Jakarta – A new study has shown that between the years of 2000 and 2012, the country lost 38 percent of its primary forest, with adverse effects on the nation's biodiversity.

Harry Pearl, Jakarta – Greenpeace has described a recent study that shows Indonesia has the highest rate of deforestation in the world as "an urgent wake up call" and has called on the

Michael Bachelard – Indonesia is destroying its tropical rainforests faster than Brazil, and the rate is soaring despite a five-year moratorium on new clearing.

Jakarta – Indonesia's disaster agency warned Wednesday that haze could return to neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia after a huge jump in forest fires in a province at the centre of a s

Jakarta – Satellites on Sunday detected 227 hotspots across Sumatra – the highest number in three months, after a relative lull – including 37 in the hard-hit Riau province, where blaze

Jakarta – Environmental activists have warned the government to be cautious about converting peatland into crude palm oil (CPO) plantations, as it could have a detrimental long-term imp

Apriadi Gunawan, Medan – Three protected forests – Gunung Leuser National Park, Kerinci Seblat National Park and Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park – are reportedly in a chronic state

Jakarta – Environmental group Greenpeace International called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to strengthen legislation to protect all peatland and forests in the country.

Vita A.D.

Josua Gantan, Jakarta – In November 2013, a group of researchers who partnered with Google and NASA noted that there was an alarming increase in the rate of deforestation in Indonesia.

Jayapura – Almost 226,000 hectares of forest in Papua will be cleared and converted into plantations, an environmental group said.

Pekanbaru – The Riau Police are intensifying their investigation into haze by probing a number of companies in Bengkalis and Indragiri Hilir regencies in connection to forest and peatla

Pekanbaru – Indonesian Environment Minister Balthasar Kambuaya said on Monday that as many as 23 companies were allegedly responsible for fires and haze that struck Riau earlier this ye

Jakarta – Climate change experts have said that stronger law enforcement was needed to prevent future disastrous wildfires in susceptible areas such as the peatlands of Riau, Sumatra.

Neil Chatterjee & Fitri Wulandari – As smoke from Indonesia's burning forests drifted across the Strait of Malacca into Singapore last June, the pollution index shot up and Ong Eng

John Vidal, Manila – High above the vast Indonesian island of Sumatra, satellites identify hundreds of plumes of smoke drifting over the oil palm plantations and rainforests.

Herman Genie & Tunggadewa Mattangkilang – Nearly 50,000 people in Riau province have been suffering from upper respiratory infections due to the worsening forest fires in Sumatra, a

Alina Musta'idah, Jakarta – Indonesia's palm oil industry has denied green activists' claims that it was behind the deforestation that has driven the highly endangered orangutan from it

Jakarta – Indonesia's Riau province declared a state of emergency on Thursday as haze from raging forest fires, often deliberately set, disrupted flights and marine navigation and autho

Nurfika Osman, Jakarta – Greenpeace Indonesia has called on consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble (P&G) to stop sourcing palm oil from firms responsible for destroying the natur

Ethan Harfenist, Jakarta – Greenpeace accused Procter & Gamble on Wednesday of sourcing palm oil from environmentally destructive firms, finding the US consumer goods giant complici

Jakarta – Some 20,000 people have reported respiratory illnesses in Riau as forest fires and the resulting haze continued to worsen on Monday, the local health agency reported.

Jakarta – The number of hotspots of forest, plantation and peatland fires in Riau reached 256 on Wednesday morning, more than double the 126 of the previous day.

Camelia Pasandaran, Jakarta – Brushfires continued to rage on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday, blanketing the troubled Riau province in heavy haze and prompting calls of c

Rizal Harahap and Jon Afrizal, Pekanbaru/Jambi – The regency administration of Meranti Islands, Riau province, has declared the forest and field fires in the region as an extraordinary

ID/Grace Dwitiya Amianti, Berau – Deep in the forests of Borneo island, workmen from an Indonesian timber company fell a tree with a chainsaw, stick a red tag with a serial number onto

After a decade-long fight against illegal logging, the idea of resuming log exports is heating up following a recent proposal by the Forestry Ministry.

Gethin Chamberlain – Even in the first light of dawn in the Tripa swamp forest of Sumatra it is clear that something is terribly wrong.

Jakarta – Greenomics Indonesia's spatial verification results on the "Global Forest Cover Change 2000-2012" map, which was published by the University of Maryland in the US in mid-Novem

Nadya Natahadibrata, Jakarta – The first high-resolution global forest cover on Google Earth should be used as a tool to revive discussion over the country's actual forest coverage and

Nadya Natahadibrata, Jakarta – Indonesia has the fastest rate of deforestation in the past 12 years, according to a new global map on deforestation.

A large demonstration allegedly initiated by palm oil company Kallista Alam, which is accused of illegally destroying some of the world's most important remaining orangutan habitat on t

Berni Moestafa – Illegal logging and mismanagement of Indonesia's forestry industry may have prevented more than $7 billion flowing to state coffers from 2007 to 2011, costing the gover

Apriadi Gunawan, Medan – After a two-month-long investigation, environmental NGO the Hutan Rakyat Institute, says it has found that a "colonial labor system" that violates workers' righ

Paris – Forests are still disappearing and local communities disregarded by palm oil development despite a plan to put the sector on a sustainable footing, researchers warned as an indu

Diana Parker – On Sept.

Novianti Setuningsih – An antigraft watchdog has urged Indonesian law enforcement institutions to strengthen their fight against crimes in the nation's forestry sector.

Matthew Pennington, Washington – At home and abroad, Indonesia is highlighting its progress in curbing the environmental destruction that has depleted forests and made the Southeast Asi

Thalif Deen – The tiger population in the rainforests of Sumatra is vanishing at a staggering rate, reducing the number of the endangered species to as few as 400, Greenpeace Internatio

Oreo cookies and Gillette shaving cream are among products driving the destruction of Indonesia's forests, Greenpeace said Tuesday, accusing agri giant Wilmar International for supplyin

Jakarta – The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), a conservation group, has said that it would file a lawsuit against the government for failing to control the annual forest f

Joseph Saunders – A long-awaited agreement signed on Monday by Indonesia and the European Union to trade only in legal timber is a critical first step toward reform of Indonesia's notor

Jakarta – Ricky Avenzora, a forestry expert at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), has hailed Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan's plan to evaluate cooperations with foreign NGOs.

The fallout over pointed questions about the government's inability to tackle illegal logging in a protected forest has continued with a legislator calling for the banishment of a leadi

Apriadi Gunawan, Medan – Three environmentalists in North Sumatra are going to give up their awards in protest against the national government, which they claim has persistently neglect

Baradan Kuppusamy, Kuala Lumpur – With a propensity to devour everything in their path and spiral quickly out of control, leaving behind swathes of scorched earth, forest fires are cons

The return of the smog is only the most tangible evidence of the damage from Indonesia's continuing failure to effectively manage its forests.

Dessy Aswim – The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a self-regulating industry body, has defended four out of five of its member companies accused of contributing to forest fires in S

Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Rizky Amelia – Where there's smoke, there's fire, as residents of Riau, Singapore and parts of Malaysia can attest to after forest hot spots in Sumatra ge

Margareth S.