topic: Transparency

topic: Transparency

Social media activity version | Lean version

Madagascar takes key step toward improving transparency of its fisheries
- Madagascar recently released its first fisheries transparency report, part of an effort to open up, democratize, and improve the sustainability of its fisheries sector.
- The report is a key step in a process defined by the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI), a Seychelles-based nonprofit.
- It contains important information on traditional, artisanal and industrial fisheries, a list of the laws and regulations governing the sector, tenure arrangements, and access agreements — including previously undisclosed information.
- It also assesses the country’s transparency according to the availability and accessibility of data from six thematic areas as outlined by the FiTI Standard.

New dams in Cambodia pit ‘green’ hydropower against REDD+ project
- The recent approval of two hydropower dams in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains could undermine a REDD+ carbon project in the area.
- The Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project relies on keeping the forests in this region standing — a goal researchers say is “completely incompatible” with the forest clearing and flooding necessitated by the new dams.
- The lack of transparency inherent in both the carbon market and the Cambodian government means that the fate of the Cardamoms remains unclear for now.

Can blockchain clean up the gold industry in Brazil and across the globe?

Gold, whose value has spiked by more than 55% since the 2008 financial crisis, is notoriously difficult to trace. Once mined, it can follow a maze-like path to market, passing through intermediaries that mix and melt it with other sources, often erasing signatures of its origin in the process. The result? Illicit gold routinely slips […]
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.

Forests in the furnace: Can fashion brands tackle illegal logging in their Cambodian supply chains?
- Global fashion brands touting sustainability claims continue to buy from their contract factories in Cambodia that burn illegally logged wood in their boilers.
- Mongabay reached out to 14 international brands that listed factories identified in a report as using illegal forest wood, but they either didn’t respond or evaded questions on illegal logging in their supply chains.
- One prominent brand, Sweden’s H&M, has developed an app that allows its partner factories to identify deliveries of forest wood, but industry insiders say there are ways to circumvent it, and that the government should be playing a bigger role in the issue.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

Forests in the furnace: Cambodia’s garment sector is fueled by illegal logging
- An investigation has found factories in Cambodia’s garment sector are fueling their boilers with wood logged illegally from protected areas.
- A Mongabay team traced the network all the way from the impoverished villagers risking their lives to find increasingly scarce trees, to the traders and middlemen contending with slim margins, up to the factories with massive lots for timber supplies.
- The garment industry association denies that any of its members uses forest wood, but the informal and opaque nature of the supply chain means it’s virtually impossible to guarantee this.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

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.

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.

FOIA lawsuit suggests Indonesian nickel miners lack environmental licenses
- A freedom-of-information ruling in Indonesia has indicated that two nickel miners suspected of polluting a river on the island of Sulawesi may not have all the required permits.
- The ruling, in a case filed by environmental journalists, ordered authorities in East Luwu district to publish the licensing documents for the two companies, but the authorities said some of the papers were still being processed.
- A lawyer for the environmental journalists points out that the companies should have already secured the licenses prior to operating, and that this revelation strongly points to them not having the licenses.
- The Indonesian government is pushing a massive expansion of the nickel mining and processing industries to feed the demand for electric vehicle batteries, but nickel mining in the country has long been associated with pollution and community conflicts.

A new tool to peer into fishing networks: Q&A with Austin Brush of C4ADS
- Washington, D.C.-based think tank C4ADS is launching Triton, a web tool to visually display the corporate structures behind fishing vessels.
- The initial cache of data focuses on the industrial fishing fleets of five key flag states: China, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain, and Japan, which together account for most high-seas fishing.
- Understanding who owns these vessels ultimately reveals the factors driving a vessel’s movements at sea and fishing activity, according to C4ADS analyst Austin Brush.

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.

‘Disclose the deal,’ East Africa pipeline opponents say (commentary)
- Champions of a new crude oil pipeline – set to run 1,443 kilometers from oil fields in Uganda to Tanga Port in Tanzania – say it will transform East Africa’s energy landscape, propelling Uganda into middle-income status, among other claims.
- Its critics call it a mistake in a world where the impacts of the climate crisis are being increasingly felt, and stopping it has become a rallying cry for campaigners around the world.
- Key agreements that would reveal critical info about agreements between the company and countries remain hidden from the public–despite Uganda’s being a member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative–and should be disclosed, a new commentary argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Ecuador promises more openness of fisheries information under new initiative
- Ecuador has committed to greater transparency in its fishing industry, under a new global initiative aimed at sustainability through better management.
- Under its commitment to the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI), Ecuador must grant public access to information related to the management of the country’s marine resources.
- Journalists, civil society groups and even other government agencies have long had their information requests to the fisheries ministry rejected or ignored, and say they hope this will now change.

Rangers in DRC gorilla park abused Indigenous villagers, report says
- According to a new investigative report by Minority Rights Group (MRG), 20 Indigenous Batwa were killed, 15 women were raped and 2 children were burnt alive by park guards and soldiers in the DRC’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBNP), home to the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla.
- The acts were committed between 2019 and 2021 under the knowledge and paramilitary support of U.S and German government agencies and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), say the report’s researchers who obtained evidence through interviews with eyewitnesses and park guards involved in the attacks.
- WCS denies allegations brought against the organization, saying it had no involvement in military operations. The KBNP bulletin denied similar reports of violence during a visit by the government agency that manages the park in February.
- German government agencies and a cabinet secretary are calling for an independent investigation into allegations of abuses, which MRG says is just the “tip of the iceberg”. According to sources, another investigation is underway.

Palm oil firm hit by mass permit revocation still clearing forest in Indonesia
- An Indonesian palm oil company stripped of its permit at the start of the year has since been actively clearing forest in its concession.
- PT Permata Nusa Mandiri was among 137 palm oil firms whose permits were revoked by the environment ministry on Jan. 6, but went on to bulldoze more than 50 hectares of rainforest since then.
- Environmental activists and local Indigenous communities have long opposed the company’s presence in Papua province, but the questionable legality of the government’s permit revocations means the firm could still be allowed to continue operating.
- The land clearance is taking place in the Jalan Korea area, a popular birdwatching and tourism destination.

When Indonesia retook land from developers, it gave them a solid case to sue
- The Indonesian government’s decision to revoke permits for plantation firms to operate in forest areas could lead to lawsuits filed by the companies, environmental law experts say.
- The permits were rescinded at the start of the year, not because of any environmental violations, but rather because the concession holders were deemed to be moving too slowly in exploiting the resources.
- But the unilateral revocations have set up an unprecedented legal mess, observers and industry representatives say, with no clarity over whether a company that has lost a permit can still operate on the basis of the other permits it still holds.
- Contributing to the confusion is the government’s persistent refusal to publicly release any data on the permits and the companies that hold them, in direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling ordering it to do so.

‘Land mafia’ makes its mark in a Sumatran village’s fight against oil palm firm
- A government agency in Sumatra issued land titles to villagers in 2020, only to rescind them this year on the grounds that a palm oil company already holds the concession for that land.
- The flip-flop has revealed a litany of irregularities in the land-titling process and strengthened suspicions of a “land mafia” at work securing community-occupied lands for big businesses.
- The National Land Agency says more than 100 of its officials are suspected of being part of this mafia, but has done little to address the problem, and continues to violate a Supreme Court ruling that could bring greater transparency to land ownership across Indonesia.
- Activists say the land mafia have been emboldened by the government’s pro-business policies, including directives to make it easier for investors to secure land for projects.

2021’s top ocean news stories (commentary)
- Marine scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, share their list of the top 10 ocean news stories from 2021.
- Hopeful developments this year included big investments pledged for ocean conservation, baby steps toward the reduction of marine plastic pollution, and the description of two new whale species, Rice’s whale (Balaenoptera ricei) and Ramari’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon eueu).
- At the same time, rising ocean temperatures, a byproduct of climate change, had profound effects on marine species up and down the food chain, and action on key measures to maintain ocean resilience in the face of multiple threats hung in the balance.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Secrecy shrouds new gold mining deal in Guyana’s Marudi mountains
- A gold mining deal between the government of Guyana and a group of small-scale miners has stirred up controversy as it permits mining on a mountain range that sustains river ecosystems that Indigenous Wapichan communities depend on.
- According to Wapichan leaders, who learned of the deal in a Facebook post, the government violated their right to free, prior and informed consent by issuing the permit without proper consultation and ignoring cases of prior environmental destruction from gold mining.
- Guyana’s Ministry of Natural Resources says at least four consultations were held with Wapichan communities before the agreement was signed.
- The terms of the agreement have not been made public, leaving Indigenous leaders and the deputy speaker of the National Assembly pointing to possible political motives behind the mining deal.

Deadly raids are latest case of abuse against Indigenous Batwa in DRC park, groups say
- The number of attacks by security forces on Indigenous Batwa villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park has tripled in the past four weeks, according to the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP).
- DRC soldiers and park rangers are accused of burning several Batwa villages to the ground, killing one man and possibly a pregnant woman, and injuring at least two other women during raids that continued until mid-December.
- Indigenous rights groups have demanded a formal investigation into the reports, and called on park funders to pay attention to alleged crimes committed using their money.
- Park officials have denied that there are any Batwa communities officially living inside the park, and say the target of the raids is an armed man that carried out a deadly attack in the city of Bukavu.

Questions over who gets the billions pledged to Indigenous causes at COP26
- Private, public and philanthropic donors pledged billions of dollars to strengthen Indigenous land tenure and forest management at COP26, notably donating $1.7 billion as part of efforts to reverse forest loss.
- Some Indigenous leaders are skeptical about how this will play out given that most previous financial support was not addressed to Indigenous organizations and communities, but to intermediate NGOs, government agencies and regional banks.
- Indigenous organizations say increasing direct funding to Indigenous-led initiatives and transparency in the flow of funds can increase effectiveness of the pledges and build trust.
- Funding for forest monitoring technology is increasingly having a role in how some Indigenous communities safeguard biodiversity and map out their territories.

It’s time for Brazil to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (commentary)
- “It’s like we don’t exist,” say people living near giant mines like Minas-Rio in Brazil’s mining heartland state of Minas Gerais.
- Though residents largely don’t benefit and live in fear of yet another environmental catastrophe caused by such mines like the Samarco Mariana & Brumadhino mines’ tailings dam collapses, their owners are making huge profits from this polluting industry marked by a lack of transparency.
- One way for Brazil to respond would be joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, as 11 other Latin American and Caribbean countries have already done.
- The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Everything is traceable – unless you don’t want it to be (commentary)
- Aida Greenbury, the former Managing Director of Sustainability at APP Group and currently a board member and advisor to several organizations including Mongabay, argues that companies need to stop making excuses for the lack of traceability of commodities and materials in their supply chains.
- “Consumers have the right to know where the products they buy come from, and to trace them back to the source of the raw materials to ensure that they are not linked to anything dodgy, such as deforestation and human rights violations,” she writes. “Consequently, brands, retailers, and manufacturers have the responsibility to provide this traceability information to consumers.”
- Greenbury argues that traceability must extend throughout a company’s supply chain, including third party suppliers and smallholders.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Final court ruling orders Indonesian government to publish plantation data
- An Indonesian court has upheld a landmark ruling that says all plantation data and maps are public information and thus should be made available to the public.
- The court’s decision was made in 2020, but it wasn’t until March 2021 that the court informed the plaintiff in the case, the NGO Forest Watch Indonesia.
- But the government, in this case the land ministry, has refused to comply with the order to release the data, going back to a 2017 Supreme Court ruling.
- The ministry has also refused to share the data with other government ministries and agencies, prompting even lawmakers to call on it to comply.

Oil palm growers’ misdeeds allow an opportunity to save West Papua’s forests
- An area of forest two and a half times the size of London sits inside oil palm concessions in Indonesia’s West Papua province but can still be spared from being cleared, a government review indicates.
- Clearing the forest to plant oil palms would release the equivalent of two-fifths of Indonesia’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions, which is why leaving it intact is important, according to experts and local government officials.
- The concession holders have been prevented from developing the land because of a lack of permits and a litany of administrative and legal violations, according to the government review.
- This gives local authorities leverage to win back control of the concessions from the companies on administrative and procedural grounds, although officials say the process could take at least a year, even if the companies relinquish the land voluntarily.

Secretive group found to have cleared orangutan habitat in Indonesia: Report
- A new report has identified the secretive Nusantara Fiber group as being responsible for the most deforestation by the industrial forestry industry in Indonesia in the past five years.
- The group’s six subsidiaries cleared a combined 26,000 hectares (64,200 acres) of forest in Indonesian Borneo from 2016 to 2020 to plant pulpwood, timber and biomass trees, according to the report by the NGO Aidenvironment.
- Little is known about the group, but historical records suggest possible ties to the pulpwood and palm oil conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle; the latter has denied any such connection.
- Aidenvironment has called for a halt to the deforestation, which has cleared habitat of the critically endangered Bornean orangutan, and for greater transparency on the ownership structures of both groups, as well as the application of zero-deforestation policies.

Papua tribe moves to block clearing of its ancestral forest for palm oil
- Members of the Auyu tribe of Papua, Indonesia, are demanding a halt to the operations of palm oil company PT Indo Asiana Lestari (IAL), which appears to be gearing up to clear their ancestral forests.
- They say that the company failed to obtain the community’s consent for the project, and that it’s not clear whether it even has the requisite permits to begin operations.
- IAL’s concession is part of the Tanah Merah megaproject that is already dogged by allegations that key operating permits have been falsified.
- The Papua region is home to the world’s third-largest contiguous swath of tropical rainforest, after the Amazon and the Congo Basin, but large areas may be cleared for plantations.

Deregulation law ‘raises corruption risk’ in Indonesia’s forestry sector
- Experts have warned that a controversial deregulation act will serve as a springboard for greater corruption in Indonesia’s forestry sector.
- They say a pervasive lack of transparency will allow companies such as plantation operators to whitewash their illegal occupation of forests or take control of larger swaths of land than permitted, among other risks.
- The experts have called for greater transparency, especially on the beneficial ownership of companies, and more detailed guidelines on how to implement the deregulation law.

2020’s top ocean news stories (commentary)
- Marine scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, share their list of the top 10 ocean news stories from 2020.
- Hopeful developments this year included some long-overdue attention to Black and other underrepresented groups in marine science; new technologies to prevent deadly ship-whale collisions and track “dark” vessels at sea remotely; and surprising discoveries in the deep sea.
- At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in more trash than ever being dumped in the sea, and stalled international negotiations aimed at protecting waters off Antarctica and in the high seas. 2020 also brought the first modern-day marine fish extinction.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Pulp producers pull off $168 million Indonesia tax twist, report alleges
- TPL and APRIL, two major pulp and paper producers in Indonesia, may have deprived the country of $168 million in taxes from 2007-2018 by mislabeling a type of pulp that they exported to China, a new investigation alleges.
- The companies, affiliated with the Singapore-based Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) group, recorded their exports as paper-grade pulp, even though they were purchased by factories in China as higher-value dissolving pulp.
- Paper-grade pulp is used to make paper and packaging, while dissolving pulp is used to make viscose for clothing; Zara and H&M were among the reported buyers of the viscose made from the mislabeled pulp from Indonesia during that time. Both companies have since eliminated controversial sourcing from their supply chains.
- The NGOs behind the investigation say it emphasizes the importance of enforcing greater corporate transparency to prevent companies from using offshore tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions to minimize their domestic tax obligations.

How we calculated Korindo’s revenues from clearing Papuan rainforest
- A panel convened by the Forest Stewardship Council calculated that Korindo had deprived indigenous communities in Indonesia’s Papua province of $300 million by underpaying for the timber harvested from their lands in the decade from 2007.
- Korindo dismissed the figure as “pure fantasy” on the grounds that the panel had based its calculations on global market prices, when Korindo actually sold the timber locally. Korindo claimed it had made a loss on the logging operations as it cleared land for plantations.
- Based on our own calculation, we estimate that since the turn of the century, Korindo exported products worth $320 million using timber harvested as it cleared the rainforest for plantations in Papua.

The Consultant: Why did a palm oil conglomerate pay $22m to an unnamed ‘expert’ in Papua?
- In a year-long investigation with The Gecko Project, the Korean Center for Investigative Journalism-Newstapa and Al Jazeera, Mongabay traced a $22 million “consultancy” payment connected to a major land deal in Indonesia’s Papua province.
- It took us from South Korea and Singapore to the heart of the largest rainforest left in Asia, to find out how the payment helped make the Korindo Group one of the largest oil palm producers in the region.
- Photography by Albertus Vembrianto.

New player starts clearing rainforest in world’s biggest oil palm project
- A company owned by a politically connected Indonesian family and an investor from New Zealand has begun clearing rainforest within an area slated to become the world’s largest oil palm plantation.
- The project will push industrial agriculture deep into the primary rainforests of southern Papua, but has been plagued by allegations of illegality.
- While the new investors represent a break from those allegations, the government’s failure to investigate them has ongoing consequences.

Activists skeptical of win as court orders Papua plantation maps published
- Indonesia’s agrarian ministry must release plantation maps and data about concession holders for the country’s Papua region, a court has ruled.
- The region is home to the largest remaining undisturbed swath of tropical rainforest in Indonesia, and is increasingly being targeted by the plantation and logging companies that have already depleted the forests of Sumatra and Borneo.
- Environmental and indigenous rights activists have welcomed the court ruling, which they say will help address land grabs and other illegal practices, but add they’re skeptical the agrarian ministry will comply.
- The ministry is already subject to previous rulings, including from the Supreme Court, to release plantation data for other regions of the country, but continues to stonewall with a variety of excuses.

Making a thriller out of Belo Monte hydro dam: Q&A with filmmaker Sabrina McCormick
- The construction of the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon is the narrative engine that drives Sequestrada, the first full-length film by U.S. cinematographer and sociologist Sabrina McCormick.
- The film, which came out in December on various streaming platforms, tells the story of Kamudjara, an indigenous girl, amid the expectations about the profound social and environmental changes that the construction will bring.
- In this interview with Mongabay, the director speaks about her creative process, her experience filming in the Amazon and perceptions about the social and cultural aspects, as well as the indigenous people’s sense of belonging to the forest.
- A former climate and environmental adviser to the Obama administration, McCormick also stresses the importance of blocking the advance of power generation models based on projects like Belo Monte.

Video: Abraham Khouw, the professor who joined the Save Aru movement
- Professor Abraham Khouw is one of dozens of academics in the Indonesian city of Ambon who lent his expertise to the Save Aru movement in the mid-2010s.
- The movement formed after a company called the Menara Group got permits to clear nearly two-thirds of the Aru Islands’ rainforest for a giant sugar plantation.
- The academics lent extra firepower to the fight against the plantation, which was mainly driven by local indigenous communities.

Experts see minefield of risk as Indonesia seeks environmental deregulation
- The government is pushing for the swift passage of more than 1,200 amendments to at least 80 existing laws in a bid to deregulate the economy and boost investment, including in the environmental sector.
- Chief among the proposed changes is the scrapping of environmental impact assessments and environmental permits as prerequisites for business permits to be issued for various kinds of projects.
- Other planned amendments would get rid of criminal charges for businesses violating environmental regulations; deprive indigenous communities of a say in projects that would affect them; and redesignate forest areas, which would allow illegal plantations and mines to whitewash their operations.
- Experts say these changes, and the rushed, opaque manner in which the government is pushing the bills, will give rise to greater risk for investors and spark more conflicts over land and resources.

Video: Mika Ganobal, the civil servant who risked his job to save his homeland
- Several years ago, a plantation company nearly broke ground on a plan to clear more than half of the rainforest in Indonesia’s Aru Islands.
- Local residents organized against the project. One of the leaders of the effort to stop it was a local bureaucrat named Mika Ganobal.
- Watch our video profile of Mika below.

Belo Monte boondoggle: Brazil’s biggest, costliest dam may be unviable
- The controversial Belo Monte mega-dam in Pará state has done significant socio environmental harm to the Xingu River and the indigenous and traditional people living beside it. Now it appears the dam may not be able to produce the electricity totals promised by its builders — an eventuality critics had long warned about.
- Project designers appear to have seriously misestimated the Xingu River’s flow rates and fluctuations between wet and dry seasons, while also not accounting for reductions in flow due to deforestation caused by rapidly expanding cattle ranches and soy plantations far upriver in Mato Grosso state.
- Climate change-induced droughts are also decreasing Xingu River flows and generating capacity. In 2013, an important Brazilian Panel on Climate Change report warned that global warming could drop water levels all across the Amazon basin, putting hydropower in serious jeopardy.
- As deforestation due to agribusiness and mining spreads across the basin, now driven by the development-friendly policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the future for Amazon hydroelectric dams, their generating capacity and investment potential looks increasingly bleak.

Bolsonaro’s Brazil: 2019 brings death by 1,000 cuts to Amazon — part one
- While the media focused in 2019 on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s incendiary remarks, or on the Amazon fires, he has quietly instituted new policies likely to aid land grabbers and do great harm to Amazon forests, indigenous and traditional peoples. “Death by 1,000 Cuts” parts 1 and 2 reviews those policies.
- Executive decree MP 910 issued December 11 legalizes large-scale land grabbing. The large-owner loophole built into the new decree allows land speculators to register large swathes of public lands that they grabbed before December 2018, using the illegal deforestation they accomplished as proof of their “occupation.”
- MP 910 could transfer 40-60 million hectares of public land to private owners who would then be authorized to legally deforest a fifth of that land, about 10 million hectares, experts say. MP 910 is likely to trigger high rates of conflict and deforestation. Congress must approve MP 910 in 120 days to make it permanent.
- The agriculture ministry also chose to make secret part of its ranching database, thwarting Visipec, an NGO-designed tool for tracking cattle raised on calving ranches where major deforestation occurs. Other administrative measures benefit big agribusiness over small family farms, and muzzle civil society voices.

Malaysia to let RSPO publish oil palm concession maps
- The Malaysian government has decided to allow the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to publish concession maps for Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak of its members in a bid to boost transparency in the sector.
- The RSPO has described the move as a “milestone” and it could leave neighboring Indonesia — currently the world’s largest palm oil producer and exporter — further behind in the pursuit of transparency in the palm oil sector.
- Activists have called on Indonesia to follow Malaysia’s footsteps if it doesn’t want to have the image of its oil palm products further tarnished compared to Malaysia.

Analysis: The Tanah Merah project is a bellwether for Jokowi’s permit review
- This week, Mongabay and The Gecko Project revealed an allegation of forgery at the heart of the world’s largest oil palm plantation project.
- Permits underpinning the project, now being used to clear rainforest in the Indonesian part of New Guinea, were falsified, government officials have alleged.
- The case provides a window into how Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration is wrestling with the consequences of two decades of poorly regulated plantation expansion.

Revealed: Government officials say permits for mega-plantation in Papua were falsified
- The allegation has been raised internally within the Indonesian government on multiple occasions, an investigation by Mongabay and The Gecko Project has found.
- An area nearly the size of Paris has already been cleared on the basis of the allegedly fraudulent permits, cutting a hole in a vast stretch of rainforest on the island of New Guinea.
- The companies clearing the forest have denied the allegation, insisting their permits are legitimate.
- The case has emerged as world leaders gather in Madrid this week for the 25th UN climate summit, with stemming Indonesia’s forest loss deemed critical if the nation is to meet its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Follow the permits: How to identify corruption red flags in Indonesian land deals
- Corruption is rife in Indonesia’s plantation and mining sectors, especially when it comes to the issuance of permits.
- For journalists and activists who lack the expansive powers of Indonesia’s law enforcement agencies, finding evidence of corruption in the issuance of licenses can be challenging.
- This article defines a number of red flags we have identified over the past several years, explains what they reveal and details the methods that can be used to identify them.

Indonesian officials charged in $1.6m bribes-for-permits scheme
- Two land agency officials have been charged with taking $1.6 million in bribes in exchange for granting oil palm plantation concessions spanning an area of 200 hectares (500 acres) in Indonesian Borneo.
- Investigators from the KPK, Indonesia’s anti-graft commission, are also investigating the businesspeople allegedly involved in the deal.
- KPK deputy chairman Laode Muhammad Syarif says the case highlights the dangers of the government’s continued refusal to allow greater transparency in the permit-issuance process.
- A watchdog group warns that corruption in the palm oil industry could get worse if the KPK is weakened under the purview of a controversial new law.

Enforce Brazilian laws to curb criminal Amazon deforestation: study
- Recent research finds that a failure to track environmental infractions and to enforce environmental laws and regulations is aiding and abetting ever escalating rates of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado.
- Researchers studied the failings of three environmental initiatives: the TAC da Carne, blocking cattle sales raised in deforestation embargoed areas; the Amazon Soy Moratorium, stopping sales of soy grown on deforested lands; and DOF timber permitting, which allows logging only in approved areas.
- The study found that timber, soy and cattle producers often subvert Brazil’s environmental laws by illegally “laundering” harvested logs, beef and soy to conceal illegal deforestation. These practices have been largely helped by the weak governance of the Jair Bolsonaro administration.
- The scientists recommend the closing of illegal soy, cattle and logging laundering loopholes via the strengthening of Brazilian environmental agencies, the improvement of monitoring technologies, better integration of policies and systems, and putting market pressure on producers.

10 takeaways from Indonesia’s grassroots #SaveAru success
- The Save Aru campaign is one of Indonesia’s most successful grassroots movements in recent years.
- The people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands managed to defeat a plan to turn more than half of their archipelago into a massive sugar plantation.
- This month, Mongabay and The Gecko Project published a narrative article about the movement. Here are 10 takeaways from the article.

Venezuelan crisis: Government censors environmental and scientific data
- Venezuela is among the most biodiverse nations in the world. But it has become increasingly difficult to measure, assess and protect the nation’s environment as the federal government spreads a dense cloak of secrecy over environmental and scientific statistics — concealing invaluable baseline, annual and long-term data.
- When the country was experiencing prosperity in the first decade of the 21st century, data was readily available on the Internet. But from roughly 2011 onward, as the nation spiraled into economic and social chaos, statistics began disappearing from the Web, and being unavailable to the public, scientific researchers and activists.
- Many important government environmental and social indices have been hidden from public view, including updated data on inflation, unemployment, crime, deforestation, ecosystem and wildlife endangerment, mining, water and air quality, pollution, climate change, energy, national fisheries production and more.
- Compounding governmental restrictions on transparency are difficulties in collecting scientific data in a nation suffering economic and social freefall. For example, 70 percent of Venezuelan weather stations are inoperative, meaning that regional temperature and rainfall patterns are no longer being measured.

Saving Aru: The epic battle to save the islands that inspired the theory of evolution
- In the mid-1800s, the extraordinary biodiversity of the Aru Islands helped inspire the theory of evolution by natural selection.
- Several years ago, however, a corrupt politician granted a single company permission to convert most of the islands’ rainforests into a vast sugar plantation.
- The people of Aru fought back. Today, the story of their grassroots campaign resonates across the world as a growing global movement seeks to force governments to act on climate change.

A Papuan village finds its forest caught in a web of corporate secrecy
- Indonesian companies were given until March this year to disclose their “beneficial owners” under a 2018 presidential regulation, but less than 1 percent have complied.
- In the easternmost corner of the country, investors hidden by layers of corporate secrecy continue to bulldoze an intact rainforest and have nearly finished building a giant sawmill.
- The government is drafting new regulations to close loopholes in the rules governing anonymous companies, which could yet open a new front in the fight against deforestation and land grabs.

Despite a decade of zero-deforestation vows, forest loss continues: Greenpeace
- Nearly a decade after the Board of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) passed a resolution to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020 when sourcing commodities such as soya, palm oil, beef, and paper products, these commodities continue to drive widespread deforestation, a new report from Greenpeace says.
- Greenpeace contacted 66 companies, asking them to demonstrate their progress in ending deforestation by disclosing their cattle, cocoa, dairy, palm oil, pulp and paper and soya suppliers. Of the companies that did respond, most came back with only partial information.
- The report concludes that not a single company could demonstrate “meaningful effort to eradicate deforestation from its supply chain.”
- Other experts say that transparency in supply chains is improving, and that measuring compliance to zero-deforestation goals requires more nuanced research.

Chile pledges to make its fishing vessel tracking data public
- In mid-May Chile finalized an agreement to publicly share proprietary data from its satellite system for monitoring fishing boats via Global Fishing Watch (GFW), an online interactive mapping platform that tracks ship movements across the globe.
- The country joins Indonesia and Peru, whose data already appear on the GFW platform, as well as Namibia, Panama and Costa Rica, which have pledged to do so.
- Countries are motivated to go public by the prospect of enhancing their ability to enforce fishing regulations, keep an eye on foreign fishing fleets operating outside or transiting through their waters, and, in Chile’s case, prevent the spread of disease in its salmon aquaculture industry.

Exposing coal-fueled politics: Q&A with investigative journo Dandhy Laksono
- In the days leading up to the Indonesian presidential election in April, a documentary film exposed how the two candidates were deeply tied to the country’s coal oligarchs.
- The 90-minute film, Sexy Killers, describes the expansion of coal mines in East Kalimantan, the Bornean province known as Indonesia’s coal heartland, and how the industry has wrought environmental, financial and social damages on local communities.
- The documentary has racked up more than 22 million views on YouTube since its public release shortly before the April 17 election.
- Mongabay recently spoke with Dandhy Laksono, the investigative journalist behind the documentary, about the key revelations it raises regarding Indonesia’s political elite and the coal industry.

Indonesia calls on palm oil industry, obscured by secrecy, to remain opaque
- The Indonesian government has called on the country’s palm oil companies to refrain from releasing their plantation data, citing national security, privacy and competition reasons.
- The publication of the data is a necessary part of sustainability certification under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
- Activists say they fear that withholding the information will further damage the reputation of Indonesia’s palm oil industry, which is already beset by allegations of deforestation, land grabbing, and labor rights abuses.
- The government has for years sent out mixed messages about whether it will make available the plantation data, which activists say is crucial in helping resolve the hundreds of land disputes across Indonesia, most of them involving palm concessions.

Monitoring hack shines a light on fishing boats operating under cover of dark
- A new report shows that many of the fishing vessels that operate at night in Indonesian waters don’t broadcast their location, masking a potentially massive problem of illegal and undocumented fishing.
- Though many of these boats fall below the 30 gross tonnage threshold for which the use of the vessel monitoring system (VMS) is required, the study highlights the indication of “dark vessels” where larger boats have switched off the tracking device, likely to avoid detection.
- The researchers suggest that if the matching of two data sets in near real time becomes available, it would greatly help authorities identify these dark vessels and crack down on illegal fishing.

Wariness over Indonesian president’s vow to get tough on land disputes
- President Joko Widodo says land claimed by both companies and local communities should be given to the latter, especially if they have occupied the territory for a long time.
- The statement is a radical departure from the Indonesian government’s record of siding with companies and moving slowly to recognize community land rights.
- But any benefits promised look to be undercut by another administration announcement, just days later, that plantation permit data will not be made publicly accessible — thus denying claimants a way to see if their land rights have been violated.
- The latter policy shores up an earlier prohibition on sharing permit data that Indonesia’s Supreme Court ruled illegal. Activists have filed a police report against the land minister over his refusal to comply.

What we learned from two years of investigating corrupt land deals in Indonesia
- The now-concluded investigative series “Indonesia for Sale” examined the corruption underpinning Indonesia’s land rights and climate crisis in unparalleled depth.
- The series was a collaboration between Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an investigative journalism initiative founded at Earthsight in 2017.
- In this final commentary, we explore how tackling corruption is a vital precondition for Indonesia to meet its climate targets and resolve land conflicts, and the role of government and civil society in doing so.

How land grabbers co-opt indigenous ritual traditions in Papua: Q&A with anthropologist Sophie Chao
- Industrial-scale agriculture poses considerable risk to the indigenous peoples of Papua, whose culture and livelihoods are closely linked to the region’s extensive rainforest.
- Last November, Mongabay and The Gecko Project published an investigative article exposing the murky dealings underpinning a mega-plantation project in Papua, as part of our series Indonesia for Sale.
- Anthropologist Sophie Chao has studied the often fraught relationship between Papuans and plantation firms, and the mechanisms through which indigenous people are compelled to give up their land.

In Indonesia, a company intimidates, evicts and plants oil palm without permits
- A state-owned plantation company, PTPN XIV, is evicting farmers to make room for an oil palm estate on the eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
- In 1973, the company got a permit to raise cattle and farm tapioca on the now-disputed land, but it expired in 2003. After a long hiatus, the company has returned to claim the land. It says the government has promised to give it permits in the future, but has started operations anyway even as local communities resist.
- The case is one of thousands of land disputes simmering across Indonesia, as President Joko Widodo attempts to carry out an ambitious land reform program.
- The president has also ordered a freeze on the issuance of new oil palm plantation permits, but the level of enforcement remains to be seen.

Vast palm oil project in Papua must be investigated by government, watchdogs say
- Last week, Mongabay, Tempo, Malaysiakini and Earthsight’s The Gecko Project published an investigation into the story behind the Tanah Merah project, an enormous palm oil development in Papua, Indonesia, whose owners remain shrouded in secrecy.
- Observers say what while Papuans have a right to development, the Tanah Merah project is clearly intended to benefit the wealthy and connected individuals who have coalesced around it.
- Watchdog groups want Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration to investigate the permits underpinning the project with an eye toward cancelling them. They have also called on authorities to implement a new regulation requiring companies to disclose their beneficial owners.

A carbon bomb in Papua: 7 takeaways from our investigation

Last week, The Gecko Project, Mongabay, Tempo and Malaysiakini published an investigation into the story behind the Tanah Merah project, a giant oil palm plantation under development in Papua, Indonesia. The article is long, so here are seven key takeaways from it, including a brief analysis of what could happen next: 1. The project poses […]
The secret deal to destroy paradise
- “The secret deal to destroy paradise” is the third installment of Indonesia for Sale, an in-depth series on the opaque deals underpinning Indonesia’s deforestation and land-rights crisis.
- The series is the product of 22 months of investigative reporting across Indonesia, interviewing fixers, middlemen, lawyers and companies involved in land deals, and those most affected by them.
- This article is based on a cross-border collaboration between Mongabay, Tempo, Malaysiakini and Earthsight’s The Gecko Project.

Panama, Namibia plan to reveal fishing fleet data via online map
- Panama and Namibia have planned to publicly share information on their fishing fleet in their waters via the open-access mapping tool by Global Fishing Watch (GFW).
- Both nations say such a move would be crucial in improving transparency in fisheries management and protecting their oceans.
- GFW’s mapping platform provides both general data for the public and more detailed information seen only by authorities.
- The tool helps identify if a boat is fishing during the closed season of a particular species; if it enters an unauthorized area; or if it sails into a protected area.

Indonesia’s anti-graft agency ‘eager to intervene’ in palm oil sector
- A new video by Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission, the KPK, suggests the agency is taking a closer look than ever before at the country’s palm oil sector.
- Many palm oil companies aren’t paying their taxes, and corruption in the licensing process for plantations is rife, according to the KPK.
- Smallholders control only around a quarter of Indonesia’s oil palm, according to the KPK.

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

Indonesian president signs 3-year freeze on new oil palm licenses
- The moratorium has been in the works for a long time. President Jokowi first announced it more than two years ago, in the wake of the 2015 Southeast Asian haze crisis.
- The moratorium will remain in place for three years. Environmentalists had called for there to be no limit on its duration.
- The policy also mandates as sweeping review of oil palm licenses across the country.

Slave labor found at Starbucks-certified Brazil coffee plantation
- Brazil Labor Ministry investigators have raided the Córrego das Almas farm in Piumhi, in rural Minas Gerais state, and rescued 18 workers who were laboring on coffee plantations in conditions analogous to slavery.
- The Córrego das Almas farm holds the C.A.F.E. Practices certification, owned by Starbucks in partnership with SCS Global Services. After hearing of the raid, the two companies responsible for issuing the seal said they would review the farm’s quality certificate. Starbucks says it hasn’t bought coffee from the farm in recent years.
- The farm also holds the UTZ seal, a Netherlands-based sustainable farming certificate prized by the coffee industry. That seal of approval was suspended after the certifier was questioned by Repórter Brasil regarding the Ministry of Justice investigation.
- Another inspection in Minas Gerais, in the town of Muzambinho, rescued 15 workers in conditions analogous to slavery from a farm owned by Maria Júlia Pereira, the sister-in-law of a state deputy, Emidinho Madeira.

Indonesian mine watchdog sues government for concession maps
- The Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam) filed the freedom-of-information lawsuit after failing to get a response to its earlier requests to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.
- The group contends that it needs the mapping data, in the shapefile (SHP) digital mapping format, to monitor whether mining concessions overlap onto conservation areas or farmland.
- Jatam has previously successfully sued to obtain the release of similar records at the provincial level, and says the ministry’s refusal to comply is a violation of transparency provisions in both the freedom of information and mining laws.

Is Indonesia’s celebrated antigraft agency missing the corruption for the trees?
- Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission is perhaps the most trusted institution in a country plagued with graft. But the KPK, as it is known, has prosecuted only a handful of cases in the plantation sector.
- Corruption in the plantation sector is a principal underlying cause of Indonesia’s deforestation and land-rights crisis. Our analysis found a range of obstacles preventing the KPK from taking action against corrupt politicians and the unscrupulous companies engaging in large-scale land deals.
- This article is part of the Indonesia for Sale series, produced through a collaboration between Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an initiative of the London-based investigations house Earthsight.

Technological breakthroughs are changing how researchers observe the world’s fishing fleet
- Three new scientific papers describe methodologies for working with automatic identification system, or AIS, signal data, and what the information reveals about global fishing activities.
- Two of the studies analyze how AIS data can be used to observe transshipment, which is when a fishing vessel transfers catch onto another vessel instead of bringing it into port itself.
- A third paper uses AIS data to shine new light on which countries dominate industrial fishing and in what areas they’re particularly active.

In Peru, a new president is faced with old conservation challenges
- Vizcarra has inherited the task of making critical decisions on the long-term, global benefit of an intact Amazon against short-term profits from mining, extraction and both legal and illegal logging.
- Nowhere is this struggle for balance more critical than in the country’s nature reserves and national parks such as Manu National Park.
- Manu is renowned as one of the world’s richest biodiversity hotspots, with greater numbers of certain plants and animals than any other park on the planet.
- Critics cite a legacy of neglect and question whether the Vizcarra administration will do any better enforcing the nation’s environmental protection laws.

Video: Meet the Bornean village chief dealing with the fallout from a corrupt plantation deal
- “Ghosts in the Machine” is an investigation by Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an initiative of the UK-based research house Earthsight.
- The article follows the money used to bribe Indonesia’s highest-ranking judge in 2013 to a series of massive land deals in the interior of Borneo, where a corrupt politician presided over a scheme to sell oil palm plantation licenses to a Malaysian firm.
- Short films produced in conjunction with the article feature some of the people affected by Hambit’s licensing scheme. One of them features a local village chief named Kardie. Watch the video below.

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

Palm oil firms using ‘shadow companies’ to hide their links to deforestation: report
- A new report highlights the use of opaque corporate structures by some of the world’s largest palm oil firms, allegedly to conceal their ties to destructive practices such as rainforest and peatland clearance.
- The report focuses on Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. The firms it flags include Sawit Sumbermas Sarana, Gama, Bintang Harapan Desa, and the Fangiono, Tee, and Salim family business groups.
- Also last week, Martua Sitorus, co-founder of palm oil giant Wilmar International, resigned from the firm after he was shown to be running a second firm, Gama, with his brother that has cleared an area of rainforest twice the size of Paris since 2013. Wilmar promised to stop deforesting that same year.
- “We are particularly concerned about this ‘shadow company’ issue as it really threatens NDPE policies, by allowing growers to continue to deforest, and allowing them to still find a market with companies with [zero-deforestation] policies,” said a researcher who worked on the report.

Abdon Nababan: ‘North Sumatran land mafia offered me $21m to win election — and then hand over control of government’
- When Abdon Nababan, one of Indonesia’s foremost indigenous rights activists, sought election for governor in his home province, he was provided an unprecedented insight into the corrupt inner workings of the nation’s electoral system.
- In an exclusive interview with Mongabay and The Gecko Project, he explained how the odds are stacked against candidates who seek to turn their back on corruption and “money politics.”
- Previous stories by Mongabay and The Gecko Project, produced under the series Indonesia for Sale, have explored in depth how the nation’s democracy is straining under the weight of corruption linked to plantation industries.
- Millions of voters will return to the polls to select regional heads next week, with this system intact.

Bust of shark smugglers in Galápagos waters leads to breakthrough in global transshipment data
- Global Fishing Watch, a publicly available platform launched by the NGOs Oceana and SkyTruth in partnership with Google, adds a new layer to its map today on “encounters” at sea.
- The new layer gives unprecedented visibility to the practice of transshipment, which is when vessels meet at sea to transfer fish or even people from one to the other. Transshipment is often used to disguise illegal fishing.
- Global Fishing Watch now also contains a layer that shows clusters of night lights out at sea where they’re not expected.

How corrupt elections fuel the sell-off of Indonesia’s natural resources
- A major driver of Indonesia’s deforestation and land rights crisis is the corrupt sell-off of land and resources by politicians, often to raise money for expensive political campaigns.
- Some government officials trade business licenses for cash bribes, while others engage in more complex schemes. There is every indication that permit selling in the agribusiness and extractive sectors is rife across Indonesia, even if the true extent remains hidden.
- This article was produced under a collaboration between Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an initiative of the London-based investigations house Earthsight, as part of our Indonesia for Sale series.

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

It’s time to confront the collusion between the palm oil industry and politicians that is driving Indonesia’s deforestation crisis (commentary)
- An investigation released today by Mongabay and Earthsight’s The Gecko Project reveals the deep connections between the international palm oil industry and the corruption of Indonesian democracy.
- Some of the biggest firms in the industry, that are supplying supermarkets in the EU and U.S., are buying palm oil from plantations linked to corrupt politicians.
- Six million hectares of rainforest and carbon-rich peatlands remains in licenses issued in opaque circumstances. If the role of corruption is confronted, through action in Indonesia, by overseas consumer companies and the international community, much of this forest could be saved.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

How a family of local elites is still pitching to control a district in Borneo

In the leadup to the release of the second installment of Indonesia for Sale, our series examining the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land-rights crisis, we are republishing the first article in the series, “The Palm Oil Fiefdom.” This is the fourth part of that article. The first part described a secret deal between the son of Darwan Ali, […]
Paper giant and its ‘suppliers’ are essentially one and the same, investigation finds
- A new investigation reveals intimate connections between Asia Pulp & Paper, which is Indonesia’s largest paper producer, and 25 of the plantation companies that supply it with pulpwood.
- The firm has always claimed the suppliers are “independent” entities, separate from Asia Pulp & Paper itself. But the investigation suggests that that they are all part of the same conglomerate.
- The supplier companies are often linked to deforestation, haze-causing fires, and conflict with indigenous communities.

Government revokes 406 mining permits in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan
- Local authorities have revoked 406 coal-mining permits in East Kalimantan province, with another 403 permits to be revoked in the future.
- East Kalimantan is the heart of Indonesia’s coal-mining industry, with over half of the province’s land area allocated for mining concessions.
- The revocation is a part of a nationwide effort to stamp out irregularities in the the country’s mining sector, which has long been plagued by corruption, legal violations, and environmental and social damage.

Indonesian agribusiness giant APRIL outed in Paradise Papers
- Leaked corporate records reveal the offshore dealings of APRIL, one of Indonesia’s largest pulp and paper companies.
- APRIL is one of 12 Asian forest-products giants that appear in the Paradise Papers.
- APRIL is owned by the super-rich Tanoto family.

Leading US plywood firm linked to alleged destruction, rights violations in Malaysia
- An investigation has found that Liberty Woods, the top importer of plywood in the US, buys wood from a Malaysian company that has faced numerous allegations of environmentally unsustainable logging and indigenous rights violations.
- Environmental NGOs have accused the timber industry in Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, of clearing too much forest too quickly, polluting streams and rivers and failing to obtain consent to log from local communities.
- Satellite imagery analysis in 2013 showed that, between 2000 and 2012, Malaysia had the world’s highest deforestation rate.
- In Sarawak, where logging company Shin Yang is based, only 5 percent of forests remain relatively untouched.

Few answers for Indonesians who wonder what chemicals are dumped in their water
- A new report from the World Resources Institute details a three-year investigation into how accessible information about pollution in local waterways is to residents in Indonesia, Thailand and Mongolia.
- While the Indonesian government has established laws to protect the right to information, enforcement is weak and both residents and government officials are confused about how to get and provide needed information about water.
- The WRI believes Indonesia is capable of providing the needed information to residents and is working toward doing so.

Indonesia’s decision to share vessel tracking data ‘ill-advised,’ some say
- In June, Indonesia became the first country to share its Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data, which tracks location and activities of commercial fishing boats, with Global Fishing Watch which uses tools like satellite imagery to monitor environmental issues.
- While the move is praised by conservationists for its potential to deter illegal fishing, some observers argue that publishing the data will backfire on the location of Indonesia’s best fisheries.
- Supporters of the policy refute the claims saying that it will help Indonesian authorities intercept any sign of violations on the country’s oceans, and boost compliance among fishing businesses in sustainable marine and fisheries.

Almost 1M hectares ‘missing’ from land holdings of major palm oil companies
- Palm oil is a major driver of tropical deforestation. The report was produced by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), which looked at information publicly disclosed by 50 of the most major palm oil production companies.
- Its findings indicate that while most companies disclose the area of planted land they manage, many fail to reveal the size, location, and use of many other areas in their portfolio, defying corporate accountability and concealing potential social and environmental risks.
- A supply chain expert says failures to disclose information don’t necessarily signal ill will on the part of the companies. Instead, it may be the result of unclear expectations, definitions, and protocols for reporting.
- The Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the world’s leading palm oil certification body, is reportedly working to improve the reporting process of its member companies.

Indonesian Supreme Court orders Jokowi administration to hand over palm oil permit data
- Forest Watch Indonesia has been trying to force the Ministry of Land and Spatial Planning to release in full the maps of oil palm companies’ concessions, known as HGUs.
- The Supreme Court’s decision hands the NGO a victory in its freedom of information request, launched in 2015.
- Once it receives the hard copies of the documents, FWI will scan and upload them on its website.

Greenpeace to take Indonesian forestry ministry to Supreme Court over environmental data
- Greenpeace wants the ministry to release seven different geospatial maps of Indonesia in the shapefile format.
- The ministry is willing to publish PDF and JPEG versions of the maps, but it says shapefiles can’t be reliably authenticated and could therefore be altered by third parties.
- Greenpeace contends the shapefiles could quite simply be digitally signed.

Greenpeace slams paper giant over loophole in fire-prevention policy
- APRIL is Indonesia’s second-largest paper firm. It sources pulpwood from a vast network of suppliers in the archipelago country.
- It has come to light that APRIL’s fire-prevention policy exempts short-term suppliers. These compose a major portion of its supply base.
- Some suppliers defined as “short term” by APRIL have actually been supplying the company for years, according to Greenpeace.

Indonesian government challenges another green group over freedom of information request
- Indonesian NGOs are making increasing use of the country’s freedom of information law to gain access to data pertaining to the management of the country’s natural resources.
- In one ongoing case, Forest Watch Indonesia is trying to force the Ministry of Land and Spatial Planning to release in full the maps of oil palm companies’ concessions, known as HGUs.
- The ministry argues that releasing the names of the companies that hold the concessions is a violation of the firms’ privacy.

Palm oil giant defends its deforestation in Gabon, points to country’s ‘right to develop’
- Singapore-headquartered Olam International is the subject of a new report by NGOs Mighty and Brainforest that alleges forest destruction by the company in Gabon.
- Olam counters that it is only expanding into Gabon’s least valuable forested lands and that the clearance is necessary for Gabon to pull itself out of poverty.
- The debate raises questions about what it means for a country to develop sustainably, and whether deforestation should be seen as a means to that end.
- Olam has also released a list of its palm oil suppliers in response to the NGOs’ allegations that the firm is a “black box” that buys and sells palm oil linked to deforestation and human rights abuses.

Indonesia’s forestry ministry takes Greenpeace to court over freedom of information request
- Reformist President Joko Widodo has called for a more transparent approach to governance in the resource-rich Southeast Asian nation, and activists agree that his administration has been more open than those of his predecessors.
- At the same time, the administration has withheld from the public key data and documents related to the country’s forestry, agribusiness and mining sectors.
- Some civil society groups are seeking access to the shapefile format of certain data, which allows for much more sophisticated analysis than do the .jpeg and .pdf files the state is willing to part with.
- In October, Indonesia’s freedom of information commission ruled in favor of a case brought by Greenpeace, asking the forestry ministry to publish a number of geospatial maps in shapefile format. The ministry’s lawyers are challenging the decision, arguing that the shapefiles could be manipulated by third parties.

Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia