Mongabay
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 ...
Indonesian government challenges another green group over freedom of information request
The Indonesian government is going to the Supreme Court over an NGO’s freedom of information request for detailed maps of land on which oil palm companies have been licensed to operate in Kalimantan, the country’s portion of Borneo island. Civil society groups have tried for ...
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 ...
Stone, sand, water the key ingredients changing the Salween landscape
Tun Lin has a unique occupation: he is the security guard at Linno limestone karst cave on the bank of the Salween River in Myanmar’s southeast Karen (Kayin) State. He earns 80,000 Myanmar kyat (around $60) per month to guard the entrance to the cave, ...
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 ...
69m people breathed toxic smoke from 2015 Indonesian fires: study
Sixty-nine million people were exposed to toxic haze as a result of last year’s devastating wildfires in Indonesia, a new study has found. Little is known about the health impacts of Indonesia’s annual fires, which spread uncontrollably because the country’s vast peat swamp zones have ...
Military training areas can be important wildlife refuges: new study
Bombs and biodiversity can go hand in hand, a new study has found. Military training areas — used for the training of armed forces — can maintain biodiversity and even support species threatened with extinction, despite years of repeated bombing, fires and other disturbances, scientists ...
