Riau Police reportedly have dropped investigations into 11 companies allegedly involved in forest fires in 2015, underlining the poor law enforcement of last year’s catastrophe that claimed five lives.
The 11 companies were among 18 accused of having been involved in the fires. While two other companies have seen their cases brought to court, six other companies are still being investigated.
Indonesia will have to address a number of inconsistencies between its climate policies and some of its sector development plans if it wants to cut emissions in line with its commitments, according to a new report on the implementation of REDD+ in the country.
The report, titled Lessons From REDD+ for Achieving Water, Energy and Food Security in Indonesia, was funded by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network and conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society in partnership with the Global Canopy Programme.
The reaction of clouds to a warming atmosphere has been one of the major sources of uncertainty in estimating exactly how much the world will heat up from the accumulation of greenhouse gases, as some changes would enhance warming, while others would counteract it.
The study, detailed Monday in the journal Nature, overcomes problems with the satellite record and shows that observations support projections from climate models. But the work is only a first step in understanding the relationship between climate change and clouds, with many uncertainties still to untangle, scientists not involved with the research said.
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A global conservation group says Borneo's orangutans are now a critically endangered species due to hunting and destruction of forest habitat.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates the number of Bornean orangutans has dropped by nearly two-thirds since the early 1970s and will further decline to 47,000 animals by 2025.
Samarinda. Thousands of mines are closing in Indonesia's tropical coal belt as prices languish and seams run dry. But almost none of the companies have paid their share of billions of dollars owed to repair the badly scarred landscape they have left behind.
Abandoned mine pits dot the bare, treeless hillsides in Samarinda, the capital of East Kalimantan province on Indonesia's part of Borneo island. It is ground zero for a coal boom that made Indonesia the world's biggest exporter of the mineral that fuels power plants. Abandoned mining pits have now become death traps for children who swim in them, and their acidic water is killing nearby rice paddies.
source: http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/business/indonesia-faces-environmental-time-bomb-coal-bust/
Tough mission: Military personnel and search and rescue team members scour debris for victims following a landslide at Kolongan Beha, Sangihe Islands, North Sulawesi, on Thursday. Floods and landslides caused by extreme weather in different locations in the past few days have left three people dead, damaged dozens of houses and affected transportation links.(Antara/Stenly Pontolawokang)
Unruly permit issuance and rapid extractive industry expansion have led to a string of disasters in several parts of Indonesia, particularly in Java, which is on the brink of ecological collapse as most of its forest areas have been converted.
source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/06/24/java-brink-ecological-collapse.html
TEMPO.CO, Brebes - Flash floods have inundated the village of Adisana in Brebes' Bumiayu District in Central Java on Saturday evening, June 18, 2016 - destroying scores of paddy fields in the area. The floods struck after a heavy showers fell for an entire day. "As a result, the rivers and creeks around the area burst its' banks - and destroyed the levees at the village of Penggarutan," said Adisana Village Chief, Komarudin, on Sunday, June 19, 2016.
The flash floods suddenly inundated scores of homes at around 17:30 Western Indonesia Time (WIB) across three neighbourhood units (RT), namely RT 005, 006, and 007 in Community Unit (RW) 001 on Saturday evening, before slowly subsiding at around 23:00 WIB. Five hectares of paddy fields - which were about to be harvested - were destroyed as a result of the flash floods.
In May, the Indonesian government announced that nearly half of the peatlands protected under a 2011 forestry moratorium have actually been damaged or converted.
Last week, the forestry ministry said it would issue a regulation to provide legal status for these areas, which amount to 3.8 million hectares – nearly the size of Puerto Rico.
Jakarta. Vice President Jusuf Kalla has responded to Singapore's offer to assist Indonesia in mitigating forest and land fires by saying environmental issues needed to be dealt with through a regional agreement, not a bilateral one.
"If the air is clean, all people in Asia – and Singapore – will be able to enjoy it. Therefore, if [the environment] is destroyed, we have to fix it together," Kalla said at the opening of the 20th Environmental and Forestry Week in Jakarta on Thursday (09/06).
source: http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/kalla-seeks-regional-not-bilateral-solution-forest-fires/
Our main goal is to preserve the forest according to the customary traditions of our people. If there’s no forest, there’s no Orang Rimba and the other way round,” says Bepak Pengusai, head of customs in a rombong, or group area, belonging to the Orang Rimba, an aboriginal people in Sumatra.
Indonesia’s devastating forest fires pose a serious threat to the Orang Rimba habitat. From July to late last year, the fires killed a dozen people and caused respiratory tract infections in half a million more.
