In 2025, the Indonesian Government released Decree No. 36 of 2025 containing a list of more than 400 palm oil company areas occupying in excess of 1.1 million hectares of the country’s Forest Area (Kawasan Hutan) without the required forest release. Our analysis found more than 20 per cent of these areas operated by Roundtable […]
STILL a critical threat to our future As an organisation that has spent more than four decades investigating and combating environmental crime and abuse across all three pillars of the triple planetary crisis — climate, biodiversity and pollution — the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) is uniquely positioned to speak to both the scale of the […]
This report examines how timber moves into one of the world’s most important wood-processing hubs - Vietnam. During the past two decades, Vietnam has become a major global exporter of furniture and wood products, supplying markets across Asia, Europe and the US. To support this growth, the country relies not only on its own plantations, but also on timber imported from a wide range of international sources, including neighbouring countries such as Cambodia and Laos.
The 20th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP20) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) will take place from 23 November and 5 December in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. EIA will be actively engaging at CoP20 on a range of key issues relating to the protection of elephants, rhinos, Asian big cats, pangolins and vaquita porpoises, in addition to broader compliance and enforcement issues.
A report by EIA and our Indonesian partner Kaoem Telapak which documents alleged deforestation, corruption and human rights violations in Indonesia’s palm oil sector by companies which are linked via the involvement of members of the Fangiono family.
In this briefing we examine the extent to which the RSPO standard ensures legality, traceability and deforestation free palm oil. At first glance it may look as if the RSPO standard largely ensures palm oil is deforestation-free, legal and traceable. In reality, the system is complicated and many caveats and loopholes allow companies to bypass and bend the rules.