A South Sumatra court sentenced two environmental activists to seven months in prison for provoking a riot against a sugar plantation, despite a public outcry against the criminalizatio

Environmentalists have lauded the Indonesian government's decision to extend a logging ban aimed at protecting rainforests despite fierce industry pressure, but some say there are more

Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesia has approved a two-year extension to a landmark ban on clearing primary rainforests and peatlands, officials said Thursday.

Banjir Ambarita, Jayapura – Police in Papua have made a shocking revelation linking bank transactions totaling Rp 1.5 trillion ($154 million) to a low-ranking police officer suspected o

Tunggadewa Mattangkilang, Balikpapan – Palm oil planters have denounced a two-year forest-clearing moratorium that ends this month, saying it has throttled palm oil production and are u

Nadya Natahadibrata, Jakarta – A study by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) shows that Indonesia, the country with the third largest tropical forest coverage in the world, i

Angela Dewan – Sibolangit.

Yuliasri Perdani, Jakarta – The latest study from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Indonesia found that the local administration in Aceh is the worst performer when it come

Nadya Natahadibrata, Jakarta – The Forestry Ministry has failed to show its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation despite its support for the extension of th

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Nadya Natahadibrata and Anggi M.

Jakarta – Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputy chairman Busyro Muqoddas said a study on corruption conducted by the commission found that illegal logging and mining practices

Michael Bachelard – A mining company has boasted of an Indonesian government decision to free up 1.2 million hectares of virgin forest in Aceh for commercial exploitation.

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Jakarta – Environmental groups are calling on the government to extend and strengthen the 2011 moratorium that prohibits the issuance of new licenses for the conversion of primary fores

Indonesia's Forest Ministry will investigate claims of continued deforestation in Riau's protected Tesso Nilo National Park after lawmakers lashed out at the World Wildlife Fund's alleg

Jakarta – When the government's moratorium on deforestation expires on May 20, forest areas in Papua province will be in peril, activists say.

Jakarta – Environmental activists have called on the government to review the draft spatial planning bylaw proposed by the Aceh administration, which they say is putting the province's

Hayat Indriyatno – Spatial zoning proposals for Aceh indicate that the province's governor is seeking to open up more than 52,000 hectares of protected forest there to logging, a conser

The world's third-largest paper producer Asia Pulp and Paper said on Tuesday it had stopped using logs from Indonesia's natural forests, after fierce campaigning by green groups against

Hayat Indriyatno – Thousands of years' worth of carbon stored in Indonesia's peat forests is being released at an alarming rate as a result of deforestation, a new study by UK scientist

Torrential rains across Indonesia triggered a pair of fatal landslides in Sumatra and another one in Bogor on the weekend and prompted flood evacuations in parts of Kalimantan, reigniti

Elly Burhaini Faizal, Jakarta – Environmental activists have called on the Indonesian government to extend the 2011 moratorium that bans the issuance of any new permits for land convers

SP/Sahat Oloan Saragih, Pontianak, West Kalimantan – Supporters of the Uud Dhanum Dayak tribe in West Kalimantan's Sintang district have called on local authorities to declare their lan

Loic Vennin and Olivia Rondonuwu, Pararawen, Central Kalimantan – The roar of chainsaws has replaced birdsong, the once-lush, green jungle scorched to a barren grey.

David Fogarty, Singapore – Indonesia on Wednesday approved a rainforest conservation project that sets aside an area roughly the size of Singapore and rewards investors with tradeable c

SP/Arnold Sianturi, Medan – A former senior police officer's wife who has been accused of illegal logging has had key items of evidence returned to her despite prosecutors appealing the

Camelia Pasandaran – Indonesian lawmakers threatened on Friday to freeze the budget for reforestation projects if President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono continues the nation's deforestation

SP/Imron Rosyid & Tunggadewa Mattangkilang, Solo/West Kutai – Forest fires have razed thousands of hectares of land in Central Java and East Kalimantan as an unusually intense and p

Hotli Simanjuntak, Banda Aceh – Aceh's title as a "green" province may likely end with the reactivation of production forest concessions (HPH) in Aceh by the new administration of Zaini

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Rizal Harahap and Apriadi Gunawan, Pekanbaru, Medan – Riau Islands province and its surrounding areas were shrouded in a haze that reportedly originated from fires in a number of planta

Jakarta – New central government regulations will allow mining and palm oil plantation companies with regional licenses to buy their concessions in state-controlled forests.

When four men were sentenced to eight months in jail in March for the "murder" of orangutans, it was the first time that people associated with Indonesia's booming palm oil industry wer

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Michael Bachelard – The carbon-rich peat forests of northern Sumatra are burning again as palm oil companies break Indonesian law to clear the land for their plantations.

Kuala Lumpur – Haze caused by forest fires in neighboring Indonesia blanketed parts of Malaysia including the capital on Saturday, causing air pollution to hit unhealthy levels.

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Michael Bachelard – In 2007, young Australian entrepreneur Dorjee Sun began a mission to save the world.

The Indonesian government reiterated its claim on Thursday that the country's deforestation rate has drastically declined over the past two years, defying critics and environmental acti

Illegal forest clearing in Kalimantan potentially cost the state Rp 321 trillion ($34.6 billion) in losses last year, largely because law enforcement efforts on the ground remain weak,

Alexandra Di Stefano Pironti – Unless the rapid deforestation in one of the world's most richly-forested countries is controlled, Indonesians may one day wonder, "where are all the flow

Jakarta – Indonesia's progress in reforming its forestry sector will not be sufficient to meet its pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020, Norway's environment minister

Tunggadewa Mattangkilang, Kutai Kartanegara, East Kalimantan – One of the largest tracts of protected forest in Indonesia has been decimated by illegal loggers and miners to the extent

Tunggadewa Mattangkilang, Balikpapan, East Kalimantan – The fast rate of deforestation in East Kalimantan over the last few years has made it the country's third largest carbon emitting

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A coalition of green groups in Indonesia on Thursday criticized a moratorium on deforestation as "weak," saying the year-long ban still excludes large tracts of the country's carbon-ric

Joanna M. Foster – Indonesia ranks right behind the United States and China in the lineup of the world's top 10 greenhouse gas emitters.

Tunggadewa Mattangkilang, Balikpapan – Primary forest cover in East Kalimantan has been depleted from 19 million hectares in the 1960s to just 4 million hectares today due to legislatio

Earth Day commemorations in Indonesia were low-key, but those who marked the day were quick to warn of the worsening environmental situation.