JAKARTA Parts of Indonesia are covered with toxic air pollutants from burning lands and forests as this year’s fire season is intensifying amid the El Niño weather phenomenon, which brings drier conditions. The Ministry of Environment and Forestry identified 3,788 hotspots from Jan. 1 to Sept. 5 this year, a fourfold increase from 979 hotspots during […]
JAKARTA Across large swaths of Indonesia, forests have been cleared to make way for oil palms, making the plantation industry one of the leading drivers of deforestation in the country. But this inconvenient truth may soon be masked by a sleight being peddled by the country’s leading forestry university to reclassify oil palms as […]
JAKARTA In 2019, fires raged through Indonesia’s rainforests and peatlands, sparked by the deliberate burning of land for agriculture, and fanned by an El Niño system bringing drier-than-usual weather conditions. Ultimately, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry would put the total affected area at 1.64 million hectares (4.05 million acres), an area half […]