The fate of a forest tract in Malaysia may have shifted dramatically in just the last few months.
For three years, a group of conservation NGOs in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, has been working to keep the forests from an area known as Forest Management Unit 5 out of the sawmills.
source: https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/sudden-sale-may-doom-carbon-rich-rainforest-in-borneo/
As much as 1 ton of plastic trash and 400 kilograms of organic litter was cleaned up by more than 500 volunteers who picked up Mt. Rinjani in West Nusa Tenggara for two days last week.
Mt. Rinjani National Park Management (TNGR) said the volcano, famous for its beauty and notorious for its trash along the trekking paths, has been relatively cleaner after the two-day clean up action.
Jakarta. A number of palm oil plantations in Riau province have allegedly received under the table permits, according to a report by a coalition of environmental NGOs dubbed the Eyes of the Earth, or EoF.
Earlier in 2014, the Forestry Ministry had converted 1.6 million hectares of forest areas into non-forest areas under a ministerial decree, but 26 companies have been found to be operating under the wrong type of license within the converted area as they are missing cultivation permits (HGU) and forest-estate release permits.
source: http://jakartaglobe.id/news/ngos-call-26-palm-oil-companies-illegal-operations-riau/
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Environment and Forestry Ministry's ocean and coastal pollution management director (PPKPL) Heru Waluyo stated that Indonesia came second as the world’s highest plastic waste to the ocean.
"It is based on the result of a study conducted by one university in The United States of America, and the plastic waste is produced by countries with good economy growth as Thailand, China, and The Phillipines, and others," he said while attending coastal cleanup in Situbondo, East Java on Saturday (4/12).
In a blow to rainforest conservation on Indonesia’s main western island of Sumatra, a court today dismissed a class-action lawsuit aiming to force the Aceh provincial government to mention the Leuser Ecosystem in its land-use plan.
The decision is a major roadblock for conservationists across the world and for citizens of Aceh who had hoped to secure the protected status of what is one of the archipelago country’s last great swaths of intact rainforest, home to critically endangered rhinos, tigers, elephants and orangutans.
source: https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/indonesian-court-shuts-down-legal-challenge-to-aceh-land-use-plan/
JAKARTA — The first containers of plywood certified as legal under the EU’s anti-illegal-logging action plan were shipped out of the Indonesian capital on Tuesday, a milestone in the fight against blackmarket timber in one of the world’s most heavily forested countries.
Of the 15 nations that have agreed to take part in the scheme, Indonesia is first to succeed in establishing a national system for verifying the legality of its timber — a considerable achievement for a country where unscrupulous loggers pocketed a presumed $60.7-81.4 billion from illicit sales between 2003 and 2014, according to the nation’s antigraft agency. Indonesia lost nearly $9 billion in state revenue from unreported timber sales during the same period.
Only less than 20 percent of some 200 companies in an industrial park in Gunung Putri district, Bogor regency, West Java, have awareness on environmental protection and conservation, a local official has said.
Gunung Putri district head Budi Lukmanul Hakim said poor waste disposal in the industrial zone had often led to conflict between the companies and local residents.
Jakarta. The fate of the Leuser Ecosystem will be revealed on Tuesday (08/11) with judges set to deliver their verdict in a case launched by Aceh citizens.
The lawsuit was filed on Jan. 21 by Acehnese community leaders against the Minister of Home Affairs, the Aceh Governor and the Aceh local government for excluding the Leuser Ecosystem from the Aceh Spatial Plan 2013-2033.
source: http://jakartaglobe.id/news/verdict-leuser-ecosystem-fall-nov-8/
Jakarta. The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, or the BMKG, said the recent spate of extreme weather is likely to continue until early 2017, with the peak of the rainy season expected in January and February next year.
With more extreme weather coming up, the agency warned the public to brace themselves for even more floods and landslides.
source: http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/extreme-weather-persist-early-next-year-bmkg/
Jakarta. With three of Indonesia's national parks having been included in the World Heritage in Danger list since 2011, the Indonesian government and the Unesco World Heritage Committee have been scrambling to find a way to save them.
The parks in question are the Mount Leuser National Park, Kerinci Seblat National Park and Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, which all form part of the Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra (TRHS), one of the biggest conservation areas in Southeast Asia.
