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Green groups want paper giant to stop using drained peat in Indonesia

International and Indonesian NGOs are calling on the country’s largest paper company to stop using drained peat swamps for industrial agriculture. The practice, which relies on drying out the waterlogged soil so that acacia trees can be planted, has enabled vast new swaths of land ...

Study finds that carbon finance is not a one-size-fits-all solution to deforestation

Halting the pace at which we’re destroying the world’s forests for agriculture, forestry, mines, and other economic development projects is crucial to combating climate change. Carbon finance, which involves creating monetary incentives for companies and countries to invest in programs to reduce carbon emissions, is ...

Private capital investments in conservation have taken off since 2013

Over the past decade, banks, fund managers, and others funneled more than $8 billion into investments aimed at delivering measurable environmental benefits as much as financial returns, according to a new report prepared by the NGO Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace initiative. The findings of the ...

The Dammed Don: Lao hydropower project pushes ahead despite alarm from scientists

Snaking down the length of the Mekong River the beautifully detailed map looks strikingly like those marking the distribution of unexploded ordnance in Laos. The red dots that pockmark the course of the river, from its origins in the highlands of China to its outlet ...

Study maps 187 land conflicts as palm oil expands in Kalimantan

Palm oil production in Indonesia often comes at the expense of traditionally managed lands as well as the livelihoods of indigenous communities, causing widespread conflict in the archipelago country. With oil palm cultivation set to double in Indonesia over the next 10 years, methods for understanding ...

Lessons from the $2 billion coal mining lawsuit against Indonesia

Indonesia cannot be held liable for $2 billion in compensation sought by Churchill Mining for the revocation of a coal-mining concession, the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ruled in a Dec. 6 verdict. The tribunal determined that Churchill’s claim to the ...

Attacks on journalists in Myanmar highlight complications, dangers for the media

The murder of a Myanmarese reporter investigating illegal logging and the roadside beating of another, both in Myanmar earlier this week, have raised new fears about media safety in the country. Soe Moe Tun, a 37 year-old Myanmarese reporter with Daily Eleven newspaper, was found “severely ...

Small-scale farming threatens rainforests in Sumatra

Rainforest cover in the Indonesian archipelago has since declined rapidly in recent years giving way to large-scale plantations of rubber and oil palm. A recent study published in Nature Communications finds that small-scale farming can be just as damaging to biodiversity as the plantations, since ...

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