A new study by researchers at Stanford and Yale universities predicts that emissions from Indonesia’s palm oil industry alone could release 558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2020 – an amount more than Canada’s total national emissions now.
While diplomacy struggles along over environmental concerns over the Mekong Xayaburi Dam in Laos, Vietnam's legislators have demanded new reports into two of its own dam projects.
Companies that rely on wood, paper and pulp and view sustainable sourcing as merely a nice extra to polish their green credentials should take note of a recent report from the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and INTERPOL which found that between 50 to 90 per cent of logging in key tropical countries is being carried out by organized crime.
The report estimated that criminal syndicates are involved in logging worth USD30 billion and accounting for as much as 90 per cent of tropical deforestation. It estimated that illegal logging accounts for between 15 and 30 per cent of the world’s timber trade.
Himachal Pradesh's "carbon-smart” growth strategy has been given a boost by a USD100 million World Bank loan. The loan will go to support the Indian state's green and sustainable policies in key engines of economic growth - energy, watershed management, industry and tourism.
A new report released by the Swiss NGO the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) puts the assets of the family of Malaysian tycoon Taib Mahmud (Taib), the long-term Chief Minister of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, at over USD20 billion.
Indonesia’s Australian-based First Secretary for Economic Affairs, Denny Lesmana, has called on Canberra to drop attempts at trying to regulate the import of timber from the South Asian country due to allegations of illegal logging.
Delegates at the 2012 World Conservation Congress (WCC) on Korea’s Jeju Island on Saturday adopted a declaration to address a wide range of environmental issues and take a step closer to "a new era of conservation, sustainability and nature-based solutions."
Malaysian logging group Samling, has been accused of using illegal logging permits to give it access to pristine forests in Liberia. The case of Liberia is simply the latest in a long list of allegations of corruption, tax avoidance and evasion and ecological terrorism against the company, which hides behind shady subsidiaries and an intricate web of cross-holdings.
At the top is the private conglomerate Yaw Holdings, led by Yaw Chee Ming, eldest son of the company's founder and one of Malaysia's richest men.
Indonesia seems to be responding to Norway’s urging for it to stop “backtracking on its own policies to protect tropical forests,” and up to USD1 billion in aid promised by Oslo in exchange for Indonesia implementing the two-year moratorium hinged on proof of slower rates of forest clearance.
Switzerland’s Attorney General has opened a criminal investigation into the country’s largest bank, UBS AG, over suspected money laundering of timber corruption proceeds from the Malaysian state of Sabah.
The Norwegian Environment Minister Baard Vegar Solhjell has urged Indonesia and Brazil to continue with progressive policies that ensure the protection of tropical forests.
The Standing Committee of China’s National People's Congress (NPC) Monday began reading a draft law aimed at putting more emphasis on the role of the central and local governments in environmental protection.
The first revision since 1989 when China introduced its fundamental legal code on environmental protection — the Environmental Protection Law — the draft amendment was created after a four-year research project.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry has launched a new Timber Legality Information System (Sistem Informasi Legalitas Kayu/SILK), which complements the country’s already established Indonesia Timber Legality Assurance System (Indo TLAS).
A new Greenpeace report calls it the “greatest land grab in PNG history” with 5.1 million hectares of customary community land in Papua New Guinea (PNG) being “given away” to foreign-owned corporations and unrepresentative landowner companies.
The “J'accuse” statement is an indictment of PNG government policies, Australian and Malaysian logging companies and China for receiving unsustainable timber.
The world's palm oil industry is going through upheavals which bodes ill for the forests of south east Asia and is likely to have impacts as far away as Africa.The markets for palm oil are shifting, refined material prices are dropping, local tariffs are changing and the sustainable land-base is shrinking. These volatile market conditions are being faced by huge conglomerates, many of which have been implicated in breaking laws, ethics and green credentials in the past.
Indonesian plantation company PT Perkebunan Nusantara X says it will build a bioethanol production plant in Mojokerto, East Java, with a total capacity of 30 million litres of fuel annually
Sustainable palm oil has finally been made available to Indonesian consumers, residents of the world’s largest palm oil producing nation and second biggest consuming market.
The World Bank has blacklisted an arm of the Finnish company that carried out a much-criticized study into the Xayaburi hydro dam project, the Phnom Penh Post reported Friday.
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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