach energy targets. But biomass still generates high levels of CO2 at the smokestack and adds to dangerous global warming.
- In South Korea, renewable energy credits given for biomass cofiring flooded the market and made other renewables like wind and solar less profitable. Although subsides for imported biomass for cofiring have decreased in recent years, increased domestic biomass production is likely to continue fueling cofiring projects.
- In Japan, renewable energy subsidies initially prompted the construction of new cofired power plants. Currently, biomass cofiring is used to make coal plants seem less polluting in the near term as utilities prepare to cofire and eventually convert the nation’s coal fleet to ammonia, another “carbon-neutral” fuel.
- In Indonesia, the government and state utility, encouraged by Japanese industry actors, plan to implement cofiring at 52 coal plants across the country by 2025. The initiative will require “nothing less than the creation of a large-scale biomass [production] industry,” according to experts.

Encircled by plantations, a Sumatran Indigenous community abides changing times
- Residents of the village of Talang Durian Cacar on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island are struggling to earn decent incomes from unproductive oil palm trees.
- Jakarta-based NGO Kaoem Telapak described the community’s switch to growing oil palm trees as an “ecological, social and cultural consequence of their marginalization.”
- The community, part of the Talang Mamak Indigenous group, can access its customary forest through a corridor bisecting oil palm plantations.

Commodity kings Cargill, Bunge buying soy from stolen Indigenous land, report says
- Commodity-trading giants Cargill and Bunge source some of the soy used in products like chicken feed and pet food to land where Indigenous communities have suffered violence and displacement, according to a new report from Earthsight, an organization investigating environmental and social injustices.
- The companies have ties to a 9,700-hectare (24,000-acre) soy farm in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul that operates on the ancestral land of the Guarani Kaiowá, an Indigenous group that has spent the last several decades fighting forced eviction.
- Earthsight has documented supply chain links between soy from the Brasília do Sul farm and chicken retailers like KFC, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Aldi and Iceland, as well as German supermarket chains like Rewe Markt, Netto Marken-Discount, Lidl, Aldi and Edeka.
- Earthsight said Cargill and Bunge need to take a firmer stance on Indigenous rights rather than passing off responsibility to intermediaries or deferring to legal loopholes.

Bad weather knocks down Brazil’s grain production as ‘exhaustively forewarned’
- Brazil’s agricultural GDP declined by 8% in the first quarter of 2022 due to a severe drought in the country’s south caused by a rare triple-dip La Niña.
- In Rio Grande do Sul, the nation’s southernmost state, 56% of last year’s total soy harvest was lost, harming thousands of farmers.
- Scientists warn that climate change will make Brazil’s southern region, an agribusiness stronghold, widespread crop losses more common.
- Despite warnings, climate denial in the agriculture sector is getting in the way of mitigation efforts as the government of President Jair Bolsonaro and the agribusiness lobby push an anti-environmental agenda.

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.

FSC-certified paper plantation faces farmer backlash in Colombia
- Smurfit Kappa Cartón de Colombia (SKCC), a paper company with multiple plantations certified by the FSC ethical wood label, is facing backlash from Indigenous and local farmers over land disputes and environmental impacts.
- Mongabay was able to confirm three cases of plantations violating Colombia’s legal forest code. Communities living close to the company’s paper plantations say they are to blame for water shortages and a decrease in biodiversity and soil fertility.
- There is little agreement over the effects of these plantations on water availability, but many activists and academics say agroforestry or silvopasture systems can be alternative solutions to increase biodiversity and contribute to farmers’ livelihoods.
- A SKCC forestry division manager said SKCC carries out rigorous legal and background analyzes of the properties to operate according to the law and practices respect for the environment.

Indigenous lands, knowledge are essential for saving primates from extinction, says new study
- A new study in Science Advances finds that primate species found on Indigenous people’s land face significantly less threats to their overall survival compared to species found on non-Indigenous lands. To guarantee the survival of primates, we must guarantee Indigenous people’s autonomy over their territory, says the paper.
- The population of non-human primates – like monkeys, apes, tarsiers or prosimians – are declining rapidly around the world. At least 68% are in danger of extinction, while 93% have declining populations globally.
- Traditional Indigenous beliefs, practices and knowledge systems reflect the need to exploit resources in the environment, but in sustainable ways that do not also deplete resources primates depend on.
- The largest threat to primates is their loss of habitat due to large-scale deforestation for the sake of large infrastructure projects, roads and rail lines as well as the expanding agriculture frontier that decreases forest cover.

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.

Delectable but destructive: Tracing chocolate’s environmental life cycle
- Chocolate in all its delicious forms is one of the world’s favorite treats. Per capita consumption in the U.S. alone averages around 9 kilograms (19.8 pounds) per year. The industry is worth more than $90 billion globally.
- Ingredients — including cocoa, palm oil and soy — flow from producer nations in Africa, Asia and South America to processors and consumers everywhere. But a recent study reveals that large amounts of these commodities are linked to indirect supply chains, falling outside sustainability programs and linked to untraced deforestation.
- Key producers of these commodities — mostly West African countries for cocoa, Brazil for soy, and Indonesia for palm oil — have faced extensive deforestation due to agricultural production, and will likely face more in future as chocolate demand increases.
- Production, transport and consumption of chocolate also have their own environmental impacts, some of which remain relatively understudied. But researchers inside and outside the industry are working to better trace chocolate deforestation, and to make processing, shipping and packaging more sustainable.

No permit? No problem for palm oil company still clearing forest in Papua
- A field observation by Greenpeace Indonesia has confirmed reports that a palm oil company has resumed clearing land on its concession in Indonesia’s Papua region despite its permit having been revoked.
- As of June, the company, PT Permata Nusa Mandiri (PNM), had cleared more than 100 hectares (247 acres) of land, according to data from Greenpeace Indonesia.
- The resumption of land clearing has prompted the district head to reprimand PNM, and raised the possibility that the company is committing a crime.

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.

Plantations threaten Indonesia’s orangutans, but they’re not oil palm
- A significant portion of orangutan habitat in Indonesia lies within corporate concessions, but industrial tree companies, like pulp and paper, don’t have strong enough safeguards and commitment to protect the critically endangered apes, a new report says.
- According to the report by Aidenvironment, there are 6.22 million hectares (15.37 million acres) of orangutan habitat within corporate oil palm, logging, and industrial tree concessions.
- Of the three types of concessions, industrial tree companies are the “key stakeholder” as they operate with much less transparency and scrutiny than the palm oil sector, Aidenvironment says.

With plantation takeover, Brazil’s Indigenous Pataxó move to reclaim their land
- On June 22, a group of nearly 200 Indigenous Pataxó people occupied a eucalyptus plantation inside their demarcated territory in Brazil’s Bahia state, setting fire to the trees.
- In a video manifesto released on June 26, Pataxó leaders drew attention to the wide range of impacts that this and other plantations have had on their lands and health, from pesticide use to water pollution.
- The occupation comes amid growing resistance to the expansion of eucalyptus in Bahia, and rising frustration among Indigenous peoples over the slow process of gaining full legal rights to their land.
- The Pataxó people have been waiting for seven years for the presidential decree that would fully demarcate their territory; President Jair Bolsonaro has vowed not to demarcate any Indigenous territories, and has so far kept that promise.

Study assesses wildlife exposure to rat poison on oil palm plantations
- Rodents can pose a financial risk to oil palm plantation managers as they can cause significant damage to crops, potentially reducing yields by up to 10%.
- Anticoagulant rodenticides are often used to eradicate or manage rodent populations.
- A recent study assessed the risk of exposure to wildlife species known to hunt on palm plantations.
- Little is known about exposure and the potential risk to a wide variety of species, the study warns, and more research is needed to fill these knowledge gaps.

Tree plantations in Patagonia are the site of wildfires and land dispute
- For decades, Argentina has subsidized the clearing of native forest and planting exotic species, primarily pines, on land often claimed by Indigenous peoples.
- A recent standoff over a land dispute led to gunmen shooting two young Indigenous Mapuche activists, one fatally.
- Pine plantations increase wildfire risk, contributing to several major fires in recent years.
- Wildfires also encourage invasion by pines into native forests, leading to a feedback loop that threatens both native forests and human settlements.

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.

Rubber used by leading European tire makers linked to forest loss in Africa: Report
- A new report investigates deforestation and land rights abuse allegations in central and western Africa by companies that supply top European tire makers like Michelin and Continental.
- The EU is home to the world’s top tire manufacturers, even though it does not produce any natural rubber, and rubber imports are currently not subject to the European nations’ deforestation regulations.
- Between 2000 and 2020, 200 square miles of forested area was likely destroyed to make way for industrial rubber plantations in six African countries, which together exported $503 million worth of natural rubber to the EU in 2020.
- Emphasizing the role of the EU, the report describes how rubber plantation owning companies are also heavily financed by European banks like Rabobank, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank.

Cameroon’s Nigerian refugees who degraded their camp are now vanguards of reforestation
- Nigerian refugees and Cameroonian villagers are taking part in efforts to reforest the area around the Minawao refugee camp near the border between the two countries.
- The influx of the refugees, driven from their homes by the advance of the Islamist group Boko Haram, led to a surge in logging for fuelwood and timber, and also sparked conflict with the locals.
- A reforestation program supported by the UNHCR, French development NGO ADES and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), and carried out by refugees and locals, has to date planted more than 400,000 trees across 100 hectares (250 acres).
- Initially, government experts chose the trees to be planted based on their ability to grow quickly and survive in arid places, but since 2017, community members have been brought into the decision-making process as the project’s managers realized that a participatory approach could generate better results.

Indonesian palm oil audit a chance to clean up ‘very dirty’ industry
- The Indonesian government plans to audit all palm oil companies operating in the country, in a bid to tackle an ongoing shortage and high prices of cooking oil.
- Experts attribute the crisis to the fact that the country’s palm oil industry is dominated by a small number of big companies.
- These companies have large concessions, in excess of the limit imposed by the government, allowing them to wield outsized power to dictate prices, policies and supplies.
- Analysts say the audit should address this land ownership issue, as well as other problems that plague the industry, such as lack of clear data and transparency.

Consumer countries mull best approach to end deforestation abroad
- Major global consumers like the U.K., the U.S. and the EU are debating how best to reduce the amount of tropical deforestation resulting from the production of the commodities they import.
- Some experts argue that laws should restrict any products tinged with deforestation, while others say regulations should allow in imports that come from areas that were deforested legally in the countries in which they were produced.
- The debate involves questions around sovereignty, equality, and, ultimately, what strategy will best address the urgent need to stem the loss of some of the world’s most important repositories of carbon and biodiversity.

Second Indonesian province moves to retake forests from palm oil companies
- The government of Indonesia’s Papua province has recommended that district officials revoke the permits of 35 of the 54 oil palm concessions operating there.
- These concessions cover a combined 522,397 hectares (1.29 million acres) of land, and are being targeted for revocation because of a range of administrative violations by the license holders.
- If revoked, the large swaths of forests still standing inside these concessions could be saved from being cleared and converted into plantations, and returned to Indigenous communities, activists say.
- The move by the Papua government mirrors a round of revocations ordered last year by the government of neighboring West Papua province, which has also successfully warded off lawsuits filed by affected companies.

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 Indonesian Borneo, a succession of extractive industries multiplies impacts, social fractures
- Much of the landscape of Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province has been transformed, its formerly vast forests razed for logging, monocrop agriculture and open-cast coal mining.
- A recently published study analyzes how waves of extractive industries have affected the inhabitants of one village in the province
- The cumulative impacts of these industries were found to be severe, but also to vary depending on multiple factors including ethnicity, gender, wealth and age. Women, young people and recently arrived migrants were found to be disproportionately affected.

Satellites show deforestation surging in Indonesia’s Tesso Nilo National Park
- Tesso Nilo National Park is a refuge for Sumatran wildlife, including critically endangered tigers and elephants.
- But the park lost 67% of its primary forest between 2010 and 2021, with the deforestation rate in 2021 nearly triple that of 2020 and the highest it has been since 2016. Satellite imagery shows further clearing of primary forest in 2022.
- Much of the deforestation of Tesso Nilo is due to the illegal development of large-scale plantations to grow oil palm and other tree crops.
- In early 2022, park officials distributed a circular to surrounding communities that reiterated the ban on plantation agriculture in the park, but conservationists say more concerted enforcement action is necessary to curb deforestation.

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.

Legal and illegal cannabis: A cause for growing environmental concern
- Legalization of cannabis for medicinal and recreational use is an expanding global trend in the U.S. and globally, while the illicit market continues to feed large swaths of demand.
- Both the legal and illegal markets are linked to environmental challenges such as freshwater use, land-use change, toxic and nutrient pollution, and climate change-contributing CO2 emissions.
- Emerging legal cannabis businesses in the U.S. are subject to strict regulation, but many operate in ways that can contribute to environmental harms.
- While the scope of damage from booming legal growing operations is now being better assessed, the impacts of illicit clandestine operations remain mostly undetermined.

A hidden crisis in Indonesia’s palm oil sector: 6 takeaways from our investigation

Last week, Mongabay, BBC News and The Gecko Project released a joint investigation into a scheme that was intended to help lift millions of Indonesians out of poverty and cut them in on the spoils of the global palm oil boom, but has instead been plagued by allegations of exploitation and illegality. Indonesia produces millions […]
Legal defeats pile up for palm oil companies stripped of permits in Papua
- Two more palm oil companies in Indonesia that sued a local official for revoking their permits have had their lawsuits rejected.
- They join a growing list of palm oil firms being held to account for legal and administrative violations that were uncovered in a May 2021 audit of oil palm concessions across West Papua province.
- Four other lawsuits filed on similar grounds by other companies have also been thrown out since December 2021.
- Activists have welcomed the verdict, saying it’s an opportunity for the government to give the concessions back to the Indigenous communities who live on the land.

Study warns of risk from feline viruses to wild cats on the palm oil frontier
- A recently published study has found that wild felines are exposed to viruses common to domestic cats, such as feline coronavirus.
- Certain species that frequent oil palm plantations in Malaysian Borneo, such as the leopard cat and Malay civet, may act as carriers of viruses back into forest areas.
- These findings are of concern, conservationists say, due to the potential impact on threatened small cat species, such as the endangered flat-headed cat and the vulnerable Sunda clouded leopard.
- Integration of animal welfare into conservation action and oil palm management plans are potential solutions to mitigate the risks of transmission, the study authors say.

Saving medicinal plants a village cause in Indonesia
- Residents of the Sumatran village of Muara Jambi are working to preserve their ancient practice of cultivating and using medicinal plants.
- The village is also home to an ancient Buddhist temple complex that may be linked to the medicinal plant tradition, but some fear government plans to restore the site could threaten the plants growing there.
- Other threats come from oil palm plantations and coal mines operating nearby.

‘The promise was a lie’: How Indonesian villagers lost their cut of the palm oil boom
- An investigation by Mongabay, BBC News and The Gecko Project estimates that Indonesian villagers are losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year because palm oil producers are failing to comply with regulations requiring them to share their plantations with communities.
- The “plasma” scheme was intended to lift communities out of poverty. But it has become a major source of unrest across the country, as government interventions fail to compel companies to deliver on their commitments and legal obligations.
- Palm oil from companies accused of withholding profits from communities is flowing into the supply chains of major consumer goods firms like Kellogg’s and Johnson & Johnson. Some have pledged to investigate.

As biomass burning surges in Japan and South Korea, where will Asia get its wood?
- In 2021, Japan and South Korea imported a combined 6 million metric tons of wood pellets for what proponents claim is carbon-neutral energy.
- Large subsidies for biomass have led Japan to import massive amounts of wood pellets from Vietnam and Canada; two pellet giants, Drax and Enviva, are now eyeing Japan for growth, even as the country may be cooling to the industry.
- South Korea imports most of its pellets from Vietnamese acacia plantations, which environmentalists fear may eventually pressure natural forests; South Korea wants to grow its native production sixfold, including logging areas with high conservation value.
- Vietnam may soon follow Japan and South Korea’s path as it phases out coal, and experts fear all this could add massive pressure on Southeast Asian forests, which are already among the most endangered in the world.

Training on pasture recovery is a win-win for Brazil’s cattle ranchers and forests
- A recent study found that providing Brazilian cattle ranchers with customized training in sustainable pasture restoration could bring long-term economic and environmental benefits.
- Trained ranchers saw an increase in cattle productivity and revenue, and a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions over a period of two years.
- Researchers say that recovering degraded pastures could help stop deforestation for agriculture by allowing farmers to increase cattle numbers without needing more land.
- Despite government-led programs that promote sustainable agriculture, experts say pasture recovery is not yet being fully prioritized.

Missing the emissions for the trees: Biomass burning booms in East Asia
- Over the past decade, Japan and South Korea have increasingly turned to burning wood pellets for energy, leaning on a U.N. loophole that dubs biomass burning as carbon neutral.
- While Japan recently instituted a new rule requiring life cycle greenhouse gas emissions accounting, this doesn’t apply to its existing 34 biomass energy plants; Japanese officials say biomass will play an expanding role in achieving Japan’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 46% by 2030.
- South Korea included biomass burning in its renewable energy portfolio standard, leading to 17 biomass energy plants currently operating, and at least four more on the way.
- Experts say these booms in Asia — the first major expansion of biomass burning outside Europe — could lead to a large undercounting of actual carbon emissions and worsening climate change, while putting pressure on already-beleaguered forests.

In oil palm-dominated Malaysia, agroforestry orchards are oases of bird life: Study
- Demand for agricultural land threatens Peninsular Malaysia’s remnant native forest cover, and with it, Malaysia’s rich bird life.
- A recent study has found that agroforestry and polyculture plantations — those with a greater number of tree species — provide a more complex habitat for bird life and are better structured to support biodiversity.
- The study suggests that the introduction of fruit trees that encourage bird life into monoculture croplands would benefit farmers through the restoration of ecological functions, such as reducing the need for pest control through bird diet without compromising yield.

Indonesia’s revocation of palm oil, mining permits marred by ‘maladministration’
- Indonesia’s environment ministry may have committed maladministration in announcing the revocation of nearly 200 permits for logging, plantation and mining concessions, the country’s office of the ombudsman says.
- If the concession holders were negligent in managing their concessions, as the ministry claimed, then the problem should have been detected much earlier and dealt with case by case, indicating a failure by officials to periodically review the permits, the ombudsman says.
- It adds that the environment ministry has no authority to revoke oil palm concessions, whose final permits fall under the remit of the land ministry to do so.
- Environmental law experts had warned shortly after the revocations were announced in January that the government had left itself wide open to lawsuits from the affected companies; at least one coal-mining company has already filed suit for the return of its concessions.

Indonesia to probe scale of tax-dodging illegal oil palm plantations
- Indonesian lawmakers have demanded an accounting of the illegal palm oil plantations that continue to operate in the country, after the government revealed it had missed out on at least $3 billion in taxes from these companies in 2021.
- That figure itself is likely an underestimate, with a previous audit putting the lost revenue from just one province, Riau, at $7.4 billion.
- Lawmakers have given the environment ministry until the end of July to collect data on illegal plantations, including the identities of their owners, in Riau and Central Kalimantan provinces; the two provinces account for two-thirds of the illegal plantation area in Indonesia.
- Experts say uncovering the true identities of the plantation owners is the first step to addressing the problem, and should be followed up by an evaluation and improvement in the management of the palm oil industry.

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.

Cradle of transformation: The Mediterranean and climate change
- The Mediterranean region is warming 20% faster than the world as a whole, raising concerns about the impacts that climate change and other environmental upheaval will have on ecosystems, agriculture and the region’s 542 million people.
- Heat waves, drought, extreme weather and sea-level rise are among the impacts that the region can expect to see continue through the end of the century, and failing to stop emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could make these issues worse.
- Charting a course that both mitigates climate change and bolsters adaption to its effects is further complicated by the Mediterranean’s mix of countries, cultures and socioeconomics, leading to wide gaps in vulnerability in the region.

With ban on palm oil exports, Indonesia reaps condemnation and praise
- Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, announced it would ban exports of the commodity starting April 28 to address a domestic cooking oil shortage.
- The move has elicited a mixed response, with economists and a leading oil palm farmers’ union saying it will destroy the lucrative industry, including hurting small farmers.
- But another farmers’ group says the move is a necessary step toward a wider reform of the industry to devolve control from a handful of conglomerates to small farmers.

In Burundi, one-time combatants who razed forests now raise seedlings
- In 2018, Burundi launched a vast national reforestation program to boost the country’s dwindling forest cover, which will run until 2025.
- Burundi has just 6.6% of its original forests remaining, the legacy of a brutal civil war in which forests weren’t spared the violence inflicted by either side.
- Today, the formerly warring factions are working together on the reforestation project that has been hailed as a fantastic initiative, especially as the planted trees are varied.
- However, key civil society stakeholders in nature conservation are calling for these efforts to be followed by awareness-raising campaigns among local populations and communities, to protect seedlings that have already been planted.

Indonesian trade official, palm oil execs charged in cooking oil crisis
- A trade ministry official and three palm oil executives have been charged by prosecutors in Indonesia in connection with a cooking oil shortage that has rocked the world’s biggest vegetable oil-producing country.
- The suspects are alleged to have conspired to secure export permits to sell crude palm oil at record-high prices internationally instead of complying with a domestic market obligation.
- The cooking oil shortage has prompted widespread outrage in a country that produces more than half of the world’s palm oil, driving up prices and forcing the government to step in with subsidies.
- The companies named in the conspiracy are the Permata Hijau Group, Wilmar Nabati Indonesia, Multimas Nabati Asahan, and Musim Mas.

Outcry in Malaysia as failure to replant forests sparks ‘cover-up’ accusation
- Critics of a government plantation scheme have slammed the program following revelations that only a fraction of forest reserves cleared for plantations over the past decade have actually been replanted.
- An investigation by environmental news site Macaranga found that only 5% of the 77,331 hectares (191,089 acres) of forest reserves cleared in Pahang state for plantations between 2012 and 2020 were replanted.
- A Pahang state opposition lawmaker has called the program a “cover-up” for a logging scheme, while an environmental activist has criticized the government for its lack of accountability.

Colombian Indigenous community waits in poverty as courts weigh ownership of ancestral land
- In 2009 the Guahibo Indigenous community of El Trompillo was forced to move from what members say is their ancestral land.
- The official owners of the land are reportedly connected to former senator Alfonso Mattos, and plantation companies affiliated with Mattos have been developed in the territory; sources say they are polluting the land, water and air.
- El Trompillo community members hope the higher courts rule in their favor and return them to their land – but in the meantime they live in cramped, impoverished conditions.
- This story is a collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Rutas del Conflicto in Colombia.

Small farmers take a stand for one of Dakar’s last urban woodlands
- A forested strip that’s one of the last green areas in Dakar could be razed for new developments under an urban expansion plan.
- The strip of filao trees is also home to small-scale farmers who grow organic fruit and vegetables for sale in local markets, and whose presence has protected the trees against sand miners and unlicensed development.
- In June 2021, Senegal’s president authorized a new urban plan that “downgraded” 150 hectares (370 acres) of the filao strip, removing its protected status; 43% of this area will be allocated for new homes, and 21% for new roads.
- The farmers have protested the plan, saying they contribute both to the protection of the filao ecosystem and to the local economy.

Study: Most biodiversity hotspots lack formal protection in Borneo and Sumatra
- A new study published in Animal Conservation finds that most predicted biodiversity hotspots in Borneo and Sumatra fall outside formally protected areas, with only 9.2% and 18.2% of the modeled species richness located within protection zones on the respective islands.
- The researcher team conducted the largest camera-trap survey ever undertaken in Borneo and Sumatra, and used multiple criteria to determine the relationship of 70 species to the surrounding habitat and how animal communities are assembled.
- The study concluded that carnivorous mammals can be used as an umbrella species to assist in the development of holistic management plans in areas where multiple species coexist.

Indonesians, too reliant on palm oil, should go back to their roots (commentary)
- Scarce supplies and high prices for cooking oil have sparked recent widespread public criticism in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of palm oil.
- Yet before the introduction of the African oil palm into Indonesia, communities across the archipelago were producing the oil they needed from coconuts.
- Mongabay Indonesia’s Taufik Wijaya recalls this practice from his childhood in South Sumatra, when the Western-influenced diet of deep-fried food hadn’t yet taken hold.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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.

Palm oil firm that cleared Papuan forest after losing its permit is still at it
- Satellite monitoring shows continued deforestation within an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s Papua province, long after the local government ordered concession holder PT Permata Nusa Mandiri (PNM) to halt land-clearing activities.
- The local government issued the order because PNM was among 137 palm oil firms whose permits were revoked by the environment ministry on Jan. 6.
- The Namblong Indigenous community, whose ancestral lands overlap with the company’s concession, say they never wanted PNM in their area and have called on the government to take firm action to stop it from clearing more forest.

All coked up: The global environmental impacts of cocaine
- Cocaine is one of the most widely used illicit drugs in the world, consumed by an estimated 20 million people in 2019, mostly in North America and Europe.
- Production, transit and consumption of the drug are exacting a heavy environmental toll, impacting tropical forests, freshwater and estuary ecosystems. Some of these effects, such as pollution impacts on eels and other aquatic species, have been documented, but most are still poorly understood, with many unresearched.
- Indigenous peoples are often at the front lines of criminal gangs’ activities in producer and trafficking countries. Often, when new narco-trafficking transport routes are established, like those in Central America, those same routes are used for other criminal activities such as wildlife and weapons trafficking.
- Researchers argue that detaching the environmental harm caused by the cocaine trade from the long-lasting war on drugs is not possible. Solutions implemented to deal with the drug problem, such as the aerial spraying of illegal coca crops, while locally effective in curbing illegal cultivation, also cause deforestation and biodiversity damage.

For Indonesians, palm oil is everywhere but on supermarket shelves
- Indonesia is the world’s top producer of palm oil, but has in recent months been hit by scarce supplies and high prices for vegetable oil.
- The country’s business competition regulator points to indications of cartel practices by the handful of conglomerates that dominate the industry.
- But government policies may also be to blame, experts say, including incentivizing palm oil producers to sell to the government’s biofuel program instead of to cooking oil refiners.
- Parliament has called hearings on the issue, while the competition watchdog has launched a formal investigation.

FSC-certified Moorim Paper linked to massive forest clearing in Indonesia’s Papua
- A subsidiary of South Korean paper company Moorim has cleared natural forests a tenth the size of Seoul in Indonesia’s Papua region over the past six years, a new report alleges.
- The report, published by various NGOs, alleges that the cleared areas consisted of primary forests serving as a habitat for threatened species and a source of livelihood for Indigenous Papuans.
- Moorim’s Indonesian subsidiary, PT Plasma Nutfah Marind Papua (PNMP), which holds the concession to the land, also allegedly cleared the forests without obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous and local communities.
- Moorim has denied the allegations, but the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which certifies its paper products as being sustainably sourced, says it has begun assessing the case to determine whether there’s enough substantial information to indicate a violation of its policies.

From land mines to lifelines, Lebanon’s Shouf is a rare restoration success story
- The Shouf Biosphere Reserve is a living laboratory experimenting with degraded ecosystem recovery in ways that also boost the well-being of the human communities living there.
- Previous conservation efforts in the area involved using land mines and armed guards to stem illegal logging and reduce fire risk.
- Today, the reserve builds local skills and creates jobs in a bid to help the local community through Lebanon’s severe economic crisis.
- Managers are also employing adaptive techniques to build resilience in this climate change-hit landscape.

Deforestation for palm oil falls in Southeast Asia, but is it a trend or a blip?
- Deforestation for oil palm cultivation in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea dropped in 2021 to its lowest level since 2017, according to a new analysis by Chain Reaction Research (CRR).
- This marks the second straight year of declining palm-linked deforestation in this region, which produces more than 80% of the world’s palm oil, despite the price of the commodity hitting all-time highs last year and this year.
- Researchers attribute the decline in deforestation to an increasing number of companies adopting no-deforestation policies, and smaller companies without such commitments simply running out of forest to clear.
- But concerns over future deforestation persist as the Indonesian government ramps up its palm-oil based biodiesel program, which sources some of its palm oil from companies that are known deforesters.

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